Russia will deliver S-400 Triumph long-range missile systems to China at the earliest in 2018, Rostec state corporation head Sergei Chemezov said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper on June 2.

“I would like to note that we have a rule: we deliver weapons to our own army in the first place and afterwards we sell weapons abroad,” Chemezov said. “A large number of customers ask us to deliver the weapons ordered by them sooner, but we immediately warn them of dates and the sequence, as it happened, for example, with China.”

The S-400 Triumph surface-to-air missile system, developed and manufactured by JSC Concern VKO Almaz-Antey, is intended for effectively engaging strategic and tactical aviation planes, ballistic missiles, supersonic targets and other air attack weapons in situations of radio-electronic and other types of warfare.

The system is capable of engaging aerodynamic targets at a distance of up to 400 km and ballistic targets flying at a speed of up to 4.8 km/s at altitudes ranging from several meters to several dozen kilometers at a distance of up to 60 km.