Gabala Radar Station was a Daryal-type bistatic Passive electronically scanned array early warning radar, built by the Soviet Union in the Qabala district of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1985. It was operated by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces and closed at the end of 2012. The radar station had a range of up to 6,000 kilometres (3,728 mi), and was designed to detect missile launches as far as the Indian Ocean. The radar's surveillance covered Iran, Turkey, India, Iraq and the entire Middle East. It could detect the launch of missiles and track the whole trajectory to enable a ballistic missile defense system to intercept an offensive strike. The Radar Station hosted about 1,000 Russian servicemen with about 500 Azerbaijanis.

The Daryal-type radar is a Soviet bistatic early-warning radar. It consists of two separate large active phased-array antennas separated by around 500 metres (1,640 ft) to 1.5 kilometres (4,921 ft). The transmitter array is 30 m × 40 m and the receiver is 80 m × 80 m in size. The system is a VHF system operating at a wavelength of 1.5 to 2 meters. Its initial transmit capacity was 50 MW with a target capacity of 350 MW.