Gagarin Air Force Academy (Russian: Военно-воздушная академия имени Ю. А. Гагарина) is a Russian military aviation academy located in Monino, Moscow Oblast. The academy prepares high-ranking military personnel for the Russian Aerospace Forces. Among the academy alumni are around 700 Heroes of the Soviet Union (highest award in the USSR), more than 10 cosmonauts, and over 2000 military specialists from 21 foreign countries. The schools provides regiment and division-level commanding officers to fill commanding, staff, navigation, logistics, communications and radar-support positions. Alternative academy names in the English-language literature include Yuri Gagarin Military Air Academy and Yuri Gagarin Air Force Academy. In conversational speech often simply referred to as Gagarin Academy or Monino Academy. By late 2008, this academy and the N. Zhukovsky Aviation Engineering Academy both merged to become the Gagarin-Zhukovsky Military Combined Air Force Academy, but it still retained its Monino campus. Later in 2011 the Monino campus was closed. Source: Wikipedia (en)