The system is made up of command ballistic missiles. Instead of flying towards the enemy, they fly over Russia, and instead of thermonuclear warheads, they carry transmitters that can send a command to launch all available combat missiles in silos, aircraft, submarines and mobile ground units. The system is fully automated, the human factor is excluded or minimized in it.

The decision to launch command missiles is made by an autonomous control and command system - a complex artificial intelligence system. It receives and analyzes a wide variety of information about seismic activity and radiation, atmospheric pressure, and the intensity of chatter on military radio frequencies. It monitors telemetry from the observation posts of the strategic missile force and data from early warning systems (EWS).

If it detects, for example, multiple point sources of powerful ionizing and electromagnetic radiation, it compares them with data on seismic disturbances in the same locations, and makes a decision whether or not there was a massive nuclear strike. In this case, Perimeter would initiate a retaliation strike bypassing even Kazbek.

Another scenario is if the country's leadership receives information from the EWS that other countries have launched missiles, it would activate Perimeter. If the shutdown command does not come within a certain amount of time, the system will launch missiles. This eliminates the human factor and ensures there would be a retaliatory strike even if the command and launch teams were completely destroyed.