Russia is developing an anti-satellite capability, The International Herald Tribune reported, quoting a Russian official.
Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Valentin Popovkin said Russia can’t remain idle while China and the United States develop and test ASAT capabilities, though he added that Russia continues its opposition to a space arms race.
He referred to China using a ground-based missile to obliterate one of its own aging weather satellites, an act creating thousands of pieces of lethal space debris, and using a ground-based laser to disable a U.S. military satellite.
Popovkin also may have been referring to the United States using a specially modified sea-based Aegis weapon control system and a Standard Missile interceptor to obliterate a nonfunctional U.S. intelligence satellite containing toxic hydrazine propellant.
Popovkin, formerly chief of Russian military space operations, said some components of the Russian ASAT weapon have been developed, but he didn’t describe what sort of system it will be: ground-based interceptor, space-based weapon or ground-based laser.
Russia this year will spend $42 billion (1.5 trillion rubles) on military hardware, with a quarter of that for nuclear forces such as putting 10 more ICBMs online.
Russia is newly resurgent, using vast oil and gas revenues it received in recent years to help fund a military renewal. That bellicose resurgence includes resuming long-range bomber and nuclear-missile submarine patrols near the United States and allied nations, developing the Bulava ICBM that allegedly outwits missile defense systems, threatening to annihilate a U.S.-designed European Missile Defense system if it is built in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in ground silos), conducting military exercises off South America, and much more.
U.S. military analysts say the Bulava missile has failed in many of its test firings, but Popovkin said several flaws in production have been discovered. He also said the Russian air force will receive 50 each new planes and helicopters, and a next-generation fighter plane is to make its first flight in August.
The United States in the early 1980s began developing an ultimate plane, the Advanced Tactical Fighter that now is called the F-22 Raptor, a plane built to counter an expected super-fighter that the then-Soviet Union was developing when it collapsed.
President Obama and Congress are mulling whether to cut off the F-22 buy at only 183 planes, about a fourth of the 750 once envisioned, and half the 381 that the Air Force until recently said it required. Options would be to build 20 more F-22s for a total buy of 203, or perhaps 60 more for something around 240 total.