Russia building anti-satellite weapons

[lovuian]

Run time: 01:26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg1UkYQrdEQ   Posted on YouTube: March 06, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: March 06, 2009 By DU Member: lovuian Views on DU: 495

 
Russia building anti-satellite weapons

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV – 20 hours ago

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is working on anti-satellite weapons to match technologies developed by other nations and will speed up modernization of its nuclear forces, a deputy defense minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

The statement by Gen. Valentin Popovkin signaled the government's intention to pursue its ambitious plans to strengthen the military despite the money crunch caused by a worsening financial crisis. He said the military will procure enough new missiles to deploy near Poland if the U.S. goes ahead with its European missile defense plans.

Popovkin said Russia continues to oppose a space arms race but will respond to moves made by other countries, according to Russian news reports.

"We can't sit back and quietly watch others doing that; such work is being conducted in Russia," Popovkin was quoted as saying.

Russia already has some "basic, key elements" of such weapons, he said without elaboration.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ia2ELy71D8upyHQMB-4TOWsJVvqQD96O0NS00
Its not in this article but I have read comments by Russian military
They don't believe the collision with their Iridium satellite was a accident
Star Wars is coming

[Phoonzang]

1. What don't these guys understand about "star wars"?

If you keep blowing up satellites, you ruin space for everyone. Destruction of only a few large sats will produce so much debris that everyone's equipment (and people) up there will be in danger. You would have to completely forget about manned space flight (unless we develop some kind of magical deflector shield) and everything from weather sats to communication sats would constantly be getting taken out by the clouds of space debris (creating more space debris of course).

[HopeHoops]

2. Haven't these guys ever played the Asteroids arcade game????

[TheEuclideanOne]

3. I am picturing a triangular ship floating around

with a joystick controlled down here on earth.

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Here is a history of Antisatelite programs.

A History of Anti-satellite (ASAT) Programs

[AtheistCrusader]

5. OUR Iridium satellite.

And 'our' as in a civilian communications satellite. It wasn't even Government equipment. Iridium is the worldwide satellite cell phone network.

Of course it wasn't an accident. I mean, who wouldn't want to smash a multi-million dollar piece of civilian infrastructure into a 20+ year old defunct Russian satellite. I mean, it's such a brilliant plan, who wouldn't jump at that chance?

[iamthebandfanman]

6. just say no to space militarization! n/t