Satellite Pit Stop

According to DARPA’s website “the goal of the Orbital Express Space Operations Architecture program is to validate the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous onorbit refueling and reconfiguration of satellites to support a broad range of future U.S. national security and commercial space programs. Refueling satellites will enable frequent maneuver to improve coverage, change arrival times to counter denial and deception and improve survivability, as well as extend satellite lifetime. Electronics upgrades on-orbit can provide regular performance improvements and dramatically reduce the time to deploy new technology on-orbit.”

Via Defence Tech.

Russians threaten to counter US shield

Russia could site cruise missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, if the US goes ahead with plans for a missile defence shield in central Europe, Russia’s first deputy prime minister warned on Wednesday.

Source: Financial Times.

Russia-NATO: a marriage of convenience?

Read my comprehensive news summary of the missile shield problematique on the Lifeboat Foundation blog (”The Missile Shield and the Race for Space Awareness“).

Despite all the difficulties of cooperation between former rivals, “the impression that the Russia-NATO Council is called upon to be concerned only with Russia is a wrong one. Also wrong is the impression that it [the Council] is winding down,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Berlin in February. Sergei Ivanov, then deputy prime minister and defense minister, said that “Russia and NATO intend to work out a long-term plan to coordinate their efforts for a period of ten years.” The NATO leadership also believes that the fight against terrorism, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the settlement of regional conflicts are the foundation of cooperation between Russia and the alliance. The two sides are particularly happy with the success of a series of joint counterterrorist exercises.NATO-Russia cooperation on a theater missile defense system was written into the Rome Declaration as a separate paragraph. A year later, in 2003, NATO’s then Secretary General George Robertson described the program as a “flagship” project. At that time, participants in the Russia-NATO Council meeting agreed on the first phase of a coordination program to develop a non-strategic missile defense system. Since then, the two sides have ignored the other’s moves in this area until the United States this year announced a plan to establish the third positioning region for its national anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Following Russia’s determined objections, the Americans began offering it a role in their anti-missile shield which it was obliged simply to refuse. For example, the Americans offered to use Russian missiles as targets for their anti-missiles or to deploy elements of a U.S. missile defense system in Russia.

Source: RIA Novosti.

See also “US sticks to European missile shield plan” at EPICOS via EUobserver.

Iran Vows Large-Scale Retaliation if U.S. Attacks

“The name of the game is simply to saturate strategic targets with missile firepower in order to render the Patriots and other defenses useless,” said Hassan Fahs, a journalist and political analyst based here.
…
In the past few months, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has shown off new weapons in testing or deployment: ballistic missiles such as Scud variants and the Shihab-3, anti-ship cruise missiles such as the Chinese C-802 and Silkworm, a new high-speed torpedo and spying drones. Guards troops displayed several of the weapons in war games in the past few months, and broadcast on local TV channels and some government-run Web sites what it called UAV-shot footage of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier.

Source: Defense News

Russia fires RS-24 multi-warhead ICBM, countering US missile-shield in Europe

Thanks, Mr. Bush et.al. 

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile Tuesday that is capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces said.

The missile, called the RS-24, was fired from a mobile launcher in northwestern Russia and its test warhead landed on target some 5,500 kilometres away on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, a statement from the forces said.

The new missile is seen as eventually replacing the aging RS-18s and RS-20s that are the backbone of Russia’s missile forces, the statement said. Those missiles are known in the West as the SS-19 Stiletto and the SS-18 Satan.

The statement said the RS-24 conforms with terms laid down in the START-I treaty and the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which call for a reduction in nuclear the warhead arsenals of Russian and the United States to 1,700 to 2,000 warheads.

The RS-24 “strengthens the capability of the attack groups of the Strategic Missile Forces by surmounting anti-missile defence systems, at the same time strengthening the potential for nuclear deterrence,” the statement said.

The new missile would probably be more capable of penetrating missile defense systems than previous models, according to Alexander Pikayev, a senior analyst at the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations.

He said its development was probably “inevitable” after the U.S. withdrew from the Soviet-era Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002 in order to deploy a national missile defense shield.

Russia adamantly opposes U.S. efforts to deploy elements of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The United States says the system is aimed at blocking possible attacks by countries such as North Korea and Iran, but Russia says the system would destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe.

Via Guardian.co.uk

29/05/2007 16:00 MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia successfully test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia Tuesday, a press spokesman for the strategic missile forces said.

The RS-24 with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) warheads was launched from a mobile missile system at 2:20 p.m. Moscow time (10:20 a.m. GMT).

“The targets have been reached and objectives achieved completely,” Vadim Koval said, adding that the ICBM’s destination was a testing ground in Kamchatka, in the Far East.

Koval said the new ICBM met all international requirements in terms of strategic offensive arms reduction and was capable of avoiding missile defense systems and, consequently, would enhance Russia’s nuclear deterrent potential when deployed.

The test comes against the background of growing tensions between Moscow and the West regarding plans by the United States to deploy elements of its global antiballistic missile defense system in Central Europe.

Although Washington claims the move is needed to counter possible attacks from “rogue states,” Moscow has condemned the plans as a threat to its national security and a destabilizing factor for Europe.

Via Global Security.

The First Assassination of the 21st Century

A former spy’s excruciating death by radiation poisoning marks the beginning of an era of high-tech hit men who can kill from anywhere.

….Litvinenko claimed in a book, for instance, that the FSB was responsible for a series of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999. (The attacks were officially blamed on Chechen separatists, and Putin had used the incident to help justify a fresh invasion of Chechnya in that same year.) He investigated the 2006 murder of journalist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya. In February of this year, Alexander Gusak, Litvinenko’s old commanding officer at the FSB, accused him of having revealed to British authorities the identities of Russian agents. “I was brought up on Soviet law,” Gusak told the BBC’s Newsnight television program. “That provides for the death penalty for treason. I think if in Soviet times he had come back to the USSR, [Litvinenko] would have been sentenced to death.” A new law, adopted by the Russian parliament last year, authorizes the elimination outside Russia of individuals the Kremlin accuses of terrorism or extremism. Litvinenko openly worried that his life was in danger. He was right.

Source: Popular Science.

Chinese ASAT Prompts Space Awareness Push

U.S. diplomatic and military officials remain perplexed and unsatisfied with China’s nonexplanatory responses to international protests regarding the Asian giant’s January anti-satellite (ASAT) ballistic missile test. 

…Chilton voiced support for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, a planned constellation of satellites for tracking missiles and re-entry vehicles through the boost, midcourse and terminal phases of flight that was formerly known as the Space Based Infrared System-Low. The system could provide better space situational awareness, he stressed to the congressional crowd.

He said U.S. efforts should concentrate primarily on boosting situational awareness because officials need to be able to know what is happening to U.S. satellites. Before officials can discern that one has been attacked, they need to rule out several other possible scenarios and even then they must be able to accurately identify who attacked the satellite, the four-star general said.

Source: Aviation Now

MI5 Front Outs Cryptome As MI5 Front

24 May 2007. The Phoenix has published a number of smears about sources of material published on Cryptome: Kevin Fulton, Martin Ingram, Sam Rosenfeld, and others who have exposed British murderous covert operations in Northern Ireland. Smears are common tradecraft of the spooks: a favorite is name an foe as a spy to breed suspicion and foster revenge killing. There are a dozen laughable errors in this hoot.

Read the article on Cryptome.

Russia promises ’sword’ to thwart U.S. missile shield

MOSCOW: The official considered to be a leading contender to succeed President Vladimir Putin criticized a landmark Soviet-U.S. arms treaty as being a “relic of the Cold War,” and promised that Russia would have a “sword” capable of piercing a U.S. missile shield.

During a two-hour news conference Wednesday, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov harshly criticized U.S. plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying that Moscow does not trust Washington’s claims that they are intended to fend off potential missile threats from Iran.

Source: IHT/AP

Star War Fronts

Israel already used US-made Patriot missiles to defend against missile attacks
US plans Israel missile shield 

The US House of Representatives has adopted a measure aimed at weaving closer US and Israeli defences against ballistic missiles of the type that could be fired by Iran.
 
The measure, part of a $504 billion defence spending bill passed on Thursday, would redirect $205m in defence department funds toward projects already underway in Israel.
 
It would provide $25m more for Arrow missile co-production and integration, $45m for a US-Israeli short-range missile defence system dubbed “David’s Sling” and $135m to buy a Theater High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, fire unit.
 
All three projects involve interceptors rockets designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of their flight paths.
 

Source: MWZ News.

U.S. experts end exploration of Brdy Czech military district

Prague- A team of 38 U.S. experts ended today the exploration of the Brdy military district, southwest of Prague, where the United States wants to station a radar within its anti-missile shield, the Czech Defence Ministry has announced.

The experts mainly studied the hydrological and geological conditions, the quality of infrastructure and transport accessibility.

The team was headed by Julian Savage from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Czech military chief of staff Vlastimil Picek said on Wednesday that the radar will be located at least five kilometres away from the closest housing facility, and that the training of the Czech artillery brigade in the district will have to be halved, which he said is no problem. Another group of five U.S. experts looked into whether the radar would reduce television and radio broadcasts, for instance.

Recently, Czech and U.S. negotiators held two-day consultations on the legal status of the radar base personnel. On May 22, the two countries’ negotiators will discuss a treaty defining the conditions of the functioning and operation of the possible radar station, its precise location, access to it, possibilities of visits and logistics.

Negotiations between Prague and Washington will last several months and it will depend on their outcome whether the radar will really be built in the Czech Republic. Another element of the anti-missile shield, a base with ten missile interceptors, is to be built in the neighbouring Poland.

A majority of Czechs are against the radar, and politicians are not united on it either.

Author: ČTK

Source: Ceske Noviny