04 December 2019, 21:08 / Politics

Putin called for strengthening Russia's rocket and space industry

The orbital constellation will be strengthened by fundamentally new satellites Ivan Safronov

The inspector satellite was launched on a Soyuz-2.1v rocket on November 26 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome / ROSCOSMOS

The development of an orbital constellation of dual-use and military satellites became the central topic of a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and heads of defense industry enterprises held in Sochi on Wednesday. Opening the event, Putin recalled that the world's leading countries are actively developing modern space systems, complementing and improving their technical characteristics, and the US leadership openly views outer space as a theater of military operations. Russia has always consistently opposed the militarization of space, but the development of the situation “requires increased attention from us to strengthening the orbital group, as well as the rocket and space industry as a whole,” the president noted. As positive examples, he cited the increased capabilities of the space echelon of the missile attack warning system (they were confirmed during the Grom-2019 exercises) and the development of new satellite systems by industrial enterprises.

The rearmament of space forces is given much attention in the state armament program (GPV), designed until 2027, says a Vedomosti source close to the Ministry of Defense: the armed forces, as shown by an analysis of military conflicts of the last decade, are in dire need of new satellite communications and guidance systems and target designation, radio, electronic and optical-electronic reconnaissance, as well as relaying. Since the 2000s The industry carried out a number of advanced developments in the field of military space, but due to a combination of technical (unavailability of production) and organizational (frequent changes to the technical specifications by the customer) reasons, they could not be implemented on time, Vedomosti’s interlocutor admits. For example, the renewal of the space echelon of early warning systems mentioned by Putin began only in 2015 with the launch of the Tundra device, part of the Unified Space Detection and Combat Control System, although the military announced the launch of the first device at the end of 2009. Now the key issues are related to import substitution, which also affects the timing of the implementation of a number of important programs, the interlocutor adds, but they will be completed, since billions of rubles have already been invested in them.

At the same time, we are talking not only about updating the constellation with more advanced systems, but also about deploying fundamentally new spacecraft. These include the inspector satellite launched on the Soyuz-2.1v rocket on November 26 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome: it is capable of moving in orbit and conducting external inspection and non-contact technical diagnostics of other satellites from the minimum possible distance. In addition, as RIA Novosti noted, inspector satellites can receive information not only from their own, but also from foreign satellites. According to space analyst Bart Hendricks, we may be talking about a spacecraft created by the NPO named after. Lavochkin and the Central Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics as part of the experimental design development "Nivelir". In June 2017, a platform satellite codenamed “Cosmos-2519” was launched into space, and in August the small spacecraft “Cosmos-2521”, intended for inspection of one of the domestic satellites, separated from it. Two months later, another disclosure occurred: the inspector satellite Kosmos-2523, also capable of diagnosing the condition of other devices, separated from Cosmos-2521.