"Russia's air defense - to balance the US space threat"

SOURCE-RT
By 2030, some nations, namely the USA, will have space-based weapon systems capable of delivering a strike anywhere in Russia, predicts Russian Air Forces Commander Aleksandr Zelin.

In 20 years, technologically advanced countries will have a new generation of military aircraft and spacecraft, the Colonel General told the media on Tuesday. They will be unmanned, capable of flying at hypersonic speeds and probably be armed with weapons working on different physical principles as compared to weapons used now.

The new armed forces will be able “to deliver synchronous precision strikes on a global scale almost at any target in Russia’s territory,” Zelin is cited as saying by Interfax news agency.



The senior officer says Russia will need a range of new weapon systems to deter this potential threat. The country’s plan for defense from space and aerial attacks is expected to be shaped out by 2020, he announced.

One weapon Zelin named specifically is the S-500, a long-range air defense system now in development, which will be able to hit targets in space as well as in the atmosphere. Hypersonic-speed missiles and aircraft will also be legitimate targets for the future system.

Another project hinted at by the top military is a strike drone with a cruise speed of about Mach-6, or 6 times the speed of sound. He said that “while there are no concrete orders for it, we have theoretical research in this area.”

Later, the Defense Ministry’s press service told ITAR-TASS that Zelin was referring to research into pulse detonation engines (PDE) as possible technology for a future Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It’s a kind of jet engine where fuel is detonated in rapid pulses rather than simply burnt. This allows greater efficiency but poses a great challenge in controlling the vibration from detonation, which engineers are trying to solve by increasing the frequency of detonations. Current working prototypes have a frequency of dozens to a couple of hundred detonations per second, while for smooth operation, a pulse detonation engine will need to make thousands of detonations per second.

Russia is lagging behind in UAV technology, and has recently bought several drones from Israel to “test their tactical capabilities”, and as Zelin said, may purchase more. The Air Forces see UAVs as one of the prime areas of investment. Earlier in August, General Zelin said he expected up to 40% of Russia’s military fleet to unmanned craft in a matter of a decade.

Speaking on closer plans, the senior officer said Russia’s fifth-generation fighter jet will see its maiden flight later this year, “in November, or probably in December.” So far three prototypes of the PAK FA have been built for land tests, and a machine for aerial tests is on its way. PAK FA is a multipurpose super maneuverable stealth aircraft designed by Sukhoi

MEDIA WARS- SECOND REPORT IN TWO DAYS BY RUSSIAN MEDIA TARGETING WESTERN MEDIA.

Its the second time Russian media made a repost about western medias biased reporting . first report was about biased western reporting about 2008 osettian war( u can watch that report on this blog in archives of 10th august) wich was aired on RT on 10th august . below is the new report aired today by the same Russian news channel RT.

SOURCE-RT

On the first anniversary of the war in South Ossetia, many in the region are taking time to reflect. In the US, however, there’s almost no mention of the conflict, so heavily covered just a year ago.



It dominated the front pages of newspapers for weeks, playing a pivotal role in the presidential election.

Back then, candidate Obama and his opponent John McCain flexed their foreign policy muscles defending Georgia.

Never mind the fuzzy facts, Russia was seen as the aggressor in the court of public opinion, while Georgia was the little democracy that could.

One year later, the blanket reporting has halted. In Manhattan, the epicenter of the message and media capital of the country, there is no mention of South Ossetia on news tickers or plasma screens.

Health care, finance and Obama dictate the current news cycle, and the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict is just old news in the US.

And while the Caucasian country struggles to be rebuilt following Georgia’s invasion last August, the Americans are left in the dark about the anniversary.

Meanwhile, South Ossetia is not the only news story that the American media has dropped once it’s gone off the boil. The coup in Honduras and the conflict in Gaza have also slipped below the radar.

So the Americans shouldn’t be surprised that the domestic media has divorced itself from last year’s global story.

Medvedev proposes bill on troop deployment outside Russia

SOURCE-RIA-NOVOSTI
SOCHI, August 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's president said on Monday he had submitted a bill to parliament on the procedure for sending troops to fight outside the country's borders.
"This is linked to the events that took place a year ago," Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with the leaders of Russia's largest political parties.

August 7 was the first anniversary of a five-day war between Russia and Georgia over breakaway South Ossetia.




"Such issues must be clearly regulated," Medvedev said speaking in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which borders on Abkhazia, another former Georgian republic.

Russia's current 2006 legislation only allows the president to send troops to fight terrorism on foreign soil. Experts say the law lacks clearly defined terms of "wartime" and a "combat situation," which complicates the deployment of army units outside the country.

Russia sent in troops last summer to repel Georgia's offensive on South Ossetia, where Moscow had maintained peacekeepers since a bloody post-Soviet conflict in the early 1990s. Russia was condemned internationally over its "excessive" use of force and subsequent recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia severed diplomatic ties with Russia after the war and declared the regions occupied territories. Russian officials said some 162 civilians and 67 Russian service personnel were killed in the conflict.

RUSSIAN MEDIA ACCUSES WESTERN MEDIA OF BIASED REPORTING.

A year ago a story on Georgia’s war against S.Ossetia filmed by a Russian cameraman was silenced on Polish TV because it was out of tune with the politicized official media line in the country
Russian media blamed western media of biasness during the osettian war. here is the report by RUSSIA TODAY a Russian english news chennel.

ISRAEL AND US TRYING TO STOP RUSSIA FROM SELLIN S300 SAM TO IRAN

SOURCE ALJAZERA
As mutual fear, mistrust and polarisation increases between Iran and Israel, an arms race between the two sworn enemies is gathering momentum.

Central to this is the Russian-made S-300 missile system.

It is one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft missile systems in the world today and air power experts say it represents a formidable defence against conventional aircraft.

In 2005, Iran sought to buy five batteries of the S-300 from Russia in a deal believed to be worth around $800 million.

The S-300 would significantly boost Iran's defence capability at a time when it is concerned about the US military's presence in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan and Israeli threats to target its nuclear facilities.

But the S-300 deal has yet to go through and Israel has been engaging in some diplomatic wrangling in an attempt to ensure that it does not.

In early June 2009, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Russian-speaking foreign minister, visited Moscow.

He was on a mission to convince Russia to put an end to its arms deals with Iran and Syria and, in particular, to halt the sale and delivery of Russia's S-300 missile system to Iran.

Lieberman had a bargaining chip: If Russia went ahead with the sale to Iran, Israel might continue to provide hi-tec weapons to neighbouring Georgia, which engaged Russia in a war last year.

Filmmaker Abdallah el-Binni investigates this high-stakes game of brinkmanship as it threatens to spread to other countries in the region.BELOW IS THE FOUR PART REPORT .

US Assassination Squad revealed

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY “Targeted assassinations were part of the [US] ‘Defensive Intervention’ program,” says investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, referring to details of an alleged JSOC Assassination Ring revealed by Pentagon officials. Detail report in the video below.

Georgia preparing for another war deserted Georgian soldier

A soldier who deserted the Georgian army and has now fled to Russia says US instructors are currently training Georgian soldiers for a war – just as they did before Georgia’s assault last year on South Ossetia. Reddit Eduard Korotkov also spoke about Georgia’s military provocations against Russian peacekeepers prior to the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict, the weapons that the US supplied to Georgia, and Georgians’ shooting of POWs during the conflict.
the video below is the interviev of the deserted soldier by Russia Today news channel.

Russia increases troops' alert in S Ossetia after Georgia's provocations

Russia has deployed its troops and border guards in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia on increased alert following provocations from Georgia, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.
"The situation is really worrisome, provocations from the Georgian side on the eve of the anniversary of the August events last year are continuing," Andrei Nesterenko, spokesman for Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.
"In this regard, combat readiness of Russian military and border guards in South Ossetia has been enhanced," he said.
Nesterenko also said Russia will do everything possible to prevent escalation of tensions.
Meanwhile, Russian Ambassador to South Ossetia Dmitry Medoyev said that regional law enforcement agencies have also been put on high alert.
"South Ossetia's law enforcement agencies and services have been put on high alert before the mourning events, which will take place on August 7-10," the Interfax news agency quoted Medoyev as telling reporters.
Tensions in the border area between Georgia and South Ossetia were heightened days before the first anniversary of Georgia's brief war with Russia in August last year.

While Georgia accused South Ossetia of shooting at Georgian villages, South Ossetian authorities said the suburbs of its capital of Tskhinvali were attacked by Georgian mortars. No one was hurt in the shootings.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday warned of using military force to defend South Ossetia "in case of further provocations threatening the republic's population and the Russian military contingent stationed in South Ossetia."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin also said on Tuesday that the ministry is concerned over actions by Georgia's leadership to remilitarize the country.
"We are deeply concerned by the actions of Georgia's leadership to remilitarize the country, which have met a surprisingly calm and even a positive response in some countries," Karasin said.
Russia would "continue to oppose the (Georgian President Mikhail) Saakashvili regime's rearmament" and was taking "concrete measures to prevent it," he added.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Tbilisi's rule during a war in the 1990s that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war last summer, when Georgia attacked South Ossetia to retake the renegade region that borders Russia. In response, Moscow sent in troops to drive Georgian forces out of the region.
Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states two weeks after the conflict ended.

Russia expects $2.6 bln in military aircraft sales in 2009

Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport has said military aircraft will continue to dominate the company's foreign sales in 2009, and will total about $2.6 billion.
The arms export monopoly is planning to sell about $6.5 billion worth of military hardware in 2009, and earlier said its defense order portfolio was worth $27 billion.
"Aviation has always been a predominant part of Rosoboronexport's foreign sales portfolio, and 2009 will not be an exception. According to our plans, exports of Russian military aircraft will worth about $2.6 billion or 40.6% of the total," said Alexander Mikheyev, the company's deputy general director.
Although India, China, Malaysia, Algeria and Venezuela remain Russia's key customers in the area of military aviation, Rosoboronexport is seeking to expand its presence on other markets.
"We are expecting a major breakthrough in the Libyan direction, because Soviet and Russian-made combat aircraft continue to be the backbone of the Libyan air force," Mikheyev said in an interview with the Arms Export Journal, which is published by Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
According to some sources, the Libyan air force has at least 25 MiG-21 and 125 MiG-23 fighter jets, a number of Su-22 and Su-24 attack aircraft, combat helicopters and military transport planes.
"At present, Libya is expressing an interest in MiG-35 [multirole fighter], Su-35 [multirole fighter], advanced attack helicopters, and air defense systems. We are expecting to resume traditional contacts with Libya [in sales of military aircraft] in the near future," the official said.
A source in the Russian defense industry earlier told RIA Novosti that Russia had signed and had started the implementation of a contract with Libya on the overhaul of Su-24 attack aircraft in service with the Libyan air force.

RUSSIAN NAVAL DREAMS SINKING….

Last year, Russian admirals were talking about building half a dozen carriers, and escort ships. That was when oil (major export) was at over a hundred dollars a barrel. Now there’s a global recession, and all raw materials prices are down. Moreover, the admirals have come to realize that their nuclear submarine program is in big trouble. The submarine construction industry, which used to turn out several nuclear subs a year, has been producing less than one a year since the early 1990s, and cannot build new boats fast enough to replace those that have to be retired.

The Russian Navy has not only shrunk since the end of the Cold War in 1991, but it has also become much less active. In the last three years, only ten of their nuclear subs went to sea, on a combat patrol, each year. Most of the boats going to sea were SSNs (attack subs), the minority were SSBNs . There were more short range training missions, which often lasted a few days, or just a few hours. But the true measure of a fleet is the “combat patrol” or “deployment.” In the U.S. Navy, most of these last from 2-6 months. In the last three years, U.S. nuclear subs have carried out ten times as many patrols as their Russian counterparts.

Currently, Russia only has 14 SSBN (nuclear ballistic missile sub) boats in service, and not all of them have a full load of missiles. Some lack full crews, or have key systems in need of repair. Only eight of these SSBNs can actually go to sea. Russia has only 14 modern, 7,000 ton, Akula SSNs (nuclear attack subs) in service. These began building in the late 1980s and are roughly comparable to the American Los Angeles class. All of the earlier Russian SSNs are trash, and most have been decommissioned. There are also eight SSGN (nuclear subs carrying cruise missiles) and 20 diesel electric boats. There is a new class of SSGNs under construction, but progress, and promised funding increases, have been slow.

The peak year for Russian nuclear sub patrols was 1984, when there were 230. That number rapidly declined until, in 2002, there were none. Since the late 1990s, the Russian navy has been hustling to try and reverse this decline. But the navy budget, despite recent increases, is not large enough to build new ships to replace the current Cold War era fleet that is falling apart. The rapid decline of Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet needed international help to safely decommission over a hundred obsolete or worn out nuclear subs. This effort has been going on for nearly a decade, and was driven by the Russian threat to just sink their older nuclear subs in the Arctic ocean. That might work with conventional ships, but there was an international uproar over what would happen with all those nuclear reactors sitting on the ocean floor forever. Russia generously offered to accept donations to fund a dismantling program that included safe disposal (of the nuclear reactors).

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, most of the ship building money has gone into new nuclear subs. Six Akulas have been completed in that time, but all of these were under construction when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Since 1991, only one nuclear sub has been laid down, and completed. The first of a new generation of SSBNs, the Borei class has been delayed by technical problems, a new ballistic missile that wouldn’t work, and lack of money. The first Borei class boat, after many delays, is finally ready for service, but ended up costing over two billion dollars.

The Russian admirals made their big mistake in the early 1990s, when the dismantling of the Soviet Union left the second largest fleet in the world with only a fraction of its Cold War budget. Rather than immediately retire ninety percent of those ships, Russia tried to keep many of them operational. This consumed most of the navy budget, and didn’t work. There were too many ships, not enough sailors and not enough money for maintenance or training at sea. The mighty Soviet fleet is mostly scrap now, or rusting hulks tied up at crumbling, out-of-the way naval bases.

While Western nuclear subs can last for about thirty years, Russian models rarely get past twenty. That means two new SSN or SSGN has to be put into service each year to maintain a force of forty boats. Unless the sub construction budget get billions more dollars a year, that is not going to happen. Right now, the priority is on producing a new class of SSBNs (11 more Boreis are planned or under construction). These Boreis are critical, because they carry SLBM (Sea Launched Ballistic Missiles) that provide a critical (they are much harder to destroy in a first strike than land based missiles) portion of the nuclear deterrent. The rest of the Russian armed forces, like most of the navy, is in sad shape, and unable to resist a major invasion. Only the ICBMs and SLBMs guarantee the safety of the state. So the way things are going now, in a decade or two, Russia will end up with a force consisting of a dozen SSNs and a dozen SSBNs. And no aircraft carriers

Russia trumps U.S. with new Central Asia army base

Kyrgyzstan on Saturday agreed to allow Russia to station more troops in the Central Asian country as Moscow seeks to increase its military influence in the region.

A memorandum signed by Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said Kyrgyzstan had “approved a proposal by Russia to house an additional Russian military contigent in Kyrgyzstan”.

The memorandum, signed at the resort of Cholpon-Ata on Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk Kul, said the size of the contingent could be up to a battalion.

The two sides also vowed to sign a formal agreement by November 1 on the formal status of Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan, the memorandum said.

Russia already has one base in Kyrgyzstan, the Kant airbase outside the capital Bishkek.

However it is also seeking a second base in the southern city of Osh that would house the newly proposed rapid reaction force of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), an ex-Soviet group dominated by Moscow.

Kyrgyzstan in June agreed to let US forces remain at the Manas airbase outside Bishkek, used to support operations in Afghanistan, effectively reversing a previous decision in a move seen by many as a blow for Moscow.

It is currently the only country in the world to house both Russian and US bases

The struggle for influence in the region intensified last month — days after U.S. President Barack Obama completed his visit to Moscow — as senior Russian officials travelled to Bishkek to press for the creation of a new Russian base.

The pressure from Moscow came after Kyrgyzstan allowed the United States to keep its air base at Manas, which is vital for supplying U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan had said in February that it was closing down the U.S. air base after receiving a promise of $2 billion in crisis aid from Russia earlier in the year. But Washington responded with a payment of $180 million to keep the base open.

On Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev laid out the framework for the new base’s creation in an agreement that will be valid for 49 years with a possible 25-year extension.

The agreement, posted on the Kyrgyz president’s Web site, said up to one battalion of Russian troops and a training centre for Russian and Kyrgyz personnel will be housed at the base.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who travelled to Bishkek with Medvedev, suggested that these parameters may change when a more detailed agreement is hammered out by November 1.

“The total numbers will be decided by military specialists based on what is needed to ensure security in the region,” Lavrov said, Interfax reported.

He added that the two sides had agreed on “the expansion of the Russian military presence mainly in the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan.”

Russia’s existing base lies in the town of Kant in Kyrgyzstan’s far north, near the border with Kazakhstan. The U.S. air base in Manas is also in the north of the country, near the capital, Bishkek.

Saturday’s agreement comes three days after Medvedev endorsed Bakiyev’s re-election last week in a poll that caused opposition protests and was condemned by Western observers as undemocratic.

KEY VICTORY

Getting Bishkek to reverse its February decision to close the Manas air base was a crucial victory for Washington, which is seeking to more than double its presence in Afghanistan by year’s end to fight the Taliban insurgency.

Manas serves as a key refuelling point for aircraft used in Afghanistan, and supply routes through Pakistan have proven less secure due to persistent militant attacks.

Moscow has denied being behind the initial decision to close Manas, though it has made no secret of seeking to check U.S. interests in the former Soviet Union, which it regards as its sphere of influence.

During Obama’s first visit to Moscow as president last month, defence issues were at the top of the agenda, and a deal was reached to let U.S. troops and military hardware fly across Russia to Afghanistan. [ID:nL6567315]

Medvedev and Bakiyev signed the deal in the Kyrgyz resort of Cholpon Ata during an informal summit of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), whose members also include Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia.

Lavrov said the new military training facility would be available to all members of the CSTO, which is also known by its Russian acronym as ODKB.