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Russia Is Building a Nuclear Space Bomber (thedailybeast.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the nuclear-arms-race-in-space dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: The Russian military claims it's making progress on a space plane similar to the U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B robotic mini-shuttle. The tech is pretty basic. But alone among space-plane developers, the Kremlin is proposing to arm its space plane. With nukes. Lt. Col. Aleksei Solodovnikov, a rocketry instructor at the Russian Strategic Missile Forces Academy in St. Petersburg who is overseeing the space plane's development, said the orbital bomber would be flight-ready by 2020. It's unclear how much money the Kremlin is investing in the project, and how serious senior officers are about actually deploying the space plane, if and when Solodovnikov and his team finish it. In any event, the military space plane could give Russia a potentially history-altering nuclear first-strike capability. "The idea is that the bomber will take off from a normal home airfield to patrol Russian airspace," Solodovnikov said, according to Sputnik, a government-owned news site. "Upon command, it will ascend into outer space, strike a target with nuclear warheads and then return to its home base." Thanks to its orbital capability, the bomber would be able to nuke any target on Earth no longer than two hours after taking off, Solodovnikov claimed.

2 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. I believe this violates the Outer Space Treaty by jonwil · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am not a legal expert but I believe their plan to produce a nuclear-armed spacecraft violates the Outer Space Treaty (to which Russia is a signatory) and specifically Article IV which says "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner." (which sounds like exactly what Russia wants to do)

    Then again, with the way the Russian economy is these days, I dont think they have the funds to actually build or launch this thing so it wont matter...

  2. Re:So this is Russia answer to the ,, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ICBMs hit their targets a lot faster then 2 hours after launch (~30 min give or take, given launch/target). Anything that can "intercept" a faster-moving ICBM can also intercept the bomber moving 25% of the same speed,, and they know it. It's part of why they are so pissed about the Thaad deployments and the rest of it. Yes, the bomber may be able to deply decoys, but it's no different then a crappy version of a MIRVing ICBM with extra dummy warheads.

    AKA *yawn*