The current spy scandal involved a scientist working in a secret research center near Zhukovsky air base, the Russian air force’s top test center, near Moscow. To STRATFOR’s knowledge, this center is designing new air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. The distinctive characteristics of these missiles include supersonic speed, low flight altitude, new elements of stealth technology and extremely accurate guidance systems. The United States currently lacks a reliable defense against these weapons, and its own versions of the missiles lack some advantages.
Despite the Russian military’s diminishing production capabilities and financial resources, the country maintains design-technology superiority in other areas, such as new weapons systems for both surface ships and submarines. These include new ship-borne cruise missiles and a supersonic torpedo, Shkval, that is unsurpassed in speed and efficiency. U.S. citizen Edmund Pope was arrested and sent to prison last year in Russia while trying to obtain secrets concerning the Shkval from a contact at a Russia’s Bauman Technical University, a leading defense technology center. It is worth noting that Pope was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin after spending only a few weeks in prison, ostensibly for health reasons: Putin said Pope was suffering from cancer, but American doctors who examined him later found no trace of the disease.
Russia also maintains the lead so far in designing anti-defense missiles. In fact, only Russian-made systems, such as the S-300 and its modifications, would be able to repulse a massive air onslaught by hundreds of cruise missiles and bombers, the kind of air offensive favored by the United States. The United States benefited greatly during its air campaigns in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan because its enemies did not have such defense systems at their disposal — Moscow refused to deliver them to Baghdad and Belgrade. Recently, Russian scientists created an even more powerful system, S-400, and are continuing to improve it.
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