Putin fears the US is militarizing space and Russia is right to worry, experts say

“I think when the Russians hear this, they primarily think of the ‘Strategic Defense Initiative’, they think of missile defense, and those are the kinds of things they can’t compete in those areas as well and something they would be very keen to avoid (competing over). The question is, what is NATO actually going to do here?,” Daragh McDowell, principal Russia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC Wednesday.

Russia was quick to criticize NATO’s announcement of space as a new operational domain with Putin telling his security council that “we are also seriously concerned about the NATO infrastructure approaching our borders, as well as the attempts to militarize outer space.”

Earlier this year, Putin had said Russia needs to heavily upgrade its space industry, telling his security council in April that “it is obvious that it is necessary to fundamentally modernize the rocket and space industry,” according to news agency TASS. He also said that leading positions in space exploration were essential for solving national development tasks, ensuring the country’s security and technological and economic competitiveness, TASS reported.

Christopher Granville, managing director of EMEA and Global Political Research at TS Lombard, told CNBC Wednesday that Russia had spent considerable time and effort, in the last few decades, developing technologies to defend against “any conceivable U.S. strategic defense or anti-missile defense capabilities.”

“And if the U.S. were hypothetically to develop new capabilities in outer space, then Russia would have to come up with new responses in addition to the weapon system that Putin announced with some fanfare last year,” he said, referencing Putin’s revealing of new nuclear weapons in March 2018 that he said were “invincible.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/05/nato-in-space-putin-is-worried-about-the-militarization-of-space.html