{"id":973,"date":"2016-05-28T14:57:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T14:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=973"},"modified":"2016-05-28T14:57:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T14:57:37","slug":"russia-flight-tests-a-235-nudol-anti-satellite-missile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2016\/05\/28\/russia-flight-tests-a-235-nudol-anti-satellite-missile\/","title":{"rendered":"RUSSIA FLIGHT TESTS A\u2013235 NUDOL ANTI-SATELLITE MISSILE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A-235<\/a><\/p>\n

Sourced : The Washington Free Beacon<\/p>\n

By: Bill Gertz<\/p>\n

Russia conducted a successful flight test of a developmental anti-satellite missile on Wednesday that is capable of destroying satellites in orbit, American defense officials said.<\/p>\n

The A\u2013235 Nudol direct ascent anti-satellite missile was launched from the Plesetsk test launch facility, located 500 miles north of Moscow, said officials familiar with the situation.<\/p>\n

The missile was monitored by U.S. intelligence satellites and the test appeared to be successful.<\/p>\n

The launch marks another major milestone for Moscow\u2019s efforts to develop weapons capable of destroying U.S. navigation, communications, and intelligence satellites, a key strategic advantage.<\/p>\n

No additional details were available, and it could not be learned if the A\u2013235 Nudol missile was fired against a satellite or was test launched in a suborbital trajectory without hitting a target.<\/p>\n

It was the second successful test of the A\u2013235 Nudol, following a Nov. 18 launch, and shows Russia is advancing its anti-satellite weaponry.<\/p>\n

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow is modernizing its entire strategic arsenal and developing new weapons like anti-satellite missiles.<\/p>\n

Air Force Lt. Gen. David J. Buck, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, told a House hearing in March that the Russians are developing space weapons, known as \u201ccounter-space capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia views U.S. dependency on space as an exploitable vulnerability and they are taking deliberate actions to strengthen their counter-space capabilities,\u201d Buck told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.<\/p>\n

Gen. John Hyten, the commander of Air Force Space Command, also has said both Russia and China are building space weapons. \u201cThey are developing capabilities that concern us,\u201d Hyten has said in press reports.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Nudol program has been couched in secrecy, but it appears linked to Moscow\u2019s missile defense systems. State-run press reports in the past have mentioned the A\u2013235 Nudol experimental development project as a \u201ca new Russian long-range missile defense and space defense intercept complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Pentagon official Mark Schneider said senior U.S. military leaders have been warning about Russian anti-satellite threats for years and regard it as serious.<\/p>\n

\u201cGPS guidance has been widely adopted for many of our weapons because it was cheap, all weather, and works well in low and medium intensity conventional conflict,\u201d he said. \u201cThe loss of GPS guidance due to [anti-satellite] attack would take out a substantial part of our precision weapons delivery capability and essentially all of our standoff capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geneva-based Russian military analyst Pavel Podvig speculated whether Russia may have conducted a simulated intercept in the latest test.<\/p>\n

How the Nudol program fits within Russia\u2019s military doctrine is difficult to assess, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy take is that it is not necessarily part of a well thought out strategic plan,\u201d Podvig said.<\/p>\n

Soviet-era and current Russian weapons developments were often developed without a clear idea on how they would be employed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the [Nudol] system is being developed just because it can be developed\u2014they will think about its role later, assuming that it works,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Podvig said the apparent missile manufacturer, Almaz-Antey, \u201cis making an argument that an [anti-satellite] system might be useful to hold U.S. [low-earth orbit] assets at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if it gets to a real conflict scenario it is very difficult to see how this capability might be militarily useful,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A Defense Intelligence Agency report to Congress in February 2015 warned that, \u201cRussia\u2019s military doctrine emphasizes space defense as a vital component of its national defense. Russian leaders openly assert that the Russian armed forces have anti-satellite weapons and conduct anti-satellite research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schneider said the threat to U.S. satellites is compounded by a lack of kinetic U.S. counter-space capabilities that could hold Russian Glonass satellites at risk.<\/p>\n

China also is developing anti-satellite missiles and in 2007 conducted a test of a missile that destroyed a weather satellite, resulting in tens of thousands of pieces of dangerous orbiting debris.<\/p>\n

The blog Planet4589.org, which monitors space launches, lists three earlier A\u2013235 Nudol tests, including an April 22, 2015, test that failed. The two other tests were the successful launch on Nov. 18 and an Aug. 12, 2014 launch.<\/p>\n

The blog identified the Russian designation for the A\u2013235 Nudol missile as \u201c14Ts033.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, the A\u2013235 Nudol test took place a day before the Air Force Space Command concluded a major annual war game involving a notional Russian adversary armed with both direct ascent anti-satellite missiles and orbiting anti-satellite robots, command officials told reporters.<\/p>\n

Air Force Col. Mike Angle, Space Command\u2019s chief of training, weapons, and tactics, said the exercise involved European allies and U.S. forces facing off against a \u201cpeer competitor\u201d in 2026 that appeared to be Russia.<\/p>\n

The annual exercise is called Schriever Wargame 2016 and was held this year at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Ala.<\/p>\n

The exercise included simulated activities by missiles, cyber-attacks, and orbiting satellite-killing robots. Scenarios also included cyber-attacks against GPS satellites that provided false data to military GPS receivers that are widely used for navigating precision-guided weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to, and we feel we need to, prepare for a crisis or conflict that might extend in the space domain,\u201d Angle said.<\/p>\n

Jason Altchek, a Space Command official who directed the war game, would not say if the notional adversary was Russia. \u201cI can tell you it was a global scenario that focused on the European Command,\u201d he said, noting that the scenarios were split evenly among space and cyber crisis and conflict simulations and responses.<\/p>\n

Pressed on whether Russia was the adversary, Altchek said such details remain classified. \u201cBut I can tell you that the Schriever Wargame has gone from looking at a near-peer competitor, to a peer competitor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The seven allied nations that took part in the war games were not immediately identified by the Air Force. However, Angle said one lesson was that \u201cwere not all on the same sheet of music\u201d in dealing with space and cyber threats.<\/p>\n

Past Air Force exercises had been limited to mainly launching and controlling satellites in a relatively peaceful space domain. \u201cWe had never trained to perform in the face of a thinking adversary,\u201d Angle said.<\/p>\n

In recent years and including the recent war game, the military has begun training to deal with space threats such as \u201cwhat happens when you have a direct ascent [missile] launched against a satellite,\u201d Angle said.<\/p>\n

Missiles are easier to identify than unidentified, small maneuvering satellites that might either be a killer anti-satellite robot or a benign maintenance satellite.<\/p>\n

The goal of the exercise was to simulate coalition warfare that extends into space and cyber space.<\/p>\n

The scenarios took place in the European Command area and included \u201ca full spectrum of threats across diverse operating environments to challenge civilian and military leaders, planners and space system operators, as well as the capabilities they employ.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 200 military personnel and civilians from 27 commands and agencies took part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sourced : The Washington Free Beacon By: Bill Gertz Russia conducted a successful flight test of a developmental anti-satellite missile on Wednesday that is capable of destroying satellites in orbit, American defense officials said. The A\u2013235 Nudol direct ascent anti-satellite missile was launched from the Plesetsk test launch facility, located 500 miles north of Moscow,… Continue reading RUSSIA FLIGHT TESTS A\u2013235 NUDOL ANTI-SATELLITE MISSILE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[790,80,789,40,791,499,27,788],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-industry","tag-air-force-space-command","tag-china","tag-gps","tag-moscow","tag-nudol-missile","tag-pentagon","tag-russia","tag-vladimir-putin","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}