Space-based weapons would risk a new arms race

Posted on: Apr. 10th, 2006 || Source: mercurynews.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Space-based weapons would risk a new arms race

MOSCOW - The United States has promised to make public in the next few months its new space doctrine, which allows for the deployment of weapons in outer space.

Col. Anthony Russo, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command's space and global strike division, said the time was ripe for clearly stipulating the Pentagon's responsibility for the security of the national space group. Space-based laser and kinetic energy weapons will be used against those who create obstructions to U.S. satellites. Logically, this will lead to the creation of a space theater of war.

Much has been written and said about the inadmissibility of space weaponization. In early March, Russia's ambassador to the U.N. office in Geneva, Valery Loshchinin, said again that the placement of weapons in space would ``provoke a new round of the race for nuclear missile and other arms, both in space and on the Earth, which would boost the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles.''

Russia has reaffirmed that it would not become the first to orbit weapons of any type and called on all countries to follow its example.

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