RUSSIA COMBINES AIR FORCE AND SPACE COMMANDS

These articles were shared by many regular readers here, and their general content raises certain questions, given the current geopolitical tensions between the West and the emerging BRICSA bloc, within which, of course, the Russian  continues to be the premier thermonuclear and space power. Each of the articles says essentially the same thing. It's the reading between-the-lines part that is difficult:

Russian Military Merges Air Force and Space Command

Russia just folded several branches of its military into a new 'Aerospace Force'

Guarding Space: Russia Creates a New Branch of the Armed Forces – Aerospace

Pause and consider a very obvious point, namely, that the great powers have traditionally created services branches of their militaries when the technological and economic needs and capabilities have emerged to sustain them on a permanent basis. For example, the ideas of professional navies emerged in the ancient world only gradually, eventually reaching the establishment of a permanent ocean-going military arm (at least in western history), with the Roman Empire, a practice which continued throughout the Byzantine period, and which was transferred to the Ottoman Empire, the Italian city-states, and eventually to the early modern Atlantic maritime powers. These two service branches, armies and navies, continued to be the norm up until World War One and its immediate aftermath, when technological advances made the airplane more than just a platform for carrying cameras for reconaissance and lightweight bombs. By the early 1930s, Great Britain had the Royal Air Force, Soviet Russia had the Red Air Force, and Germany the Luftwaffe, as seperate service branches. Now Russia has joined the USA in establishing a fourth branch of armed forces (or, alternatively, has extended its Air Force into outer space), a space force.

One must view these developments within the long history of the militarization of human space: first land was militarized, then the oceans, then the airspace above our heads, and now space itself. The establishment of service branches, in other words, means the inevitable presence of weapons in the areas covered by that service branch's field of operations.

In effect, Russia's move is an acknowledgement of the inevitable, brought about by careful consideration of the similar integration of air and space command structures in NATO, as the first article avers, Marshal Shoigu, Russia's Defense Minister recognizes this reality quite well:

Shoigu, introducing the new military branch, described the merger of Russia’s lofty services as “the best option for streamlining our nation’s system of air and space defense,” and said the move was prompted “by a shift in the combat ‘center of gravity’ toward the aerospace theater.”

Maxim Shepovalenko, a former Russian military officer and analyst at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defense think tank, said this new focus reflects lessons learned in the wake of NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s.

“Based on what we saw [then], air and space attacks are the first stage of any conflict, be they small, medium or large,” Shepovalenko said. “[In this regard], the prime reason for the merger is to ensure a prompt response to any attack coming from the air or space with a streamlined and unified command.”

Modern militaries, such as the U.S.-led NATO alliance, consider air and space to be a seamless theater of war. Ballistic missiles travel through both, and air forces are supported by space-based communications and intelligence satellites.

Russia, the U.S. and China are all working on anti-satellite weaponry that could bring war into space, prompting the imperative of new defensive strategies.

This new command structure and operational doctrine, not surprsingly, entails a Russian strategic missile defense component:

A reported 20 percent of the 20 trillion ruble rearmament drive was set aside to buy new equipment such as S-400 air-defense systems and the developmental S-500, which reportedly will have the ability to intercept targets at the edge of the atmosphere.

As the Moscow Times article also avers:

“It is an incomplete integration,” Shepovalenko said. “Compared to the U.S. Air Force, which wields both the sword and the shield, we will be incorporating only the shield.” This indicates that the focus of Russia’s new branch is on countering advanced U.S. missiles currently under development as part of the Prompt Global Strike program — a project to field a hypersonic missile capable of hitting anything on the globe in 30 minutes — while offensive nuclear missiles will be kept under a separate command, Shepovalenko said.

These words require careful unpacking, but their meaning is clear: just as it is the US intention to dominate the high ground of space strategically, to enable it to use that high ground to interdict any point on the globe with strategic offensive, and probably space-based or space-utilizing weapons, so Russia intends to dominate space strategically, and defensively interdict any potential American offensive uses of space.

All of which makes one wonder, once again, about those curious statements of Mr. Medvedev a month prior to the Chleyabinsk meteor strike, that Russia would have to develop an asteroid defense system, in partnership with others on the best scenario, and independently if necessary, a capability that, you'll recall, Mr. Medvedev indicated would be reliant on thermonuclear weapons or (to paraphrase) "other modalities" for the destruction of "asteroids."

If you, like me, have been watching all this bizarre space news lately, from Pluto and Ceres to Japanese and Chinese plans for the Moon and lasers, to Russian asteroid defense and now,combined aerospace commands, one wonders if, indeed, geopolitics is the only context for these developments.

See you on the flip side...

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

17 Comments

  1. Helen Ramos on August 13, 2015 at 2:19 am

    A website, WhatDoesItMean.com, has two interesting articles:
    – Putin Orders Spacecraft Debris Removed from Iran as Alien Fleet Circles Earth.
    – Russian Special Ops Converge on Massive Spacecraft Debris in Field in Iran.
    While, the particular site is almost suspect for the type of news it carries, one needs to look at the particular objects that it is putting its sights on, and the implications contained therein, which are not normally contained in any other site. While sites like this could contain trash, it could also be utilised by authorities for issuing materials that normally would be considered sensitive. Sometimes, one finds treasure in something presented as trash….
    I would suggest looking through a number of their articles



  2. Frankie Calcutta on August 12, 2015 at 8:02 am

    I imagine one day another branch of the military will arise tasked with fighting an inter-dimensional war.



  3. DaphneO on August 10, 2015 at 5:29 pm

    Another very good article explaining what the Russians are doing can be found on The Saker blog.
    http://thesaker.is/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-russias-airspace-defense-system-concept/

    It’s slightly reasssuring to know that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is a Buddhist.



    • Tim H on August 11, 2015 at 6:12 pm

      Very slightly. See how Buddhists in Myanmar/Burma treat the Muslim Rohingya minority? Not exactly compassionate. Sorry off topic I know.



  4. Robert Barricklow on August 10, 2015 at 4:46 pm

    In a way this ties in with the Earth versus aliens scenario that “they” are trying to push I can’t see how they want us to fight the aliens while we’re trying to fight of the technocratic control, turning the war on terror[before asteroids & aliens] into a war on the public’s right to know. It is the citizens[all over the world] who are he ultimate guardians of “our” liberty, and it is our right, indeed our duty to be informed by a public press & whistleblowers when our governments deceive us. It is the bedrock of a representative Republic. Remember Dwight’ D Eisenhower’s farewell address 1/17/1962, “…we must be alert to the equal & opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific technological elite”. We all know, it’s too accurate of a cliché to say, “That truth is the first casualty of war.
    And the public worldwide, …is in the privatized crosshairs.



  5. goshawks on August 10, 2015 at 3:46 pm

    I believe the Russian response is due to a couple of items:

    First, the US is insisting on the Long Range Strike Bomber program. This expensive boondoggle is likely to be operating on the edges of the atmosphere, hence the blurring of the air/space boundary.

    Second, Russia is awakening to the vulnerability the US has in terms of having become dependent on its space assets. Reconnaissance and data-relay satellites make easy targets. Combining the Russian air & space assets produces an ‘uneasy’ feeling as to whether they could knock the satellites down with SA-400/500s in a pinch. (Laser/charged-particle beam capabilities adds to this ‘blurriness.)

    There is also the ‘bureaucratic’ problem which is solved by the combining. I could see each separate ‘branch’ pointing to the other and proclaiming “it was in their region” to avoid responsibility for some lapse. This way, there is one ‘responsible party’…



  6. marcos toledo on August 10, 2015 at 9:54 am

    Just how far into a Star Trek-Star Wars-Tesla technological society are we? Our elites seem to be trying to keep us in a 1950’s techno world with only a few twenty first century crumbs here and there to keep us believing we’re progressing.



    • goshawks on August 10, 2015 at 3:20 pm

      I agree on the “trying to keep us in a 1950’s techno world.” I got my aerospace engineering degree just after Apollo 11. I expected us to have moved-on to human-travel in the solar system by now. Everything seems to have hit a brick wall since then. (I visited the production-line Saturn V at Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Center a couple of times. Grrr.)

      That’s just on the unclassified side…



  7. Robert Barricklow on August 10, 2015 at 9:26 am

    I find it disturbing that Von Braun’s scripted scenario leads to an anticipated set of circumstances that look too set in stone. Was there an ancient civilization that fell prey to their own technologies; changing their very being to the point of no return. And before their final fall into the technological/black magic abyss – scripted “our” dna to recapture an innocence lost – and a hope that we would not fall ourselves? with a little preprogramed help?



    • Robert Barricklow on August 10, 2015 at 9:29 am

      or, just the opposite?



  8. Aridzonan_13 on August 10, 2015 at 8:11 am

    The Ruskies have always been resource constrained. So, they are forced to be as efficient as possible. Getting the most for their Defense Ruble is imperative. Over hear, Waste, Fraud and Abuse gets rewarded. The more that can disappear in the sofa cushions, the happier the Pentagon is. The USARMY’s Quartermaster Corp should have been scrapped. All US military logistics should be handled by the Air Force and Navy. Those logistical branches are far superior to the ARMY’s. The ARMY is still using Civil War paperwork.

    Now, there is a caveat. No one knows anything about the NE Navy logistical organization. Well, except for maybe Gary McKinna(sp?). So, there exists a possibility that the Break-Away group might be very well organized. Well, if they have Nazi roots.. I’d say that is very likely.



    • Robert Barricklow on August 10, 2015 at 9:08 am

      Yet, supposedly the Army is in charge of the “5th Domain”



  9. Beckysue on August 10, 2015 at 7:34 am

    Cosmopolitics. Only I don’t think “they” will be sending an ambassador any time soon.



  10. Enlil's a Dog on August 10, 2015 at 7:21 am

    The fact that they are telling us this means that they more than likely already have this system in place – and fully functional; as well as probably several other surprises they are not telling us about.



  11. WalkingDead on August 10, 2015 at 6:15 am

    Would this not be a necessary step toward Von Braun’s third and forth stages of threats (asteroids and alien invasion) required to advance the one world governance approach toward such threats as voiced by Ronald Reagan.



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