MOSCOW, May 3 (Itar-Tass) —— United Sates land and sea-based antimissile complexes can be used as antispace weapons, Lieutenant-General Oleg Ostapenko, the commander of the aerospace defense forces, said on Thursday.
“Emplacement of missile defense complexes with antispace potential will make it possible to intercept spacecraft on any orbit,” he told the international conference on missile defense issues, held in Moscow.
Ostapenko noted that “our partners say now that the main aim of creating missile defense is the need to protect their territory and troops in theaters of operation against the threat of a limited strike by ballistic missiles of North Korea and Iran.” “It is stated that the missile defense system being created is aimed to parry regional threats and is not meant for changing the balance of forces with Russia,” he recalled. “However, these pronouncements remained mere declarations not implemented in practice,” he noted.
“Russia at the 2010 Lisbon summit proposed cooperation in creating a European missile defense system on the basis of the so-called sectoral approach,” he said. “Creating the aerospace defense system we were ready to aim for solving the task of antimissile shield, also under obligations we were ready to assume, Regrettably, our proposals were not accepted even as a theme for talks,” he said.
“Moreover, viewing the creation of the missile defense system combined with the development of the concept of a global strike, hypersonic and aerospace craft, intercontinental ballistic missiles with non-nuclear armaments, our steps in the creation of the aerospace defense system become understandable,” he added.