Russia wants to fly surveillance planes over US with advanced cameras, congressional staffer says

WASHINGTON –  Russia will ask permission on Monday to start flying surveillance planes equipped with high-powered digital cameras amid warnings from U.S. intelligence and military officials that such overflights help Moscow collect intelligence on the United States.

Russia and the United States are signatories to the Open Skies Treaty, which allows unarmed observation flights over the entire territory of all 34 member nations to foster transparency about military activity and help monitor arms control and other agreements. Senior intelligence and military officials, however, worry that Russia is taking advantage of technological advances to violate the spirit of the treaty.

Get Ready, America: Russia and China Have Space Weapons

It was a grave mistake for America to halt Reagan’s Star Wars space program almost 30 years ago. It’s now 2016 and a rapidly-gaining Sino-Soviet axis is attaining first-strike capability on the United States, all while it suicidally disarms and holds the belief that it’s taking the “moral high road”. If it were to restart the program tomorrow, it would still be years behind its adversaries.

 

 

Russia and China are increasingly pursuing the ability to attack America’s space-based assets, but is there anything the Pentagon can do to thwart Beijing and Moscow’s ambitions?

While it is sometimes treated as an afterthought here on earth, space-based capabilities like GPS, communications and reconnaissance satellites are the sinews that hold the U.S. military together, allowing American forces to operate across the globe. That’s a fact, however, that has not gone unnoticed in Beijing or Moscow.

US Air Force’s Australia bomber run a message: US official

With the support of Royal Australian Air Force ground forces, the two B-52s flew directly to Delamere bombing range in northern Australia to conduct a bombing run. After unloading their conventional bombs on the range, the two craft headed back to Barksdale Air Force Base in the US. It took 44 hours for the US Air Force to complete its “bomber assurance and deterrence” on July 1, according to Gertz.

China has two types of missile to attack US satellites: report

China is developing two types of anti-satellite missile to challenge the US dominance of space, Bill Gertz, a military analyst and senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon, wrote on March 25.