MOSCOW. Jan 20 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's aerospace defense concept and the principles of its organization will be developed in 2003, Colonel General Boris Cheltsov, Chief of Staff, Air Force, told Interfax-Military News Agency Monday.
According to the general, transfer of aerospace defense elements to the Air Force is not on the table.
He called these issues complicated, sensitive, and expensive. "There is a task to determine the principles, ideology and concept of effective employment of various assets with the goal to create a single national aerospace defense system accomplishing the aerospace combat mission," he said.
He also said that "to create a space defense system is an expensive thing that not any nation can afford," but emphasized that Russia should begin to work for the future.
Cheltsov said that aerospace defense should not be considered kind of a branch within the Air Force. According to the U.S. experience, he said, there is no an armed service that would be able to run it alone, and therefore space defense is considered to be a system uniting assets organic not only to the Armed Forces, but also to other structures.