MOSCOW. May 30 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia can ensure its military security most efficiently through creating absolute attack assets, not through designing air defense and anti-missile defense systems, Igor Ostretsov, deputy director of the All- Russian R&D Institute of Atomic Energy Machine-Building, said on Friday.
"I have always been very pessimistic about creating an anti- missile defense system for this country. Creation of penetration assets as a containment measure for any aggressive goals is much cheaper and easier. Construction of anti-missile defense means wasting enormous money. The only efficient way of ensuring its security for Russia is creation of absolute attack assets, including nuclear weapons and reliable means of penetrating the eventual enemy's anti-missile defense," Ostretsov told Interfax- Military News Agency.
Rendering stealth capability to the missiles the carry nuclear weapons is the most important goal in this sphere, he went on. This can be achieved through using plasma technologies.
"The possibility to create plasma assets of anti-missile defense penetration is based on such plasma attributes as the ability to refract and disperse electromagnetic waves and to consumer electromagnetic emission in a certain wave band. Thanks to it, no radar will be able to detect a carrier with plasma protection," Ostretsov said.
He said he supervised research in this field back in the 1970s. A small plasma source provided for a decrease in radio visibility of a Soyuz-type spacecraft by 35 to 40 decibels, i.e. practically to the noise level of a measuring system. The backlog for ensuring stealth capacity of Meteorit long-range cruise missiles started to emerge at the same time.
"Creation of an invisible cruise missile with a range of about 8,000km would have been a bigger achievement than the creation of the SS-18 system," Ostretsov said.
The SS-18 silo-based intercontinental ballistic missile was created in the early 1970s. Their heavy missiles have a warhead weighing up to 9t and are capable of carrying 10 nuclear charges with a capacity of 0.15 megatonnes each. Experts say that the USSR reached nuclear parity with the U.S. thanks to this weapon.
"Such a cruise missile can be launched from any type of launcher, including a sea-based one such as a trade vessel located anywhere in the World Ocean, and can hit the target on the territory of any eventual enemy. In this case, all AMD and SDI programs become worthless toys," Ostretsov said.
According to him, no aggressor will dare to start a war against the nation that has powerful attack assets such as high- speed cluster nuclear warheads and long-range supersonic cruise missiles based both in the air and in the sea and having stealth capability on the basis of plasma technologies. "That is why Russia should think of having such assets," Ostretsov said.