Kazakhstan, Russia to create Unified Regional Air Defense System

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Kazakhstan and Russia signed an agreement on a common regional air defense system.

“Russian Defense Minister rendered a visit to our country for the first time. We discussed important issues and signed document to create a common air defense system. In our view, this will increase the level of cooperation and create conditions for enhancement of the defense potential of our countries,” Defense Minister Adilbek Dzhaksybekov said after the meeting with his Russian counterpart in Astana.

According to Russian Defense Minister, the parties talked about further ways to improve the agreement, expand its framework and “add new elements that also include the anti-ballistic missile defense”. Sergey Shoigu also noted that both parties had been preparing the document for signing for over 6 years.

“Our cooperation volume is great and covers all areas: CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization), exploitation of sites and space research. The agreement that has just been signed is related to air defense system. We have also talked about further ways for improvement and expansion of this agreement. It took a long time to prepare it — over 6 years. It involves joining our information spaces, their integration and introduction of additional elements. It (the agreement) will help increase security of our countries,” Shoigu said.

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Russian Satellite Plunges into The Pacific Ocean

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MOSCOW: A Russian rocket carrying a US telecommunications satellite plunged into the Pacific Ocean on Friday only moments after being launched from a mobile sea platform in Moscow's latest space failure.

The rocket may have veered off course from the moment of take-off because of heavy waves battering the former northern seas oil platform, initial reports said.

The Intelsat-27's loss means the giant Boeing aerospace corporation would for now be unable to fit the final piece of a constellation mean to provide TV feeds across Europe and the United States.

"There was an accident during the Zenit rocket launch," a source at the Energia corporation that makes the Zenit-3SL rocket used to lift up Intelsat satellites told AFP.

"The rocket fell into the Pacific Ocean."

Officials said no one was hurt on the huge Odyssey platform that was once stationed off the oil-rich coast of Norway before being tugged to the Pacific by an international consortium called Sea Launch.

Energia chief Vitaly Lopota said the Russian rocket's engine appeared to fail less than a minute after the evening take-off but the reason was still unknown reason.

"We had an abnormal situation -- the emergency shutdown of the first stage engine," Lopota told the state RIA Novosti news agency.

"It happened 50 seconds into the flight. We are now looking into what happened."

Several Russian media reports said the platform itself was unstable at the time of the launch because of heavy weather.

Sources said the Zenit had purposefully steered itself as far away from the Odyssey as possible -- instead of going straight up -- because the engines detected a problem and were programmed to save the ground crew.

"The rockets detected an abnormal situation linked to platform instability from the very start, and then switched the engines over (to operations) aimed at steering the rocket away from the platform," a space industry source told the Interfax news agency.

Sea Launch has been using the deep-sea platform to perform commercial operations since 1999. There had been only two complete failures out of the 34 missions conducted prior to Friday's launch.

But analysts said Sea Launch -- having emerged from bankruptcy protection in October 2010 after years of financial difficulties -- will be keen to prove that the accident was an anomaly that should not affect future launches.

"This accident is very unpleasant for Sea Launch, which only recently started to repair its reputation on the commercial space services market," said Moscow's Space News magazine editor Igor Marinin.

Russia's space programme is now especially closely watched because it provides the world's only manned link to the International Space Station (ISS).

The country's space programme also leads the world in the number of commercial launches and is used by other nations to put up both private and military satellites.

The Roscosmos space agency -- a direct descendent of Moscow's once-proud Soviet programme that competed against NASA at the height of the Cold War -- has been beset by a string of accidents in the past two years that prompted sackings at the top of command.

Russia's most recent setback came in November when it temporarily lost contact with all its non-military satellites as well as the space station because of a vital cable cut.

Other high-profile accidents included the loss of a highly-publicised Mars probe in the Earth's orbit and the loss of a cargo vessel taking up supplies to the ISS.

That August 2011 incident caused delays to a string of manned missions and renewed Moscow's attention on finding an eventual replacement to the workhorse Soyuz rocket.

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Largest Russian Naval Exercise in Post-Soviet Era Begins

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The Russian Navy has begun its biggest war games in the high seas in decades that will include manoeuvres off the shores of Syria.

More than two dozen ships drawn Russia’s all four fleets, as well as long-range warplanes, will conduct nine-day exercises in the Mediterranean and Black seas.

It is the largest naval manoeuvres since the collapse of the Soviet Union, officials said.

The purpose of the war games is to improve coordination between different naval groups during missions in “far-away sea zones,” the Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday.

Experts suggested the exercises will serve to project Russia’s naval power to a highly explosive region and render moral support for the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“This part of the world ocean has key geopolitical interest for Russia, considering that the Russian Navy has a maintenance and supply facility in Syria,” the Russian Navy General Staff said last month.

Russia leases a naval base at the Syrian port of Tartous.

The naval manoeuvres will involve training for landing operations on the Syrian shore, informed sources told Russia’s Interfax news agency. Several big landing ships taking part in the Russian war games carry marines, munitions, and “military hardware,” Interfax reported last week.

Moscow may also be preparing for possible evacuation of thousands of Russian nationals from war-torn Syria, experts said.

About 9,000 Russians are registered with the Russian Embassy in Damascus, but their total number may well exceed 30,000.

Thousands of Russian women have married Syrian men who studied at Russian universities and military academies in past decades.

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China to Buy a Fleet of Russian Bombers to Take On The US Navy

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Chinese websites are again reporting that Russia has agreed to sell Beijing the production line for the Tupolev Tu-22M3 bomber at a cost of $1.5 billion.

Once in service with the Chinese Naval Air Forces the Tu-22M3 will be known as the “H-10″.

The deal struck with Russia includes 36 aircraft: a batch of 12 followed by a second batch of 24 additional bombers.

The Tu-22 will be employed in the maritime attack role and used to attack targets from low levels to avoid radar detection.

The Tu-22 is a Soviet supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber.

It was developed during the Cold War and is among the closest things to a modern stealth bomber.

However, it will get updated with indigenous systems and an extended range making it a significant threat to many latest generations weapon systems.

That’s even more true if the deal with Russia includes the Raduga Kh-22 (AS-4 ‘Kitchen’) long-range anti-ship missile, in which case this could be a significant change in the strategic balance of the region.

The Tu-22 bombers will give China another tool to pursue the area denial strategy in the South China Sea and the Pacific theatre; a fast platform to launch cruise missiles, conventional or nuclear weapons in various regional war scenarios.

In other words, a brand new threat to the U.S. Navy in the region.

 The Aviationist

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‘No need for new mosques in Russia’ - Nationalists

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A nationalist organization has criticized a proposal to construct more mosques in Russia to accommodate an influx of immigrants arriving from Muslim countries in search of employment. "This approach is not totally correct," Aleksander Belov, chairman of the Russkiye national movement, told reporters on Tuesday. "It is necessary to decide once and for all whether Russia will turn into an Islamic state or it will remain a secular state, where foreign immigrants arrive, find jobs and leave after their work is finished."

"If immigrants…want to build a mosque in my yard, this approach is certainly wrong," he added. In an effort to “to restore order to the immigration processes,” the nationalist leader says it is important to understand “to which region foreign immigrants should go.”

Belov’s comments follow remarks on Monday by Moscow Chief Mufti Albir Krganov, who proposed the construction of new mosques in Russia. "We are troubled by the shortage of places to pray," Krganov, who also holds the post of deputy head of Russia's Spiritual Muslim Board, said. "If the state is accepting such large numbers of immigrants, we should sort out this issue.”

The Chief Mufti hinted that it could be an undesirable situation if there are not enough official places of worship available to the growing number of Muslims in Russia. "It is necessary to decide where they [immigrants] should live and who will work with them,” Krganov stressed. “If they do not come to official structures, for example, to the Spiritual Board and official mosques, they will be engaged in religious practices…in other places.”

We will not know who preaches there and what they discuss, he added. For an increasing number of Russian nationalists, however, that seems to be a risk worth taking. Tensions between Russian natives and members of the Muslim community have been on the rise. In September, Moscow authorities announced they were shelving a project to build a mosque in the suburbs of the Russian capital after a large number of protesters gathered in the northwestern neighborhood to express their disapproval of the plans.

Meanwhile, Aleksandr Brod, director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights and a Public Chamber expert, said Muslims have a right to demand the construction of new mosques in the Russian capital. "When driving past the Central Mosque during Muslim holidays, people complain of the roads crowded by worshipers. New mosques are needed. Let people build them and pray there quietly," Brod told Interfax on Monday.

This problem could be resolved through dialogue between the Moscow authorities and the Muslim clergy, he added. Last week, however, prospects for more mosque construction were dashed when Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said many of the worshipers are not Muscovites. Sobyanin revealed that "two-thirds" of the worshippers at the city's main Cathedral Mosque were not registered in the city of Moscow.

"These are either people from the Moscow Region or migrants without residency permits," he said in comments carried by Interfax. In August, tens of thousands of worshippers filled the streets around the Cathedral Mosque in the center of Moscow to mark the end of Ramadan. Moscow has four mosques for an estimated 2 million worshippers, a shortage that has compelled Islamic groups to seek additional places of worship

(RT)

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