WASHINGTON, May 2. A senior Pentagon official blamed Russia and China in the development and deployment of anti-space weapons, both ground-based and orbital-based.
«If you're asking whether Russia and China are militarizing outer space, are they militarizing space, the answer is absolutely,» John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said at a congressional hearing.
Both countries, which traditionally deny such accusations, are engaged, in Plumb's words, in «the development, deployment and deployment of a range of counter-space weapons, some of which are based on the ground, but some of which are in orbit.»
Plumb claims that Russia is allegedly “developing and deploying prototype kinetic weapons in space,” and China has created “dual-use robotic satellites.”
«They can be used for non-military purposes, but clearly they can have military applications — to capture satellites,» he said, promising to reveal more details in the closed part of the meeting with lawmakers.
Plumb called Russian proposals at the UN on the issue of weapons in space «untrustworthy», «unverifiable» and «really hypocritical.»
Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Ryabkov previously announced that Russia will soon submit its draft resolution to the UN Security Council, which will be “comprehensive, not taking only nuclear weapons out of the general context” — in contrast to the US-Japanese initiative it has vetoed on the non-placement of weapons of mass destruction in space.
Earlier, Russia in the UN Security Council vetoed a draft resolution of the United States and Japan on the non-placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space — the Security Council did not include in the text an amendment from Moscow and Beijing calling for permanent prevention of the deployment of any weapons in outer space. China abstained from voting, 13 countries were in favor of the project.
Washington and Tokyo have prepared a draft UN Security Council resolution calling on countries not to develop nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction intended for placement in orbit around the Earth or for installation on celestial bodies, as well as for placing them in space in any other way.