Defense Minister: Russia Will Develop Weaponry Based on "New Physical Principles"

March 22, 2012 • 2:36PM

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said at a meeting today with Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin, that proposals for the development of weaponry based on "new physical principles" would be presented by December 2012. Putin highlighted the need to develop such weapons systems, in his pre-election article on strategic matters.

"The development of weaponry based on new physical principles; direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, etc. is part of the state arms procurement program for 2011-2020," Serdyukov stated.

The reference to "new physical principles" will be understood as highly relevant by those familiar with the history of Russian and Soviet strategic thinking—as well as Lyndon LaRouche's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposal from the late 1970s and early 1980s, which was adopted in 1983 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. . The language comes almost verbatim from the mid-1980s writings of Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov, and the ideas of Soviet Armed Forces General Staff strategist Marshal V.D. Sokolovsky, author of the famous Military Strategy book of the early 1960s. As was noted in a Feb. 22 entry on the LPAC web site, Putin is today presenting policies drawn directly from these precedents. Defense Minister Serdyukov, after he and President Medvedev addressed a March 20 conference of the defense sector leadership, had located Russian defense planning in the context of the U.S.-NATO "deployment of the global missile defense [which] considerably violates the power balance and strategic stability as a whole."

According to a March 21 wire from Xinhua, "Serdyukov said Russia has already started to study responsive measures that would be made public during an international conference on missile defense in Moscow in May. As for countermeasures, Serdyukov said Moscow would upgrade 10 first-strike missiles of Topol-M and Yars complexes, which account for 25 percent of all current Russian nuclear forces. Russia, meanwhile, plans to put its newest intercontinental ballistic missile, the [upgraded submarine-launched] Bulava, in service in October and build eight nuclear strategic submarines to carry them by 2017. Serdyukov said that between 2008 and 2011 Russia had acquired 39 inter-continental ballistic missiles, 12 Iskander missile systems, two submarines, nine warships and boats, and other weaponry and military equipment."

These statements were made in the framework of Serdyukov's review of the 2011 defense program and outline of this year's objectives. The road-mobile Iskander missile is the tactical (short-range) system, which Medvedev previously announced will be deployed in Kaliningrad, between Lithuania and Poland, in the event that NATO proceeds with its ABM plans. The missile-defense conference announced by Serdyukov will be held May 3-4, and will be the occasion for Russian military officials to unveil more of their planned countermeasures.