Russian Military Satellites: Development and Launches

Be real. This guy has been talking about imminent Russian victory since Feb of 2022.

TMA1 wrote:this guy isnt talking about the satellite's orbit, and is not talking about the capabilities of this radar. It can essentially scan rbe whole of Ukraine twice a day with a respectable one meter resolution, looking thru cloud cover day and night. It is a very important piece of kit.  Twitter screen caps of nafo tier ideologues is silly.

limb wrote:Very good thread

Scorpius wrote:

limb wrote:Very good thread

They basically pour slop on Scott Ritter for not following their moronic narrative. I don't understand what this thread has to do with the Russian space program.

lancelot wrote:It depends on what you are talking about. You can capture lower resolution pictures over larger swathes of terrain with less satellites. There will be a variety of products from lower to higher resolution.

It is also naive to think that all the imaging satellites that Russia recently launched will not have been put into proper orbits to mainly image Ukraine. Plus it is highly unlikely that Russia would not be able to reposition older satellites. The Russians are leaders in ion propulsion for satellites for example.

limb wrote:
It says that the kondor FKA RECOVERS PREVIOSLY LOST CAPABILITY and doesnt bring anything new to russian satellite ISR, and that without chinese recon sats, russian satellite surveillance is practically worthless, with observation time being ONLY 2 HOURS OUT OF 24.

limb wrote:
Is there any evidence that the persona and bars satellites even have their own propulsion?

Twice a day is useless. The US just notifies the ukraine when none of those single digit recon satellites are above it, thus allowing them to transport hundreds of peices of equipment far from the frontline with 100% safety while the russians are blind.

It says that the kondor FKA RECOVERS PREVIOSLY LOST CAPABILITY and doesnt bring anything new to russian satellite ISR, and that without chinese recon sats, russian satellite surveillance is practically worthless, with observation time being ONLY 2 HOURS OUT OF 24.

Is there any evidence that the persona and bars satellites even have their own propulsion?

As usual, these statements come from your own ass. None of those screaming about this has access to real data on the state of the intelligence capabilities of the Russian orbital group.

Funny that genuine western sources are upset that Russia now has good satellite coverage of the conflict and all the implications that poses while Limb is complaining the new capability is not good enough.

Who gives a **** what it says... if it is discounting Scott Ritter as being a fool then it is not interested in the truth... whether you agree with him or not he is no fool and has a better understanding of the

2 hours per day is actually Amazing coverage

Scott ritter said that the ukraine was about to fully collapse in donbass in july 2022 and that bakhmut would be liberated by the end of 2022.

NATO satellites observe the donbass nearly 24 hours per day with 0.1-0.4m resolution every day without cloud cover.

Theyre complaining that russia has access to chinese sats(thankfully).

Anyway, the point is in the roundtable, Putin made another—to me—devastating revelation. He admitted that no one in Russia foresaw any of the precipitant events and as such, no one thought to prepare Russia’s space industry and ISR capabilities. For obvious reasons this is an outrageous admission. It means that all those years since the events of 2014, when anyone with a brain knew things were heading towards a headlong clash with NATO, no one in the Russian general staff thought to bring the C4ISR capabilities up to snuff, and Russia in fact found itself caught with its pants down by NATO’s vast ISR overmatch.

Watch and judge for yourself, and if you believe my interpretation is perhaps off, then let me know in the comments. In fact, I wish it were wrong because this does not give one optimism about some of those ‘parquet generals’ running Russia’s MOD:


Look at the lady’s face when Putin says brightly, “We’re #5 in space.” Even she’s clearly unimpressed, and perhaps a tinge horrified, causing her to respond with, “Well, uh…we’re up against the #1 guys.”

But, this wretched tale does have somewhat of an optimistic ending. Not only have I repeatedly reported on an unprecedented amount of satellites being launched by Russia since last year, but there is even now rumor that Russia plans to build a whole new plant for mass-producing satellites to pump them out like never before:

А new plant for the mass production of space satellites will be built in Russia.

Since 1957, each satellite has been assembled by hand; there has never been a serial production. But now there is a need not only for scientific or military, but also for commercial launches. The request is massive, so it is necessary to automate all processes.

In total, all Russian enterprises produce 15 satellites a year, given some modernization, this number can be increased to 42, but Roscosmos says that demand is much higher. The medium-term goal is to collect one satellite per day.

Now a site is being selected, the first plant will be built either in the Moscow Region or in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

lancelot wrote:The article shows a clear lack of understanding of the space sector.

Yes, Russia was the leader in commercial space launches in the late 1990s and 2000s, before SpaceX came on the scene. So this would look like a clear case of a superior service winning. Except, the way the US achieved this, was by also banning Russia from launching any satellites with US components in them after 2014 Russian Annexation of Crimea. The rest is basically Starlink satellites. It remains to be seen if Starlink will be financially viable or not.

The fact is a Russian Soyuz launch was and still is cheaper than a launch with the much advertised SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is supposedly cheaper per pound launched than Soyuz. But most satellites do not use the extra launch capacity. And most satellites fit on the Soyuz.

The US is one of the major manufacturers of commercial satellites worldwide, and Europe is a fairly distant second. This means if you wanted to buy a commercial satellite and launch it, you would substantially limit your choices by going with a Russian satellite launcher. It is for this reason, sanctions, that China seldom does commercial launches either despite in some years launching more satellites for themselves than the US does for themselves and everyone else. China has been banned from launching satellites with US technology since the Loral affair.

After the Loral affair the US put severe ITAR sanctions on China. Back then, unlike now, European and Asian US aligned countries took this as a major possible challenge to their own sovereignty and, fearing a US monopoly on space technology, actually cooperated with Russia and China to develop alternatives to US space technologies. That was when the Soyuz launch facility in Kourou was built and Europe funded Galileo as an alternative to GPS.

Anyway, the thing is, Russia's satellite network rotted away when Yeltsin was in power in the 1990s. Because of the lack of space grade electronics Soviet satellites seldom had lifetimes over 2 years. So you can guess what happened. And while Putin increased funding for satellites once he came into power most of it was concentrated into getting GLONASS satnav up and running properly again. There was investment into other satellites as well, but it was small, and given Russia's lagging capabilities in the space electronics industry, something which had been a problem even back in Soviet times, Russia ended up collaborating on satellites with Europe. Except after 2014 Annexation of Crimea the EU sanctioned Russia so they no longer could buy space grade semiconductors from the EU to put on Russian satellites.

Blaming this situation on Rogozin is a bit much, even if I do not like the guy either, since he was not head of Roscosmos when all of this happened. He was made head of Roscosmos in 2018. Still he was deputy for the defense industry so you cannot exactly say he had no influence on the situation although he was not directly to blame.

The Soviets had photographic reconnaissance satellites which dropped film rolls back to Earth. Well this has been obsolete for a long time ever since we had digital cameras. In the case of the US since like the late 1970s. And you know how good the Soviets were at semiconductors and computers in general i.e. not very.

Anyway, Russia has since spent huge efforts into making space grade semiconductors of their own. This is why there can even be plans to serial produce satellites. It is not like there were zero efforts into making improved electronics for space missions before 2014 Annexation of Crimea, but those efforts were quite timid like with the GLONASS-M satellite series.

Paradoxically because more modern Russian satellites last longer than Soviet ones, Russia needs to launch less satellites to keep a certain constellation in orbit. So just comparing historical Soviet launch rate of satellites with US one can be misleading. For example GLONASS satellites had a lifetime of 2 years and a GLONASS-M satellite has a lifetime of 7 years. Satellites last 3.5x as long so you need 3.5x less launches.