The arms race is never going to go away. The most powerful countries in the world are continuing to develop advanced weapons.­ As we know advanced weapons development is one of the most secret of all the projects in any country and yet leaks do occur. These leaks may not be 100% accurate, but they do give a picture and an idea of what is going on. Recently Business Insider ran an article talking about Russia’s seven most impressive weapons which were in development. One of those weapons is an advanced type of nuclear submarine. They are planning what is known as a fifth generation nuclear sub. The talk is the subs will be equipped with robotics, underwater drones and are said to contain a new type of nuclear reactor. This may be the most important part of the submarine for the Russians. I say this, because of the nuclear submarines they have lost in the past, some of which was blamed on shoddy workmanship and the type of reactors used. There is another type of submarine which is nonnuclear and almost undetectable. It is far cheaper than a nuclear submarine and can stay submerged for several weeks. They may be putting this type of submarine into their arsenal as well and we may also be doing the same.

One of the more impressive things we have been hearing about are devices which are able to shut down all communications and I assume block instructions to drones, missiles and such. There is a rumor this device has already been tested and it knocked out the communications on an American ship. Supposedly the incident happened in 2014. It was said the American destroyer, the USS Donald Cook was flown over by a Russian jet when it was in the Black Sea and the jet contained electronic warfare devices which shut down all the communications on the destroyer. The destroyer was equipped with the most recent Ageis Combat System which is integrated with other systems on the ship. All systems were completely blacked out. The Russian device is called Khibiny and was mounted in a basket under the plane.

President Donald Trump recently proposed an increase in military spending. One has to wonder if this increase was prompted by meetings he had where he was informed of the growing improvements in proposed new weapons by the Russians and the Chinese. The article said the Russians are also building and testing new air defense missiles. They are known as the S-500. They are expected to be capable of knocking out 5 to 10 ballistic missiles at a time. It has been rumored their range is sufficient to knock out low orbiting satellites. They are also said to be mobile which means they would be very hard to target. There has been a rumor which stated the Russians do not want to sell this missile, because they believe it is too powerful to be in other hands. There is no doubt if there is no countermeasure to the missile it has the capability of completely destroying an attack waged on Russia using missiles. We have to assume it will be very accurate since the system it replaces was already accurate and this one is two generations ahead of that one.

What would advance weapons be without lasers? These weapons appear in every science fiction movie and until recently only existed in the heads of writers, but in the last generation that has changed. These devices have not only been getting more powerful, they have been getting smaller, allowing them to be inserted into fighter aircraft. Russia has made a claim its laser program is equivalent and at the same stage as the United States laser program. We don’t know if any are completely operational yet, but we do know what lasers are capable of and if the Russian system goes online, which no doubt it will, it will be able to knock out planes, drones, boats and even be used on soldiers. One of the advantages of a laser weapon is, it’s usually cheap to fire thus saving as much as a hundred thousand dollars a shot compared to smart guided munitions. While no other nation has anywhere near the capacity in aircraft carriers as the United States, some countries have a couple. Russia is building a new aircraft carrier which is about the size of the U. S. Nimitz. We don’t know much about it yet, but it seems it will not use catapults but have a raised nose ski lift type deck which would give lift to the planes taking off. It is not an aircraft carrier which the United States has to worry about at this point, it is all the guided weapons being developed specifically to sink aircraft carriers which include missiles, very fast torpedoes, drones and even smart bombs which we should worry about.

It is said one area in which Russia was very deficient was in heavy bombers. This may change soon, if their rumored new heavy bomber comes online. The name of the plane is the PAK-DA and it is said it will have a range of 7,500 miles and will be able to carry 30 tons of bombs. It is also said the technology it will use was developed for the Sukhoi T-50 fighter plane. Some believe this heavy bomber will be extremely stealthy which will make it even more dangerous.  One of the other current and future projects the Russians are working on is modernizing their nuclear force. This could be another reason for our increasing our defense budget.

The Russians are quite capable when it comes to developing weapons and the truth of the matter is we are engaged in another arms race. The question is are they developing all of these new weapons because we develop new weapons or are they developing them to get ahead of us in technology? It’s a thorny question and there may not be a clear answer to it. It’s a dangerous world out there and while we tend to think in terms of the old Cold War, this could be the wrong way to think about things. The Russians probably don’t trust several other countries and may be arming themselves as a protection not only against us, but Europe, North Korea and even though we don’t suspected it, China. You have to look at Russian history and the huge losses they suffered in World War II due to the fact they fell behind German technology. Their mind-set might be they have to at least be even if not ahead in weapons to avoid that from happening again.