#8
stratfor.com
April 15, 2002
CIA Will Continue Search for New Russian Technologies
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said April 10 that it had blocked a
CIA intelligence operation aimed at penetrating Russia's missile-design program,
Russian media and the BBC reported. The FSB said CIA officers posing as embassy
officials in Russia and another former Soviet state tried to recruit an employee
at a secret Russian Defense Ministry installation, slipping him psychotropic
drugs in attempts to get information from him. CIA and U.S. Embassy officials in
Moscow refused to comment.
As STRATFOR has previously said, the end of the Cold War has done nothing to
halt espionage activities. The current case suggests that even the budding
friendship between Moscow and Washington cannot stop intelligence-gathering.
There is still something in Russia that the United States considers to be worth
spying on: new military technologies.
Despite Russia's financial and military declines in recent years, its
scientific and technology potential remains formidable. The country remains a
scientific power for two reasons: First, several experimental and research
schools in the defense sector have survived in the post-Soviet era; and second,
Russia has always had strong intellectual potential, which has been widely used
for defense purposes. This remains in spite of the brain-drain created by better
wages offered to scientists in the United States and other countries.
The current spy scandal involved a scientist working in a secret research
center near Zhukovsky air base, the Russian air force's top test center, near
Moscow. To STRATFOR's knowledge, this center is designing new air-to-air and
air-to-surface missiles. The distinctive characteristics of these missiles
include supersonic speed, low flight altitude, new elements of stealth
technology and extremely accurate guidance systems. The United States currently
lacks a reliable defense against these weapons, and its own versions of the
missiles lack some advantages.
Despite the Russian military's diminishing production capabilities and
financial resources, the country maintains design-technology superiority in
other areas, such as new weapons systems for both surface ships and submarines.
These include new ship-borne cruise missiles and a supersonic torpedo, Shkval,
that is unsurpassed in speed and efficiency. U.S. citizen Edmund Pope was
arrested and sent to prison last year in Russia while trying to obtain secrets
concerning the Shkval from a contact at a Russia's Bauman Technical University,
a leading defense technology center. It is worth noting that Pope was pardoned
by President Vladimir Putin after spending only a few weeks in prison,
ostensibly for health reasons: Putin said Pope was suffering from cancer, but
American doctors who examined him later found no trace of the disease.
Russia also maintains the lead so far in designing anti-defense missiles. In
fact, only Russian-made systems, such as the S-300 and its modifications, would
be able to repulse a massive air onslaught by hundreds of cruise missiles and
bombers, the kind of air offensive favored by the United States. The United
States benefited greatly during its air campaigns in Yugoslavia, Iraq and
Afghanistan because its enemies did not have such defense systems at their
disposal -- Moscow refused to deliver them to Baghdad and Belgrade. Recently,
Russian scientists created an even more powerful system, S-400, and are
continuing to improve it.
Officials in Washington, who are embarking upon the National Missile Defense
program, are concerned that Russia might develop a successful countermeasure,
and Russian rocket scientists indeed are working on such technologies. Although
these remain in the design stage -- and the Putin government has not yet made a
decision on whether to proceed with production -- such technologies would help
Russian strategic nuclear missiles overpower NMD systems and yet would cost a
fraction of what Washington plans to spend on NMD.
All of these technologies and other scientific achievements in Russia will
continue to be important objectives of U.S. intelligence activities. More spy
scandals are likely, but Russia -- under the administration of Putin, who
appears to be seriously committed to his pro-Western policy course -- will sweep
them under the rug.
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