As we can see, although Russia continues to support its military space program, the scale of that effort is just enough to maintain the programs that are most important. In addition to the systems described above, Russia invests significant effort into its early-warning and military communication satellites. Neither of these systems, however, is related to space-based weapons or anti-satellite capability. Russia does seem to preserve the basic industrial infrastructure that theoretically would allow it to develop and eventually deploy these kind of weapons, but that infrastructure has been steadily deteriorating in the recent years and it is extremely unlikely that Russia will be able to undertake any serious development effort in the area of space weapons or ASAT. As for other space-based military capabilities-imagery, signal intelligence, navigation-that might potentially play important role in a military conflict, the existing systems do not seem to provide Russia with capabilities that would significantly improve performance of its military. Besides, Russia has yet to demonstrate its ability to integrate space-based systems into military operations.

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Podvig, Pavel. "Russian Military Space Capabilities." Ensuring America's Space Security. Ed. Phillip E. Coyle. Washington, D.C.: Federation of American Scientists, September 2004. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 131 ]