FBIS Views the Future of Soviet Space (1987)
“The USSR is publicly discussing an ambitious array of manned and unmanned space missions … planned over the next quarter century,” the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service reported in a 1987 internal assessment (pdf).
“Recent items in the Soviet press and scientific literature… have provided new details on Soviet space plans from the present through the end of this century,” said the FBIS analysis, which was marked “For Official Use Only.”
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. FBIS was absorbed into the DNI Open Source Center in 2004 2005.
See “Soviet Space Missions Planned Through the Year 2000,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service Science and Technology Perspectives, April 8, 1987 (4.5 MB PDF file, thanks to Allen Thomson).
Some other historical U.S. intelligence assessments of Soviet space programs can be found here.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]