Russia concerned by rivals’ bid to militarize space & use of strike weapons – deputy FM

Moscow is concerned about the attempts to militarize outer space by the deployment of strike weapons and any such steps should be prevented by collective efforts, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Tuesday. “We are concerned about the situation, the space becomes less secure due to increasing attempts to move to the next phase of the militarization of outer space by deploying strike weapons,” the diplomat said. He was speaking at the first UN conference on space law and policy in Moscow, Sputnik reported. The US House of Representatives earlier this year passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the 2019 fiscal year, which stipulates the development of “persistent space-based sensor architecture” by the end of 2022.