Experts told us which military satellites were launched from Plesetsk

Russia is expanding its fleet of surveillance spacecraft

The Russian Ministry of Defense on Wednesday, December 27, announced the launch of another military satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region. The intended purpose of the spacecraft, codenamed “Cosmos-2574,” has not been reported, but experts, assessing open data on the altitude of the satellite’s orbit and its inclination, have suggested what class the launched device belongs to.

Russia’s lag behind the United States and China in the field of satellites for various purposes has already become the talk of the town. The SVO showed that in this area the Russian space sector needs to repeatedly increase its groupings of communications and surveillance devices. As Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently reported, more than 400 US and NATO spy satellites are used in the interests of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And Russia has a total of less than 180 devices for various purposes, including navigation and communications.

Apparently, the work of the space industry has received the necessary impetus; more and more new devices are regularly reported being launched into orbit. The next one was launched into orbit in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense on December 27.

As military blogger Yuri Podolyaka noted, each such device “means thousands of soldiers’ lives saved and a simplification of the situation at the front.”

He recalled that the previous two military satellites, Cosmos-2572 and Cosmos-2573, had a mass of about 7 tons, according to American estimates. In the West, they believe that these were the 3rd and 4th devices of the Razdan optical reconnaissance system with a mirror diameter of 2.4 meters. They are replacing the Persona system satellites with worse characteristics and a mirror diameter of about a meter.

New devices have improved the accuracy of intelligence data, which has affected the accuracy of Lancet drone strikes and cruise missiles.

In turn, analysts from the Rybar resource recalled that with the launch on December 27, the total number of satellites launched by Russia in 2023 increased to 19, including 8 in the interests of the Ministry of Defense.

According to experts, the capabilities of Russian space reconnaissance have grown over the past two years, with the appearance of the Razdan and Bars-M series vehicles.

“Nevertheless,” experts conclude, “there is still a lot of work to be done – from space reconnaissance to the deployment of a communications constellation with the possibility of high-speed data transmission. Without all this, it is difficult to operate successfully in high-intensity conflicts now, and in the future it will become completely impossible.”