I have talked about US secret projects many times. Secret projects and military secrets in general are always an interesting topic. I began thinking that why not expand the topic to include Russia and China. Today I will try and concentrate on Russia and the former Soviet Union. Tomorrow will be China's turn. For clarity I will call both the Soviet Union and Russia, Russia for purposes of this article. The items that I talk about will not be in any chronological order and I may bounce around back and forth on the time scale. Before we get into this stuff, it is important to note that Russia has been steadily increasing their military budget again and many in Russia are scared that the US will attack them. This has led to the creation of Russian secret projects. Russia claims that the increases in military spending are not what they seem. They claim that all the years of neglect has caused the military to have to spend more money than usual. One Russian official stated, "We have a scandalous situation, where last year 118 billion rubles [$4 billion] was set aside [for purchases], this year they were supposed to spend 146 billion rubles [$5 billion] and the end result is that two tanks or four tanks, two helicopters and one airplane are bought per year. We are talking about very large amounts of money that are disappearing -- no one knows where."

While we have some facilities built into mountains, so do the Russians. There is a facility built into a mountain called Yamantau, in a region known as Beloretsk. This facility was very upsetting to Congress and President Clinton, when they found out about it. They had asked the Russians about it repeatedly, but it is said that they never got an answer. I wonder what they expected? It seems that the Russians had built secret underground bases all over Eastern Europe and used them to hide nuclear missiles. The US guess is that 73 SS-23 missiles were hidden in these underground bases. It is important to note that each one of these missiles has the power of 365 Hiroshima nuclear weapons. It is said that the Russians violated the INF Treaty which they signed which went into effect in 1988. Their is a silver lining to the Eastern European missile situation, most of them have been destroyed, maybe even all of them. This does not apply to what ever is at Yamantau, if anything. It is said that the Russian now have over 200 deep underground complexes that are capable of withstanding nuclear assaults and they are supposedly vast. It is said that the Russians have poured billions of dollars into these sites to modernize them. We have been calling them nuclear war fighting centers. I can not let this go without saying the obvious There is sort of an underground base building war going on between Russia and the US. We don't hear much about this, but believe me it is taking place. It is estimated that the size of the Russian base at Yamantau is 400 sq miles. We are talking about an underground base, one that is about the size of Washington DC, inside of the beltway. There is said to be enough room underground for a city of 60,000 people. The base has filtered air and US military men are saying that the only purpose of such a base could be for nuclear war. Here is the fly in the ointment, while the Russians were putting billions of dollars into building this base, we were giving them billions of dollars to destroy nuclear warheads.

Secret projects are nothing new to the Russians. A very famous secret project took place in the 1970s. The Russians built a top secret vehicles that could skim across the water at speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour and could hold many people, troops or weapons. It resembled a giant airplane, but it only rose off the water a couple of feet. The vehicle weighed 540 tons and it had the Americans completely fooled. How could this be? It is simple really, we had taken satellite photos of it while it was being built and we thought that it was an airplane. It looked like a giant cargo plane, so I can understand the mistake. The idea was that hundreds of these things would be capable of traveling under the radar and therefore would not be detected before they reached their targets. This was the theory anyway. The vehicles were known as KMs and 8 of them were built. The last one was built in the late 1980s and was built as a missile launcher. The vehicle was also known as the Ekranoplan. I don't think that any of these vehicles are left, they seem a little impractical to me, since a low flying plane would do the job just as good. Apparently the Chinese liked this technology, but as far as I know, not for military reasons. They have built a propeller type version that is smaller and they use it to travel on rivers, it is known as the Hubei TY-1

Russia is helping build up India's rocket and nuclear forces. They have allowed India to pay to finish a Russian nuclear submarine and then lease it for 10 years. This means that India now has all three legs of the nuclear triad. Russia had entered into a secret agreement with India over 3 years ago for the submarine. The submarine has been named the Akula-II, it is said to have a speed of 35 knots and the capability to dive 600 meters. Most conventional powered submarines only can dive to half that distance. Russia has continued to manufacture quality military equipment, even though they have been going through some really hard times. The BMP-3 is an armored fighting vehicle that is so highly regarded that it was chosen by Oman over the American equivalent. It is said that their surface to air missile systems are superior to our systems, such as the Patriot system. The S-400 system is said to be more powerful than any Patriot missiles. Their helicopters are said to be extremely capable. They are know as the Kamov-50 family of military helicopters. They are said to be at least the equal to anything in the west and they might be even better. When India and the US conducted joint war games, the SU-30 Russian jets that the Indians used, constantly outperformed the American F-15s. I guess we have to remember that the F-15s we were using were not the newest technology at the time, but it still came as a huge surprise to us that we were beaten so handily.

When we try and understand the scope of the Russian military, we have to realize that it is huge. One Russian leader has said that there are more than 100,000 Colonels in the army alone and that the force numbers over 4 million when you count all the auxiliary forces. Right now it has to be considered as bloated for the current situation in Russia. How good are Russian weapons? Mexico has decided to buy some of them, instead of getting all their weapons from the US. This might be a political move however. It might be that Mexico wants to show it's displeasure with the border situation and the illegal aliens in this country from Mexico. So how is it that the Russian Military Complex has survived such a financial upheaval? One of the reasons being stated for this is the fact that many of factories are located in secret cities and were given priority in the budget. Russia has managed to scramble back to become the second largest exporter of arms behind the US. Russia is getting tired of the US trying to spread influence in areas that it believes are in it's sphere of influence. This has been made all the worse with the US stating that US anti-missile missiles are going to Poland, near the Russian border. It might be the radar that will go with the missiles that irks the Russians even more. It could turn out that the radar will be able to detect things that the Russians are trying to keep secret.

A little known Russian plan from 30 years ago, stated that the Russians were going to build a base on the Moon. The base was to be a military one. The story was broken by the Novaya Gazeta weekly. The story was said to have been gotten from the then project-deputy general designer of the General Machine Building Design Bureau. He was supposedly directly involved in the project. He told the paper, "Soviet scientists considered the Moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it." He went on to say that the Russians knew that the Americans also had such a project and he knew of their plans. He also stated that the reason that the Russians never followed through was that, "it was too damn expensive."

Russian Delta Submarine

Between 1960 and 1990 almost all of the Russian satellites that were launched had military applications. This was almost constantly denied by the Russian government, until this century. The satellite program fell on hard times and the Russians could no long afford to maintain the program. The Russian President has promised that the program will be back in full swing by this year. Every year Russia is growing more powerful. It is a shame that we can't meet on some middle ground with the Russians. One of the problems that we have, is that we spend billions on developing secret projects and then they get stolen by spies. It is a little known fact that a Russian was given access to a computer system that contained much information on our stealth aircraft program. We have given the Russians years of data on these planes which must have given their stealth aircraft programs quite a lift. Look for Russian stealth aircraft to come out in the next couple of years, hey maybe they are here already and we don't know it. Last year the internet was abuzz. It is claimed that submarine plans that showed up on the internet were for a secret Russian submarine. A news site stated, "Municipal authorities in Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod Region, accidentally revealed the design for the latest Russian submarine, when it posted an account of a meeting with it's commander on it's website. The high level of secrecy surrounding the submarine suggests that it is a unique experiment on the part of scientists and the military." Wow, I bet someone was real unhappy in Russia over this.