Teams at work
If present schedules hold, RAMOS would be up and operating in the 2004-2005 time period. Lifetime of the satellites is from two to five years. One estimated price tag for RAMOS is some $344 million spread out between 2000 into 2007.
A Russian team is busy at work on the early warning and missile defense concept.
The Russian State Company, Rosoboronexport, is managing that country's participation in the program. Russian design bureau, Ts NPO Kometa, is also lending a scientific hand on the project.
For America's part, Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) is fabricating the super-cooled infrared space sensors. SDL is the current U.S. prime contractor for RAMOS. One duty of Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation of Boulder, Colorado is integrating U.S. and Russian components to create the RAMOS constellation of two co-orbital satellites.
To what degree RAMOS might help build a bridge between U.S. and Russian policy makers on ballistic missile defense is yet to be seen.
New strategic relationship
On October 21, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that the September 11 terrorist attacks on America unified the two countries in ways unimaginable during the height of the Cold War.
The two leaders were attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Shanghai when they announced their solidarity around the issue.
"The thing that's really bound us together most right now is our common desire to fight terrorism,'' Bush said.
Such openness has increased the likelihood that long-sought agreements on U.S. missile defense system and the mutually agreed cutting of nuclear stockpiles could be possible. The discussions will continue when Putin visits the United States in November.
Earlier in October Bush had said that while the Cold War was over, new threats as exemplified by the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, were possible. A world can now be envisioned, he said, in which a terrorist thug or a host nation might have the ability to deliver a weapon of mass destruction via a rocket.
"And wouldn't it be in our nation's advantage to be able to shoot it down? At the very least, it should be in our nation's advantage to determine whether we can shoot it down. And we're restricted from doing that because of an ABM Treaty that was signed during a totally different era," Bush said.
However, while Putin agreed that the time was right for such discussions, he was quoted in Shanghai as saying that he doubted Bush's claim that terrorists could commandeer missiles.
"It would be difficult for me to agree that some terrorists will be able to capture intercontinental missiles ... to use them,'' Putin said.
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