During the Cold War, the Soviet Union constantly maintained a large fleet of military satellites in the Earth orbit, with the additional spacecraft launched every time a major international conflict would break out. Depending on their purpose, the military satellites provided high-resolution photographic reconnaissance, radio-intercepts, early warning about missile launches and radar data about the location of the potential sea-based targets.

However with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its huge defense budget, Russia found itself unable to replenish failing or outdated satellites. Although Russian space officials do not provide exact details about its military space assets, the available information suggests that at the time of the September 11 attack on the United States, Russia space forces operated only one single imaging spy satellite, Cosmos-2377, also known as Cobalt. Launched on May 29, 2001, from Russia's northern Plesetsk Cosmodrome, the spacecraft is believed to be at the end of its life span.

General Perminov hinted that Russia might accelerate its military space launches in order to have adequate information about the developments in Afghanistan.

Despite all the secrecy surrounding military space launches, the official sources combined with independent analysis allow to draw an outline of Russia's arsenal of the reconnaissance spacecraft, which could be used in the near future.

The Russian press speculated that the launch of the new Cobalt photographic reconnaissance spacecraft to replace Cosmos-2377 could take place at the end of October or beginning of November.

Spacecraft of this type are equipped with at least two ball-shape capsules about the size of the outdoor grill, which can return rolls of the exposed film to Earth in mid-flight. At the end of each mission, the Cobalt's main conical-shaped reentry craft also parachute to earth delivering additional imagery.

Although Cobalt-type spacecraft are capable of providing imagery at a very high resolution, they have the major disadvantage of a very slow response time to the quickly changing situation on the battlefield.

Every time imagery from orbit is needed, the reentry capsule has to be recovered and the film it delivered has to be processed. This isn't an effective way of tracking small and mobile bands of fighters in Afghanistan. To address this very problem, the Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin company has developed a new spacecraft, the Arkon. It is capable of transmitting digital imagery in almost real time as it flies over the area of interest to the military.

Although the US was using the spy satellites delivering digital imagery for many years, Russia is believed to have only launched one Arkon-type spacecraft, back in 1997. It appeared to fail shortly after the launch. However, a launch of an Arkon-type spacecraft has been rumored for quite some time and is a possible candidate as the payload for the scheduled launch Saturday, October 6 of a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Russian space officials would only confirm that the Proton would carry the payload for the Ministry of Defense. However, only a few military satellites use the Proton rocket to ride into orbit, and the Arkon is among that number.