Holy Crap, Russia Has a Space Army!

At Russia's Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Center, in the midst of answering reporters' questions, the center’s deputy chief, Sergey Berezhno, was asked very seriously if Russia's division of space troops were prepared to defend the country in the event of an extraterrestrial attack. To which Berezhno gave a rather serious and straightforward answer.

Why?

Because Russia has a space army. A space army! Go ahead, imagine how cool it would be to be a part of the space troops. And yes, it is just what it sounds like: a division of the Russian military that plans and trains for possible armed conflicts...in space. This is the coolest thing to come out the former Soviet Union since that meteor hit the region and everyone who saw it greeted it with a collective yawn. Russia, even when it's not trying to be cool, is always so damn cool (Except for the whole anti-gay thing, which is really not cool).

The space troops' roots can be traced all the way back to 1967. The unit was formed, but remained relatively dormant until after the Soviet Union was broken apart. That opened the door for the creation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which revamped the unit into Russian Space Forces. Again, a few years passed before the Space Forces were adopted by the country's Strategic Rocket Forces. Because the Space Forces hadn't actually done much, some in the government saw this cost-cutting move as smart, however, as time passed, experts saw this as ultimately keeping the Space Forces from advancing as far as they should've.

"Under the slogan of 'optimizing,' but, essentially, reducing the officer corps of the armed forces, the Military Space Forces were simply merged with the Strategic Missile Troops," Explains Russian Public TV, at the time. "In this way the missilemen command remained in their places virtually in full and almost the entire elite of military engineers were dispersed from the space forces. The military base, too, was destroyed. In the building of the Military Space Forces headquarters on Kaluga Square [Kaluzhskaya ploshchad], the very expensive fiber optic cable necessary for communicating with space facilities was ripped out. Afterwards, this decision was deemed to have been erroneous."

Despite the setback and the amazing name, the space troops program carried on relatively unnoticed. Until the aforementioned press conference with Berezhnoy, which brings us to the downer part of this whole story: The great Russian space army isn't quite prepared to prevent an alien life form attack, should that ever happen. In answering the question about the space troops' ability to fend off an army of E.T.s, Berezhnoy was pretty pessimistic. "So far we are not capable of that," he explained. "We are unfortunately not ready to fight extraterrestrial civilizations." Then, as if feeling a bit embarrassed, he covered his tracks a bit by saying "Our center was not tasked with it. There are too many problems on Earth and near it."

What Berezhnoy doesn't realize is that a Russian space trooper doesn't ever have to be embarrassed or justify himself or the mission. He is part of a space army! Sure they can't stop aliens, but they've thought about it! That's more than lame America can say. During the Cold War Russia tried desperately to stay one step ahead of the United States. Turns out they only had to say four words to put us in our place: We have space troops.

[Pic via Flickr - Will Hart]