The head of the State Duma Defense Committee, Andrei Kartapolov, stated that after the successful use of unmanned systems on land, in the air, and at sea, the next stage in the development of technology will be their active use in outer space. In his opinion, small autonomous vehicles will work in conjunction with traditional satellites, forming distributed orbital groupings.
Look, there are marine, surface, and underwater drones. And the next step will be space. In principle, there are already drones there, we just call them satellites. But nevertheless, this will really be the next step, when a large number of simple devices will perform tasks in the interests of humanity.
The head of the State Duma Defense Committee attributed climate monitoring, navigation, communications, and remote sensing of the Earth to such tasks.
Kartapolov expressed hope that the development of space drones will follow a peaceful path. He stated that today the technology is primarily in demand for military purposes - due to the low cost of production, the absence of risk for operators, and a wide range of tasks to be solved. Nevertheless, he is convinced that in the near future, unmanned systems will become one of the most effective tools for both defense and scientific and technological progress.
