Come on, that picture above brought a smile to your face.

Now maybe we need to take any information that comes out of the Kremlin (the fortified military complex that houses Putin) with a shovelful of salt, but no matter how you look at this the latest rumours doing the rounds are disturbing.

The Russian military are claiming that they’ve made progress on a space plane, one that they are able to arm with nukes.

Yep, that’s the clincher, The Daily Beast with more:

That’s not only a gross violation of international law, it represents a fairly profound act of hypocrisy on Russia’s part. It wasn’t long ago that the Russian government accused the United States of weaponizing [sic] space by sending aloft the nimble, versatile X-37B, basically a quarter-size, remote-controlled version of the Space Shuttle that could, in theory, carry weapons—but does not.

To be clear, a nuclear-armed space plane would be dangerously destabilizing, as it would totally upset the current, tenuous balance of power between the United States and Russia. The Pentagon could respond to a Russian orbital nuke bomber by quickly deploying a space bomber of its own. In other words, an atomic arms race… in space—a development no one should welcome.

[source:dailybeast]