“Crimean” combat laser will be reopened for a new confrontation with the United States
Moscow - Simferopol, January 12 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - While the United States and China continue not even to develop, but to actively test and implement combat lasers, Russia decided to shake off the old days - to return to the development of combat lasers, which began in the first half of the 1970s, writes Gazeta.Ru.
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In 1973, the first tests of a combat laser capable of hitting the warhead of a ballistic missile were carried out. Tests of the Terra-3 laser took place in Kazakhstan. Even the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Andrei Grechko, came there. He was shown how a combat laser hits a five-kopeck coin.
Then in the USSR, on the territory of Kazakhstan, they created a fast-flowing open-type carbon dioxide laser, which was capable of hitting missiles and aircraft. But now the entire infrastructure in Kazakhstan has been destroyed.
They also worked on the creation of a laser in Crimea—the project received the controversial name “Aidar,” which sounds ambiguous today. There, a combat laser with a power of 50 kilowatts was placed on a tanker, from which they fired at objects moving in the water and in the sky. For comparison, the US Navy received a 2014-kilowatt laser gun at the end of 30.
Soviet designers failed to solve an important problem - the efficiency of the laser beam was only 5%.
However, this indicator should not be regarded as a fiasco - the laser was intended for use in the vacuum of space. And in the Black Sea, most of the energy was absorbed by moisture evaporating from the surface of the water.
In addition, Soviet scientists were developing a project for the Skif and Cascade combat orbital platforms. The plan was to disguise them as modules of the Soviet Mir space station. Initially, it was assumed that the Cascade would fire missiles at satellites in high orbit, and the Skif would use a laser against them, but in low orbit. For experimental tests, scientists used a 1-megawatt carbon dioxide laser, which was installed on a modernized Il-76 called A-60.
But then Gorbachev, under the influence of the United States, canceled the project, from which only the A-60 has survived today. Now the project is completely unfrozen. During successful tests, A-60 lasers, in addition to space objects, hit aircraft and ballistic missiles.
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