“There are also Soviet projects of an aerospace aircraft. So, one of the leaders of work on the creation of MTKK "Buran" G. Ye. Lozino-Lozinsky proposed a reusable system for consideration, the first stage of which will be the Mriya carrier aircraft.
It is he who will deliver the second stage closer to space - an orbital aircraft with a suspended tank (the latter will be the only disposable component of the entire transport system). According to calculations, the orbital aircraft will be able to launch into low-earth orbits up to 7 tons of cargo in a manned version and up to 8 tons in an unmanned one."
A. I. Shmygin. "SOI through the eyes of a Russian colonel"
Sokol-Echelon project
30 years ago, two models of the Il-76 aircraft, equipped with combat lasers, took off at one of the secret aviation training grounds in the Moscow region. This is how the decisive stage of the Sokol-Echelon project began. In the course of these experimental design work, Soviet scientists and engineers attempted to counterbalance the American development of a whole group of laser weapons capable of destroying missiles.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the development of the Sokol-Echelon program ceased, and the equipment was mothballed. However, today a number of Western media insistently assert that the Russian military has revived certain areas of the Soviet laser project, and the new ultra-powerful optical quantum generators are mainly designed to deal with orbital objects.
The latest development of the Taganrog Aviation Complex named after G. M. Beriev's A-60 resembles an American experimental laser installation on board the Boeing-747. In both laser systems, the nose sections have massive fairings, and on the upper part of the fuselage there are large bulges that hide additional equipment.
Promotional video:
The latest development of Taganrog gunsmiths - A-60
This is where the similarities end, because the emitter of the American laser laboratory is located in the nose cone, and the Russian aircraft hides the beam cannon in the upper aft fuselage. This emphasizes the A-60's purpose for firing at orbital targets.
The emblem of the A-60 flight unit is curious. It depicts a hunting falcon shooting down a combat spacecraft flying across the North Pole towards Russia.
Sokol-Echelon
Shooting at the windows
Meanwhile, it is far from easy to build an effective anti-missile defense even with the help of super-powerful lasers. Reagan with his "Star Wars" understood this very well in his time. After all, it is necessary at the right time to get into the narrow "windows" through which the enemy missile flotillas fly. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) assumed that orbiters would shoot down monstrous pulses of gamma and X-rays, as well as fluxes of fast neutrons.
The SDI baseline scenario included a multi-layered anti-missile defense (ABM). According to the plan, the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that survived in the "windows" were to destroy the lasers and "beam generators" of the second line of defense. It was assumed that the capabilities of such ground-based mobile installations would be about five times higher than the firepower of conventional surface-to-air missiles.
So, modern space missile defense includes the first line of defense from the "zone defense system", which is several rows of combat laser stations in different orbits. Orbital emitters must have time to hit enemy ICBMs above their launch site at the points of greatest vulnerability. This is followed by an attack by an air group (this distinguishes it from the original "ground" plan of SDI) with lasers on board. A variety of surface-to-air missile systems complete the BMD operation. It is considered optimal if each "space defense" belt will destroy at least 90% of the remaining enemy missiles.
For SDI, the stumbling block has become heavy-duty gazers, or gamma-X-ray lasers. The fact is that the energy pumping of these combat giants was to be carried out on the basis of nuclear explosions. Only then could one hope that the gizers would emit such an intense discharge of energy that ICBMs located thousands of kilometers away would instantly turn into clouds of plasma.
Second line of defense
The second line of "space missile defense" in the form of a "point defense system" was intended to destroy missiles that broke through the "zone defense system". At one time, in the days of SDI, it seemed that the second line of defense could be conventional high-power ground lasers. Their action could be supplemented by satellites-mirrors, reflecting, focusing and transmitting further streams of light energy.
Radiophysicists and electronic engineers immediately criticized such a scheme of the second echelon of "space missile defense". It turned out that weather conditions and atmospheric turbulence can minimize "volleys of ground beam weapons." This is how the idea arose of creating "flying lasers" capable of being above thunderstorm fronts and any other hurricane.
Nevertheless, the very initial implementation of the SDI mission drew a lot of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Basically, it boiled down to insufficient elaboration of the scientific basis of the project. That there is only one statement by the authors of SDI that colossal rivers of electric energy for powering lasers and "beam generators" will give … "thermonuclear fusion". Needless to say, the problem of creating a thermonuclear reactor has not changed since then.
In addition, it is still doubtful that optical quantum generators emitting such powerful pulses will be able to work reliably for at least a few minutes in the conditions of modern fleeting combat. In addition, the creation of "laser weapons" required the development of many sciences, such as quantum optics and nonlinear spectrography.
A special issue for SDI was the construction of super-powerful computers and the creation of original software. In fact, it was about creating a gigantic "artificial intelligence" capable of making optimal decisions in a split second, hitting thousands of different targets.
It is said that it was these fantastic ideas that inspired Hollywood director James Cameron to create the epic "The Terminator", which featured the military supercomputer "Skynet". Just according to the scenario of a preemptive attack by SDI, this electronic monster provokes a nuclear catastrophe and enslaves the surviving people …
Engineering and technical support
When the developers of the SDI basis moved from global scientific problems to engineering and technical support of the "space missile defense", new difficulties awaited them. First of all, it was necessary to build a conceptual scheme for the placement and well-coordinated work of a variety of sensors that recognize, capture and automatically track targets.
On the one hand, it was necessary to deploy an entire fleet of laser orbital platforms, satellites and ships, and on the other, to ensure their safety from the enemy's orbital interceptor fighters. And the CIA, Pentagon and NATO knew very well that such devices exist.
In addition to conducting "orbital battles" between "space fighters" and the protection of the main laser stations of the first echelon, there was also a difficult task to control the theater of operations in the conditions of the rapid rotation of their own and other people's objects in Earth orbit. Any information processing was required to be carried out exclusively in real time, which required not only colossal computing power, but also innovative programming methods.
Even Edward Teller, an incorrigible optimist and big SDI supporter, is said to have been amazed at the vulnerability of the "space fleet" with its giant lasers and particle accelerators. To destroy the entire armada of the orbital boundary of the space missile defense would require only 5-6 megaton charges! According to the further most optimal scenario, from 30 to 40% of the enemy's ICBMs could break through the second and third lines of defense. Undoubtedly, in this case, everything would have ended in a tremendous catastrophe and the death of the nation would not even require the subsequent "nuclear winter".
Strike the Challenger
The failures of the SDI concept force the modern Pentagon administration to treat with great attention any attempts by other countries to create military aerospace systems. This is how the A-60 system was perceived in the West, "designed to transmit laser energy to distant objects in order to counteract the enemy's optoelectronic means," as the military observer of the Washington Post wrote. In other words, “the laser plane was supposed to blind American spy satellites.
This idea is much older than the SDI conceptual plan and has been implemented in reality more than once. So, in 1984, the unique "Granite-Terra" beam complex, which included lasers, masers and magnetrons, fired several "shots" at the Challenger shuttle when it was spying over the territory of the USSR.
This story is still hidden by all possible secrets. However, the same Washington Post expert pointed out that, according to information leaked to the press, all the main electronics on the space shuttle were out of order, and the crew experienced very strange painful symptoms …
It is not known whether the beam weapon was used in the future. In any case, since the mid-1980s, "remote sighting" of the territory of the Soviet Union from space has practically ceased, and was restored only after the collapse of the USSR.
In 2006, China launched two laser strikes on American satellites, incapacitating at least three American "space observers." It is curious that after this demarche over the Chinese territory, the number of foreign "electronic eyes" also significantly decreased.
Oleg FAYG