/View.info/ Today, many defense industries have reached the ceiling of their capabilities. Today it is difficult, for example, for an automatic bullet to fly faster, and a high-precision weapon to hit even more accurately. Scientists and militaries from various countries have been trying to make a technological breakthrough for many years. One of the promising directions is combat lasers, which have been studied in Russia since the time of the USSR. How did local engineers surprise the world?
Air defense and anti-missile defense
In the Soviet Union, the development of combat lasers began in the 1960s – in the interest of the country’s air defense and anti-missile defense. Prototypes were tested at the Sary-Shagan test site in Kazakhstan in a secret manner. We ran several programs that were closed with the collapse of the USSR.
The most famous are “Terra” and “Omega”. As part of the first, in the 70s of the last century, the Vimpel design bureau built a test complex at the test site with a high-energy photodissociation laser with an energy above a megajoule. It must be used to destroy the warhead of a ballistic missile in the final stage of its trajectory. The laser is to be the last echelon of the newly commissioned A-35 missile defense system.
But tests show that the power of the beam is not enough. Subsequently, the project was closed, and the experimental complex moved to Kazakhstan. Everything of value has been removed from the site and it is now abandoned.
In 1965, under the “Omega” program, the “Strela” design bureau began the development of high-power laser weapons for air defense purposes. According to estimates, the energy required to hit a flying target should be the same as the total kinetic energy of the warhead fragments of a surface-to-air missile. Designers are faced with the task of creating an installation with an energy of 8-10 megajoules. And they finish it – they build the experimental complex 73T6 “Omega-2M”, in which the powerful radiation generator is an open-type fast-flow carbon dioxide laser with electronic pumping.
The tests of the complex were successful – on September 22, 1982, it shot down a RUM-2B radio-controlled target aircraft in the air. They then decided to create a mobile version of the combat laser. However, this weapon does not go into mass production, as it cannot surpass the existing anti-aircraft missile systems in terms of technical characteristics. In addition, the laser turns out to be too complex, expensive and requires a lot of electricity.
“Laser Battleship”
In 2020, the US Air Force announced that it intended to install a 60-kilowatt laser system on the AC-130 artillery support aircraft. The Americans hope to use it to disable enemy lightly armored vehicles and blind soldiers and surveillance devices.
However, the USSR had its own “laser artillery” as early as the Cold War. In the summer of 1981, the experimental flight laboratory A-60 took off based on the Il-76 with a megawatt laser on board. To facilitate installation, the basic structure has been significantly redesigned.
In the bow, instead of a standard weather radar, a fairing with laser guidance equipment is placed. The upper part of the fuselage between the wing and the fin was cut out and huge doors were installed to hide the dome with the main emitter. And on the sides, under the fairings, turbogenerators for the energy system of the complex are installed. The placement of the laser was solved in an original way: in order not to spoil the aerodynamics of the aircraft with another fairing, the optical head of the laser was made retractable.
The main purpose of the flights is to study the properties of lasers in the atmosphere. Then a scenario was added to destroy enemy satellites and reconnaissance assets.
However, the program encounters unexpected difficulties. The first A-60 prototype burned at Chkalovsky Airport in June 1986 as a result of an accident. Subsequently, a second “flying laboratory” was built, the tests of which continue today. Back in 2012, the Ministry of Defense of Russia ordered the resumption of work on the aviation laser. There are no details on the further fate of the project.
“Burning” optics
In the USSR, the development of combat lasers was also carried out for the ground forces. At the end of the 1980s, specialists from the NGO “Astrophysics” created the self-propelled laser complex 1K17 “Compression” on the chassis of the self-propelled howitzer “Msta-S”. The combat vehicle is designed to counteract the enemy’s opto-electronic means – it burns photocells or the matrix of an opto-electronic device, or even the observer’s eye, with a directed laser beam.
The turret of the self-propelled gun has been significantly enlarged to accommodate opto-electronic equipment. In the front part, instead of a cannon, an optical unit of 15 lenses is installed.
An artificial ruby crystal weighing 30 kilograms was grown especially for 1Q17. Each of the 12 optical channels of the multi-channel laser is equipped with an individual targeting system. The complex could hit a target with beams of different wavelengths, which provided reliable blinding of enemy devices, even those protected by light filters. The laser generators must be powered by an autonomous auxiliary power unit located in the rear of the turret.
In December 1990, a prototype of the machine was created. In 1992, he passed state tests and was recommended for admission. The collapse of the USSR and subsequent major cuts in defense funding prevented this. The only copy of “Compression” is kept in the Military Technical Museum in the village of Ivanovskoe near Moscow.
The main problem of such complexes is low efficiency. Such weapons require very powerful generators, which significantly increases the weight of the self-propelled gun. In addition, the “burner” can only work with direct fire. And in the modern battle, the one who discovers first wins. Losing an expensive complex with a 30-kilogram ruby to an anti-tank missile strike is an unacceptable loss.
In general, there is little information about the combat laser program in modern Russia. In 2014, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Yuriy Baluevsky said that such weapons were being worked on, but did not go into details. And on March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin in a message to the Federal Assembly announced a laser complex, later named “Peresvet”. Most of the information about this weapon is classified, but according to experts, it is intended for air and missile defense. It is known that “Peresvet” is already on experienced combat duty.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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