Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI Program: History, Star Wars US Strategic Defense Initiative What to do

Konstantin Bogdanov, columnist for RIA Novosti.

Thirty years ago, US President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as the Star Wars program. The project turned out to be largely inflated, the claimed results were never achieved.

The United States has not created a multilayer anti-missile umbrella. However, this did not make it any easier for the Soviet Union: the burden of military spending and structural disproportions in industry were steadily leading the country to a crisis.

The Soviet "defense industry" lived widely: the country's leadership gave practically everything that it asked for in those areas that seriously worried the higher spheres of the Central Committee. By 1988, up to 75% of all R&D spending in the USSR was carried out within the framework of defense topics.

Let us refer to the opinion of Anatoly Basistov, designer of the Moscow A-135 missile defense system. In the late 1970s, the Central Committee asked him if it was possible to create a reliable system for repelling a massive nuclear missile attack. And then, according to Basistov's memoirs, he realized one thing: if the designer now answers the party "yes, you can" - any requested resources will be placed directly on the table for experiments to solve this problem.

At that time, Basistov said "no, you can't." But the sectoral mechanism could no longer be altered; it worked according to its own laws. Especially since there, the Americans say - you can ...

And, most importantly, the ivory tower, inside which at least ten million people constantly worked in the late 1980s (not counting episodically fed from military programs under contracts) - the most ordinary, but very well paid people - formed a sense of stability. That this is how it should continue to be.

And the reasons for this became more and more elusive.

Goldsmiths of a poor country

The last head of Soviet foreign intelligence, Leonid Shebarshin, recalled how, at the end of perestroika, they, the top leadership of the KGB, were driven to meetings with workers from large factories. Shebarshin arrived at the Znamya Truda Moscow aircraft building plant, the leading enterprise in the MiG cooperation.

"And how much do you get, comrade general?" - Poisonously asked from the audience after the performance. "1300 rubles," Shebarshin honestly admitted. After some revival, a voice was heard from the gallery: “Yes, our locksmith can earn so much” ...

Yuri Yaremenko, director of the Institute for National Economic Forecasting since the late 1980s, describing this situation, noted that the main "damage" from the Soviet "defense industry" of the 1980s was not even in the money that went into it. The military-industrial complex drew upon itself all the best that was in a poor country. First of all, qualified personnel, but he also claimed high-quality materials, demanded the most advanced equipment and technologies.

In second place in the system of priorities were the needs of raw materials and energy producers. Civil engineering and consumer goods industry got leftovers: from people - who the military did not take, from equipment - what they managed to knock out, materials - well, take what you have ... This did not slow down the quality of products, as well as the aggravating lag behind the technological level of industry from West and Japan.

Provide a transfer high technology Soviet defense engineering in the civilian sector was not allowed not only by the rooted feudal logic of the directorate, accustomed under the pretext of solving problems national importance"cut down" for themselves isolated domains of cooperation and sit on them as sovereign barons, responsible only to the heads of the relevant ministries and the party. The fact is that the central offices and the party also did not want to hear anything.

The same Yaremenko recalled that holistic programs to reduce military spending with the simultaneous well-thought-out conversion of high-tech defense capacities and trained personnel for the mass production of civilian durable goods (high-quality household appliances, in other words) were going up from the first half of the 1980s. There they pointedly did not notice ... and then allocated more and more resources to the military-industrial complex.

Defense directors took graduation programs civilian products to their enterprises "to the load", but did not see them as a priority and worked with them on a residual basis. Military programs paid better and interested them more.

The icon of the national defense industry, Yuri Dmitrievich Maslyukov, a man who did a lot of good for the industry of the USSR and for the Russian economy, and he, in 1987, according to Yaremenko, said that talk about the excessive allocation of resources to military production was empty, because the Soviet "defense industry" lagged behind and, conversely, requires additional injections.

The head said it Military Industrial Commission The Council of Ministers is the chief of staff of the "nine" defense ministries, the main industry coordinator and responsible for determining areas of work on defense topics. Next year, without leaving this post, Maslyukov will become the head of the entire Soviet State Planning Committee ...

"In general, he burst" ...

What is the SOI? The Waste Effect of Countering Fraudulent SDI Threats - mosquito bite against the background of a resource-consuming flywheel, dispersed back in the second half of the 1970s by the solidarity efforts of the defense complex and another icon of the military-industrial complex, the former secretary of the Central Committee for defense matters, Minister of War Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov.

So Reagan did not know the Soviet directorate and the leadership of the "nine" well. Even if the SDI program had not been proclaimed, it would have been invented in one way or another.

The essence of the economic catastrophe of the USSR lay not in oil, not in SDI, and not in the Americans. Not in "traitors to the motherland", "young reformers", "Judas Gorbachev and Yeltsin", etc. The problem was that a huge self-contained sector had formed in the economy, accustomed to pulling the blanket over itself and demanding more, more, more ...

It had to be carefully opened, to smoothly transfer a significant part of its huge capabilities to meet the daily needs of the entire country. But those who understood the big picture - the leaders of the military-industrial complex from factories through ministries to the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee - were silent. For everything suited them, and they did not want to break through the interdepartmental squabble during the structural restructuring of the economy. And was there such a possibility?

And no one wanted to make decisions in the system of collective irresponsibility that developed in the late USSR. And everyone was afraid of a new round of the Cold War, so they maneuvered between the harsh pressure of "blood-smelling" Washington at the disarmament talks and the solidarity request of their own directorate - they yielded, dodged, shelved.

As a result, if we use military analogies, instead of the accurate demining of the "defense industry", we got the liquidation by undermining, from which not only the military-industrial complex, but the entire Soviet economy in general, along with the country, was blown apart.

Reagan could record a victory for himself. And who cares if it's completely undeserved?

The successful launch of the first Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 in August 1957 initiated a number of military programs in both powers. The United States, immediately after receiving intelligence about the new Russian missile, began the creation of an aerospace defense system for the North American continent and the development of the first Nike-Zeus anti-missile system equipped with anti-missiles with nuclear warheads (I already wrote about it in Chapter 13).

The use of an anti-missile with a thermonuclear charge significantly reduced the requirement for pointing accuracy.

It was assumed that the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion of an anti-missile would make it possible to neutralize the warhead of a ballistic missile, even if it was two to three kilometers away from the epicenter. In 1962, in order to determine the influence of damaging factors, the Americans conducted a series of nuclear test explosions at high altitudes, but soon work on the Nike-Zeus system was stopped.

However, in 1963, the development of the next generation missile defense system, Nike-X (Nike-X), began. It was necessary to create such an anti-missile complex that was capable of providing protection against Soviet missiles for an entire area, and not a single object. To destroy enemy warheads at distant approaches, the Spartan missile was developed with a range of 650 kilometers, equipped with a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. A charge of such enormous power was supposed to create in space a zone of guaranteed destruction of several warheads and possible decoys.

Tests of this anti-missile began in 1968 and lasted three years. In the event that part of the warheads of enemy missiles overcome the space protected by Spartan missiles, complexes with Sprint anti-missiles (shorter range) were included in the missile defense system. The Sprint anti-missile was supposed to be used as the main means of protecting a limited number of objects. She was supposed to hit targets at altitudes up to 50 kilometers.

The authors American projects In the 1960s, only powerful nuclear warheads were considered a real means of destroying enemy warheads. But the abundance of anti-missiles equipped with them did not guarantee the protection of all protected areas, and if they were used, they threatened to contaminate the entire United States with radioactive contamination.

In 1967, the development of a zoned limited missile defense system "Sentinel" ("Sentinel") began. Her kit included all the same "Spartan", "Sprint" and two RAS: "PAR" and "MSR". By this time, the concept of anti-missile defense began to gain momentum in the United States not of cities and industrial zones, but of the areas where strategic nuclear forces and the National Control Center for them were based. The Sentinel system was urgently renamed "Safeguard" and modified in accordance with the specifics of solving new problems.

The first complex of the new missile defense system (out of the planned twelve) was deployed at the Grand Forks missile base.

However, some time later, by decision of the American Congress, these works were also terminated as insufficiently effective, and the built missile defense system was mothballed.

The USSR and the USA sat down at the negotiating table on the limitation of anti-missile defense systems, which led to the conclusion of the ABM Treaty in 1972 and the signing of a protocol to it in 1974.

It would seem that the problem is over. But it was not there…

On March 23, 1983, US President Ronald Reagan, addressing his compatriots, said:

“I know that all of you want peace. I want it too.[…] I appeal to the scientific community of our country, to those who gave us nuclear weapons, with a call to direct their great talents for the benefit of mankind and world peace and to put at our disposal the means that would make nuclear weapons useless and obsolete. Today, in accordance with our obligations under the ABM Treaty and recognizing the need for closer consultations with our allies, I am taking an important first step.

I am ordering a comprehensive and vigorous effort to establish the content of a long-term research and development program that will begin our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat from nuclear-capable strategic missiles.

This may open the way to arms limitation measures that will lead to the total elimination of these weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only goal - and it is shared by all the people - is to find ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war.

Not everyone understood then that the President was overturning the ideas that had developed over almost two decades about ways to prevent nuclear war and ensure stable peace, the symbol and basis of which was the ABM Treaty.

What happened? What has changed Washington's attitude towards missile defense so dramatically?

Let's go back to the 60s. Here is how the well-known columnist for the American magazine Time S. Talbot described the way of thinking that the American military-political leadership adhered to in those years regarding the ABM Treaty: “At that time, some observers found the agreement reached somewhat strange. Indeed, the two superpowers made a solemn commitment not to defend themselves. In reality, however, they reduced the possibility of attacking each other. The ABM Treaty was an important achievement. […] If one of the parties is able to protect itself from the threat of a nuclear strike, it receives an incentive to spread its geopolitical weight to other areas, and the other side is forced to create new, better types of offensive weapons and at the same time improve its defense. Therefore, the proliferation of defensive weapons is as much a curse on arms control as the proliferation of offensive weapons. […] ABM is “destabilizing” for a number of reasons: it stimulates competition in defensive arms, with each side striving to equal and perhaps outperform the other side in ABM; it stimulates competition in the field of offensive weapons, with each side seeking to be able to "overcome" the other side's missile defense system; ABM can finally lead to illusory or even real overall strategic superiority.”

Talbot was not a military specialist, otherwise he would not have missed another consideration that guided the parties when deciding to limit missile defense systems.

No matter how strong the missile defense system is, it cannot become absolutely impenetrable. In reality, missile defense is calculated on a certain number of warheads and decoys launched by the other side. Therefore, missile defense is more effective against a retaliatory strike by the other side, when a significant, and perhaps even overwhelming, part of the enemy's strategic nuclear forces has already been destroyed as a result of the first disarming strike. Thus, in the presence of large missile defense systems, each of the opposing sides, in the event of a heated confrontation, has an additional incentive to launch a nuclear attack first.

Finally, new round arms races are a new onerous expenditure of resources, of which humanity is becoming less and less.

It is unlikely that the people who prepared Ronald Reagan's speech on March 23, 1983 did not analyze all the negative consequences of the announced program. What prompted them to such an unreasonable decision? They say that the initiator of the program "Strategic Defense Initiative" ("SDI", "Strategic Defense Initiative") is the main creator of the American thermonuclear bomb Teller, who has known Reagan since the mid-60s and has always been an opponent of the ABM Treaty and any agreements that limit the ability of the United States to build up and improve its military-strategic potential.

At the meeting with Reagan, Teller spoke not only on his own behalf. He relied on the powerful support of the US military-industrial complex. Fears that the SDI program might initiate a similar Soviet program were dismissed: it would be difficult for the USSR to accept the new American challenge, especially in the face of already emerging economic difficulties. If the Soviet Union did decide to do so, then, as Teller reasoned, it would most likely be limited, and the United States could gain the much-desired military superiority. Of course, "SDI" is unlikely to ensure complete impunity for the United States in the event of a Soviet nuclear retaliatory strike, but it will give Washington additional confidence in conducting military-political actions abroad. Politicians, however, saw another aspect in this - the creation of new colossal burdens for the USSR economy, which would further complicate the ever-increasing social problems and reduce the attractiveness of the ideas of socialism for developing countries. The game seemed tempting.

The President's speech was timed to coincide with the debate in Congress on the military budget for the next fiscal year. As the speaker of the House of Representatives O "Neill noted, it did not concern national security at all, but the military budget. Senator Kennedy called the speech "reckless plans for star wars." nobody called the plan of star wars. They tell such a curious incident that happened at one of the press conferences at the Center foreign press at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, an anchorman who introduced Lt. Gen. Abrahamson (Director of the SDI Implementation Organization) to reporters joked, "Whoever asks the general and avoids using the words 'Star Wars' wins a prize."

There were no applicants for the prize - everyone preferred to say "Star Wars Program" instead of "SDI".) Nevertheless, in early June 1983, Reagan established three expert commissions that were supposed to evaluate the technical feasibility of his idea. Of the materials prepared, the report of the Fletcher Commission is the most famous. She came to the conclusion that, despite the major unsolved technical problems, the achievements of the last twenty years in the field of technology in relation to the problem of creating missile defense look promising. The commission proposed a scheme for a layered defense system based on the latest military technologies. Each echelon of this system is designed to intercept missile warheads at various stages of their flight. The Commission recommended that a research and development program be initiated with a view to culminating in the early 1990s with a demonstration of basic missile defense technologies.

Then, based on the results obtained, decide whether to continue or close work on the creation of a large-scale defense system against ballistic missiles.

The next step in the implementation of SDI was Presidential Directive No. 119, which appeared at the end of 1983. It marked the beginning of research and development that would answer the question of whether it is possible to create new space-based weapon systems or any other defensive means, able to repel a nuclear attack on the United States.

As it quickly became clear, the allocations for SDI provided by the budget could not ensure the successful solution of the grandiose tasks set for the program. It is no coincidence that many experts estimated the real costs of the program during the entire period of its implementation at hundreds of billions of dollars. According to Senator Presler, SDI is a program that requires costs ranging from 500 billion to 1 trillion dollars (!) to complete. The American economist Perlo called an even more significant amount - 3 trillion dollars (!!!).

However, already in April 1984, the Organization for the Implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (OSDI) began its activities. It was the central office of a large research project, in which, in addition to the organization of the Ministry of Defense, organizations of civilian ministries and departments, as well as educational institutions, participated. Approximately 100 people were employed in the central office of the OOSOI. As a program management body, the OOSOI was responsible for developing the goals of research programs and projects, supervised the preparation and execution of the budget, selected the executors of specific work, maintained daily contacts with the US President's office, Congress, and other executive and legislative authorities.

At the first stage of work on the program, the main efforts of the OOSOI were focused on coordinating the activities of numerous participants in research projects on issues divided into the following five most important groups: the creation of means of observation, capture and tracking of targets; creation of technical means using the effect of directed energy for their subsequent inclusion in interception systems; creation of technical means using the effect of kinetic energy for their further inclusion in interception systems; analysis of theoretical concepts on the basis of which specific weapon systems and means of controlling them will be created; ensuring the operation of the system and increasing its efficiency (increasing the lethality, security of the system components, power supply and logistics of the entire system).

What did the SDI program look like in the first approximation?

The efficiency criteria after two or three years of work under the SDI program were officially formulated as follows.

First, a defense against ballistic missiles must be capable of destroying a sufficient portion of the aggressor's offensive forces to deprive him of confidence in achieving his goals.

Secondly, defensive systems must perform their task to a sufficient extent even under the conditions of a series of serious blows against them, that is, they must have sufficient survivability.

Third, defensive systems should undermine the potential enemy's belief in the possibility of overcoming them by building up additional offensive weapons.

The strategy of the SDI program was to invest in a technology base that could support the decision to enter the full-scale development phase of the first stage of the SDI and prepare the basis for entering the conceptual development phase of the subsequent phase of the system. This staging, formulated only a few years after the promulgation of the program, was intended to create a basis for building up primary defensive capabilities with the introduction of promising technologies in the future, such as directed energy weapons, although initially the authors of the project considered it possible from the very beginning to implement the most exotic projects.

Nevertheless, in the second half of the 1980s, such elements as the space system for detecting and tracking ballistic missiles in the active part of their flight trajectory were considered as elements of the first stage system; space system for detecting and tracking warheads, warheads and decoys; ground detection and tracking system; space-based interceptors that ensure the destruction of missiles, warheads and their warheads; anti-missiles for atmospheric interception of ballistic targets ("ERIS"); combat control and communications system.

The following were considered as the main elements of the system at subsequent stages: space-based beam weapons based on the use of neutral particles; interceptor missiles for intercepting targets in the upper atmosphere ("HEDI"); an onboard optical system that provides detection and tracking of targets in the middle and final sections of their flight trajectories; ground-based RAS ("GBR"), considered as an additional means for detecting and tracking targets in the final section of their flight path; a space-based laser installation designed to disable ballistic missiles and anti-satellite systems; ground-based gun with projectile acceleration up to hypersonic speeds("HVG"); ground-based laser installation for the destruction of ballistic missiles.

Those who planned the SDI structure thought of the system as a multi-tiered system capable of intercepting missiles during the three stages of ballistic missile flight: during the acceleration stage (the active part of the flight trajectory), the middle part of the flight trajectory, which mainly accounts for flight in space after how the warheads and decoys separated from the missiles, and at the final stage, when the warheads rush towards their targets on a downward trajectory. The most important of these stages was considered the acceleration stage, during which the warheads of multiply-charged ICBMs had not yet separated from the missile, and they could be disabled with a single shot. The head of the SDI department, General Abrahamson, said that this is the main point of "star wars".

Due to the fact that the US Congress, based on real assessments of the state of work, systematically cut (reductions to 40–50% annually) the administration's requests for project implementation, the authors of the program transferred its individual elements from the first stage to subsequent ones, work on some elements was reduced and some disappeared altogether.

Nevertheless, non-nuclear ground-based and space-based anti-missiles were the most developed among other projects of the SDI program, which allows us to consider them as candidates for the first stage of the current anti-missile defense of the country's territory.

Among these projects are the ERIS anti-missile for hitting targets in the atmospheric area, the HEDI anti-missile for short-range interception, as well as a ground-based radar, which should provide the task of monitoring and tracking in the final section of the trajectory.

The least advanced were projects on directed energy weapons, which combine research on four basic concepts considered promising for multi-layer defense, including ground-based and space-based lasers, space-based booster (beam) weapons, and directed-energy nuclear weapons.

Works that are almost at the initial stage may include projects related to complete solution tasks.

For a number of projects, only problems have been identified that need to be addressed. This includes projects for the creation of space-based nuclear power plants with a capacity of 100 kW with power extension up to several megawatts.

The SDI program also required an inexpensive, versatile aircraft capable of launching a 4,500-kilogram payload and a crew of two into polar orbit. The DOE required firms to review three concepts: vertical launch and landing, vertical launch and horizontal landing, and horizontal launch and landing.

As it was announced on August 16, 1991, the winner of the competition was the design of the Delta Clipper with vertical launch and landing, proposed by McDonnell-Douglas. The layout resembled a greatly enlarged Mercury capsule.

All this work could continue indefinitely, and the longer the SDI project would be implemented, the more difficult it would be to stop it, not to mention the steadily increasing allocations for these purposes almost exponentially. On May 13, 1993, US Secretary of Defense Espin officially announced the cessation of work on the SDI project. It was one of the most serious decisions made by a Democratic administration since it came to power.

Among the most important arguments in favor of this step, the consequences of which were widely discussed by experts and the public around the world, President Bill Clinton and his entourage unanimously named the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, the irretrievable loss of the United States of its only worthy rival in the confrontation between the superpowers.

Apparently, this is what makes some modern authors argue that the SDI program was originally conceived as a bluff aimed at intimidating the enemy leadership. They say that Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage took the bluff at face value, got scared, and lost the Cold War out of fear, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is not true. Not everyone in the Soviet Union, including the top leadership of the country, accepted on faith the information disseminated by Washington regarding SDI. As a result of research conducted by a group of Soviet scientists led by Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences Velikhov, Academician Sagdeev and Doctor of Historical Sciences Kokoshin, it was concluded that the system advertised by Washington "is clearly not capable, as its supporters claim, of making nuclear weapons" powerless and obsolete", to provide reliable cover for the territory of the United States, and even more so for its allies in Western Europe or in other parts of the world." Moreover, the Soviet Union had long been developing its own missile defense system, elements of which could be used in the Anti-SDI program.

In the Soviet Union, the problem of missile defense began to pay attention immediately after the end of World War II. In the early 1950s, NII-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense and NII-885, which were engaged in the development and use of ballistic missiles, conducted the first studies on the possibility of creating missile defense systems. In these works, schemes were proposed for equipping antimissiles with two types of guidance systems. For anti-missiles with remote control, a fragmentation warhead with low-velocity fragments and a circular destruction field was proposed.

For homing missiles, it was proposed to use a directional warhead, which, together with the missile, was supposed to turn towards the target and explode according to information from the homing head, creating the highest fragment field density in the direction of the target.

One of the first projects of the country's global missile defense was proposed by Vladimir Chelomey.

In 1963, he proposed using the UR-100 intercontinental missiles developed in his OKB-52 to create the Taran missile defense system. The proposal was approved and by a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated May 3, 1963, the development of a project for the Taran missile defense system was assigned to intercept ballistic missiles in the atmospheric trajectory.

The system was supposed to use the UR-100 (8K84) missile in the anti-missile version with a super-powerful thermonuclear warhead with a capacity of at least 10 megatons.

Its dimensions are: length - 16.8 meters, diameter - 2 meters, launch weight - 42.3 tons, warhead weight - 800 kilograms.

The anti-missile could hit targets at altitudes of about 700 kilometers, the range of hitting a target would be up to 2,000 thousand kilometers. Probably, in order to guarantee the destruction of all targets, it was necessary to deploy several hundred launchers with anti-missile systems of the Taran system.

A feature of the system was the lack of correction of the UR-100 anti-missile during the flight, which would be ensured by accurate target designation of the radar.

The new system was supposed to use the radar facilities of the Danube-3 system, as well as the TsSO-S multi-channel radar, located 500 kilometers from Moscow towards Leningrad. According to this radar, operating in the wavelength range from 30 to 40 centimeters, enemy missiles were to be detected and the coordinates of the interception points and the moment the targets arrived at these points were to be prolonged. The station "TsSO-S" was switched on by the signals of the nodes of the missile attack warning system "RO-1" (Murmansk city) and "RO-2" (Riga city).

In 1964, work on the Taran system was stopped - a significant role in the history of the creation of this system was played by the resignation of Nikita Khrushchev. However, Vladimir Chelomey himself later admitted that he abandoned the Taran system due to the vulnerability of the early warning radar system, which was a key link in his system.

In addition, the anti-missile needed a launch booster - a similar ballistic missile is not suitable as an anti-missile due to limitations in speed and maneuverability with a hard time limit for intercepting a target.

Others have been successful. In 1955, Grigory Vasilyevich Kisunko, chief designer SKB-30 (structural subdivision of a large organization for missile systems SB-1), prepared proposals for the test site missile defense system "A".

Calculations of the effectiveness of anti-missiles carried out in SB-1 showed that, with the existing guidance accuracy, the defeat of one ballistic missile is ensured by the use of 8-10 anti-missiles, which made the system ineffective.

Therefore, Kisunko proposed to apply a new method for determining the coordinates of a high-speed ballistic target and an anti-missile - triangulation, that is, determining the coordinates of an object by measuring the distance to it from the radar, spaced a long distance from each other and located at the corners of an equilateral triangle.

In March 1956, SKB-30 produced a preliminary design anti-missile system"BUT".

The system included the following elements: radars "Danube-2" with a target detection range of 1200 kilometers, three radars for precise guidance of anti-missiles on a target, a starting position with launchers of two-stage anti-missiles "V-1000", the main command and computing center of the system with a lamp computer "M-40" and radio relay communication lines between all means of the system.

The decision to build the tenth state test site for the needs of the country's air defense was made on April 1, 1956, and in May a State Commission was created under the leadership of Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky to select its location, and already in June, military builders began to create a test site in the Betpak desert. Dala.

The first work of the "A" system to intercept the R-5 anti-missile ballistic missile was successful on November 24, 1960, while the anti-missile was not equipped with a warhead. This was followed by a whole cycle of tests, some of which ended unsuccessfully.

The main test took place on March 4, 1961. On that day, an anti-missile with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead successfully intercepted and destroyed at an altitude of 25 kilometers the warhead of the R-12 ballistic missile launched from the State Central Test Range. The anti-missile warhead consisted of 16 thousand balls with a tungsten carbide core, TNT filling and a steel shell.

Successful test results of the "A" system made it possible by June 1961 to complete the development of a draft design of the A-35 missile defense system designed to protect Moscow from American intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The combat system was supposed to include a command post, eight sectoral RAS "Danube-3" and 32 firing systems. It was planned to complete the deployment of the system by 1967 - the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.

Subsequently, the project has undergone changes, but in 1966 the system was still almost completely ready to be put on combat duty.

In 1973 general designer Grigory Kisunko substantiated the main technical solutions for the modernized system capable of hitting complex ballistic targets. The A-35 system was given a combat mission to intercept one, but complex, multi-element target containing, along with warheads, light (inflatable) and heavy decoys, which required significant improvements to the system's computer center.

This was the last revision and modernization of the A-35 system, which ended in 1977 with the presentation of the new A-35M missile defense system to the State Commission.

The A-35M system was withdrawn from service in 1983, although its capabilities allowed it to be on combat duty until 2004.

In addition to the creation of traditional missile defense systems in the Soviet Union, research was carried out to develop completely new types of anti-missile defense systems. Many of these developments have not yet been completed and are already the property of modern Russia.

Among them, the Terra-3 project stands out in the first place, aimed at creating a powerful ground-based laser system capable of destroying enemy objects at orbital and suborbital heights. Work on the project was carried out by the Vympel Design Bureau, and since the late 60s, a special position for testing has been built at the Sary-Shagan test site.

The experimental laser installation consisted of the actual lasers (ruby and gas), a beam guidance and retention system, an information complex designed to ensure the functioning of the guidance system, as well as a high-precision laser locator "LE-1", designed to accurately determine the coordinates of the target. The capabilities of the "LE-1" made it possible not only to determine the range to the target, but also to obtain accurate characteristics of its trajectory, object shape and size.

In the mid-1980s, laser weapons were tested at the Terra-3 complex, which also included shooting at flying targets. Unfortunately, these experiments have shown that the power of the laser beam is not enough to destroy the warheads of ballistic missiles.

In 1981, the United States launched the first space shuttle, the Space Shuttle. Naturally, this attracted the attention of the USSR government and the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. In the fall of 1983, Marshal Dmitry Ustinov suggested that Votintsev, the commander of the Missile Defense Forces, use a laser system to escort the Shuttle. And on October 10, 1984, during the thirteenth flight of the Challenger shuttle, when its turns in orbit passed in the area of ​​the test site "A", the experiment took place when the laser installation was operating in the detection mode with a minimum radiation power. The height of the ship's orbit at that time was 365 kilometers. As the Challenger crew later reported, during the flight over the Balkhash region, the ship suddenly lost communication, equipment malfunctioned, and the astronauts themselves felt unwell. The Americans began to understand. Soon they realized that the crew was subjected to some kind of artificial influence from the USSR, and they made an official protest.

At present, the Terra-3 complex is abandoned and rusting - Kazakhstan was unable to raise this object.

In the early 70s, research and development work was carried out in the USSR under the Fon program in order to create a promising missile defense system. The essence of the program was to create a system that would make it possible to keep all American nuclear warheads "at gunpoint", including even those based on submarines and bombers. The system was supposed to be based in space and hit nuclear missiles Americans before their start.

Work on the technical project was carried out at the direction of Marshal Dmitry Ustinov at NPO Kometa.

At the end of the 70s, the Fon-1 program was launched, which provides for the creation of various types of beam weapons, electromagnetic guns, anti-missiles, including multiply charged ones with submunitions, and multiple rocket launchers. However, soon many designers at one of the meetings decided to curtail work, since, in their opinion, the program had no prospects: as a result of work on the Fon program, the Central Research Institute "Kometa" came to the conclusion that destroying the entire US nuclear potential at all types of carriers (10 thousand charges) in 20–25 minutes of flying time is impossible.

Since 1983, the Fon-2 program has been launched. The program included in-depth research into the use of alternative means capable of neutralizing American SDI with "non-lethal weapons": electromagnetic impulse, instantly disrupting the operation of electronic equipment, exposure to lasers, powerful microwave field changes, and so on. As a result, quite interesting developments appeared.

From 1983 to 1987, within the framework of the Terra-3 project, tests were carried out on a laser installation weighing about 60 tons, installed on the Il-76MD (A-60) USSR-86879 flying laboratory.

To power the laser and related equipment, additional turbogenerators were installed in the fairings on the sides of the fuselage, as on the Il-76PP.

The regular weather radar was replaced with a bulb-shaped fairing on a special adapter, to which a smaller oblong fairing was attached from below. Obviously, the aiming system antenna was located there, which turned in any direction, catching the target. From the extensive glazing of the navigational cabin, only two windows remained on each side.

In order not to spoil the aerodynamics of the aircraft with another fairing, the optical head of the laser was made retractable.

The top of the fuselage between the wing and the keel was cut out and replaced with huge flaps consisting of several segments.

They retracted inside the fuselage, and then a turret with a cannon climbed up.

Behind the wing there were fairings protruding beyond the contour of the fuselage with a profile similar to that of the wing. The cargo ramp was preserved, but the cargo hatch doors were removed, and the hatch was sewn up with metal.

The finalization of the aircraft was carried out by the Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex named after Beriev and the Taganrog Engineering Plant named after Georgy Dimitrov, which produced the A-50 and Tu-142 anti-submarine aircraft. Nothing is known about the course of tests of the domestic combat laser, since they remain top secret.

After the testing program, the A-60 laboratory was located at the Chkalovsky airfield, where it burned down in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, this project can be revived if the need suddenly arises ...

A mobile laser complex for destroying enemy satellites and ballistic missiles was created by the efforts of the design team of the Troitsk Institute for Innovation and Thermonuclear Research (Moscow region).

The complex is based on a 1 MW carbon laser. The complex is based on two platform modules created from serial trailers of the Chelyabinsk plant. The first platform houses a laser radiation generator, which includes an optical resonator unit and a gas discharge chamber. A beam forming and guidance system is also installed here. Nearby is the control cabin, from where software or manual guidance and focusing is carried out. On the second platform there are elements of the gas-dynamic path: aviation turbojet engine"P29-300", which has exhausted its flight resource, but is still capable of serving as an energy source; ejectors, exhaust and noise suppression devices, a tank for liquefied carbon dioxide, a fuel tank with aviation kerosene.

Each platform is equipped with its own KrAZ tractor and is transported to almost any place where it can go.

When it turned out that this complex would not be used as a weapon, a team of specialists from the Troitsk Institute, together with colleagues from NPO Almaz, the Efremov Research Institute of Electrophysical Equipment, and the Conversiya State Innovative Small Enterprise, developed the MLTK-50 laser technological complex on its basis. ". This complex showed excellent results in extinguishing a fire at a gas well in Karachaevsk, breaking up a rock mass, decontaminating the surface of concrete at a nuclear power plant by peeling, burning an oil film on the surface of the water area, and even destroying hordes of locusts.

Another interesting development is related to the creation of a plasma missile defense system capable of hitting targets at altitudes up to 50 kilometers.

The operation of this system is based on a long-known effect.

It turns out that plasma can be accelerated along two, as a rule, rather long tires - current conductors, which are parallel wires or plates.

The plasma clot closes the electrical circuit between the conductors, and an external magnetic field acts perpendicular to the busbar plane. The plasma accelerates and flows off the ends of the tires in the same way as a metal conductor sliding along the tires would accelerate. Depending on the conditions, the outflow can occur in different ways: in the form of a strongly expanding plume, jets, or in the form of successive plasma toroid rings - the so-called plasmoids.

The accelerator is called in this case a plasmoid gun; typically, the plasma is formed from the material of the consumable electrodes. Plasmoids resemble smoke rings produced by skilled smokers, but they do not fly flat in the air, but sideways, at speeds of tens and hundreds of kilometers per second. Each plasmoid is a ring of plasma pulled together by a magnetic field with a current flowing in it and is formed as a result of the expansion of the current loop under the action of its own magnetic field, sometimes amplified with the help of jumpers - metal plates in an electrical circuit.

The first plasma gun in our country was built by the Leningrad professor Babat back in 1941. Currently, research in this area is being conducted at the Research Institute of Radio Instrumentation under the leadership of Academician Rimily Avramenko. A plasma weapon capable of hitting any targets at altitudes up to 50 kilometers has been practically created there.

According to the academician, a plasma missile defense weapon will not only cost several orders of magnitude cheaper than the American missile defense system, but will also be many times easier to create and manage.

The plasmoid, directed by ground-based missile defense systems, creates an ionized area in front of the flying warhead and completely disrupts the aerodynamics of the object's flight, after which the target leaves the trajectory and collapses from monstrous overloads. In this case, the damaging factor is delivered to the target at the speed of light.

In 1995, specialists from the Research Institute of Radio Instrumentation developed the concept of the international experiment "Trust" ("Trust") for joint testing of plasma weapons with the United States at the American Kwajelein anti-missile test site.

Project "Confidence" was to conduct an experiment with a plasma weapon that can hit any object moving in the Earth's atmosphere. This is carried out on the basis of an already existing technological base, without launching any components into space. The cost of the experiment is estimated at $300 million.

The ABM Treaty no longer exists. On December 13, 2001, US President George W. Bush notified Russian President Vladimir Putin of his unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty. The decision was related to the Pentagon's plans to conduct new tests of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system no later than six months later in order to protect against attack from the so-called "rogue states". Before that, the Pentagon had already conducted five successful tests of a new anti-missile capable of hitting Minuteman-2 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The days of SOI are back. America is once again sacrificing its reputation on the world stage and spending huge amounts of money in pursuit of the illusory hope of obtaining a missile defense "umbrella" that will protect it from the threat from the sky. The senselessness of this undertaking is obvious. After all, the same claims can be made against the NMD systems as against the SDI systems. They do not provide a 100% guarantee of security, but they can create its illusion.

And there is nothing more dangerous for health and life itself than the illusion of security...

The US NMD system, according to the ideas of its creators, will include several elements: ground-based missile interceptors (“Ground leased Interceptor”), combat control system (“Battle Management / Command, Control, Communication”), high-frequency missile defense radars (“Ground Based Radiolocator”), missile attack warning system radar (EWS), high-frequency missile defense radar (“Brilliant Eyes”) and SBIRS satellite constellation.

Ground-based missile interceptors or anti-missiles are the main missile defense weapon. They destroy ballistic missile warheads outside the earth's atmosphere.

The combat control system is a kind of brain of the missile defense system. In the case of missile launches on US territory, it will be she who will control the interception.

Ground-based high-frequency missile defense radars track the flight path of the missile and warhead. They send the received information to the combat control system. The latter, in turn, gives the command to the interceptors.

The SBIRS satellite constellation is a two-layer satellite system that will play a key role in the control system of the NMD complex. The upper echelon - space - in the project includes 4-6 satellites of the missile attack warning system. The low-altitude echelon consists of 24 satellites located at a distance of 800-1200 kilometers.

These satellites are equipped with optical range sensors that detect and determine the movement parameters of targets.

According to the Pentagon's plan, the initial stage in the creation of the NMD should be the construction of a radar station on Shemiya Island (Aleutian Islands). The place to start the deployment of the NMD system was not chosen by chance.

It is through Alaska, according to experts, that most of the flight trajectories of missiles that can reach US territory pass. Therefore, it is planned to place about 100 anti-missiles there. By the way, this radar, which is still in the project, is completing the creation of a tracking ring around the United States, which includes a radar in Tula (Greenland), the Flyindales radar in the UK and three radars in the United States - Cape Cod, Claire and "Bil". All of them have been operating for about 30 years and will be modernized in the course of the creation of the NMD system.

In addition, the radar station in Vard (Norway), located just 40 kilometers from Russian border.

The first anti-missile test took place on July 15, 2001. It cost the US taxpayer $100 million, but the Pentagon successfully destroyed an intercontinental ballistic missile 144 miles above the Earth's surface.

A one and a half meter striking element of an interceptor missile launched from Kwajelein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, approaching a Minuteman ICBM launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, hit it with a direct hit, resulting in a blindingly bright flash in the sky, which caused jubilation of the American military and technical experts shaking their fists admiringly.

"By initial estimates, everything worked as it should, - said the head of the missile defense department of the US Department of Defense, Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish - We hit very accurately ... We will insist on the next test as soon as possible.

Since the money for NMD is being allocated without delay, US military experts have launched a storm of activity. Development is being carried out in a number of directions at once, and the creation of interceptor missiles is not yet the most difficult element in the program.

A space-based laser has already been tested. This happened on December 8, 2000. A comprehensive test of the Alpha HEL hydrogen fluoride laser manufactured by TRW and the optical beam control system developed by Lockheed Martin was carried out as part of the SBL-IFX program ( "Space Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment" - Demonstrator for integrated flight tests of a space-based laser) at the Capistrano test site (San Clement, California).

The beam guidance system included an optical unit (telescope) with a system of mirrors "LAMR" ("LAMP"), using adaptive optics technology ("soft mirrors").

The primary mirror has a diameter of 4 meters. In addition, the beam control system included the ATP (ATP) detection, tracking and guidance system. Both the laser and the beam control system were placed in a vacuum chamber during testing.

The purpose of the tests was to determine the ability of the telescope's metrological systems to maintain the required direction to the target and provide control of the primary and secondary optics during high-energy laser radiation. The tests ended in complete success: the ATP system worked even with greater accuracy than required.

According to official information, the launch of the SBL-IFX demonstrator into orbit is scheduled for 2012, and its testing on launching intercontinental rockets is scheduled for 2013. And by 2020, an operational group of spacecraft with high-energy lasers on board can be deployed.

Then, as experts estimate, instead of 250 interceptor missiles in Alaska and North Dakota, it will be enough to deploy a constellation of 12-20 spacecraft based on SBL technologies in orbits with an inclination of 40°. It will take only 1 to 10 seconds to destroy one missile, depending on the altitude of the target. Reconfiguring to a new target will take only half a second. The system, consisting of 20 satellites, should provide almost complete prevention of the missile threat.

As part of the NMD program, it is also planned to use an airborne laser system developed under the ABL project (short for Airborne Laser).

Back in September 1992, Boeing and Lockheed received contracts to determine the most suitable existing aircraft for the ABL project. Both teams came to the same conclusion and recommended that the US Air Force use the Boeing 747 as the platform.

In November 1996, the US Air Force awarded a $1.1 billion contract to Boeing, Lockheed, and TRV for the development and flight testing of the ABL weapons system. On August 10, 1999, the assembly of the first 747-400 Freighter for ABL began. On January 6, 2001, the YAL-1A aircraft made its first flight from the Everett airfield. A combat test of the weapon system is scheduled for 2003, during which an operational-tactical missile is to be shot down. It is envisaged to destroy missiles at the active stage of their flight.

The basis of the weapon system is an iodine-oxygen chemical laser developed by TRV. The High Energy Laser (“HEL”) has a modular design and extensive use of the latest plastics, composites and titanium alloys to reduce weight. The laser, which has a record chemical efficiency, uses a closed circuit with recirculation of reagents.

The laser is installed in the 46th section on the main deck of the aircraft. To ensure strength, thermal and chemical resistance, two titanium skin panels of the lower fuselage are installed under the laser. The beam is transmitted to the nose turret through a special pipe passing along the upper part of the fuselage through all bulkheads. Shooting is carried out with a bow turret weighing about 6.3 tons. It can rotate 150° around a horizontal axis to track a target. Focusing the beam on the target is carried out by a 1.5-meter mirror with a viewing sector in azimuth of 120 °.

In the event of successful tests, it is planned to produce three such aircraft by 2005, and by 2008 the air defense system should be completely ready. A fleet of seven aircraft will be able to localize a threat anywhere in the world within 24 hours.

And that's not all either. Information is constantly leaking into the press about tests of powerful ground-based lasers, about the revival of ASAT-type airborne kinetic systems, about new projects to create hypersonic bombers, and about the upcoming update of the satellite early warning system. Who is this all against? Is it really against Iraq and North Korea, which still cannot build a workable intercontinental missile? ..

It must be admitted that such a defiant activity of American military specialists in the field of creating an NMD is frightening.

I'm afraid we are entering that phase of human development after which flights to the Moon, to Mars and the creation of orbital cities will become simply impossible ...

According to the sources of the WESTERN PRESS:

It's like a James Bond movie: a huge satellite, the largest ever launched, with a powerful laser on board, to neutralize the American anti-missile shield before the Soyuz launches its first strike. But it was for real - well, or at least that's how it was planned. Moreover, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev left the Reykjavik summit in October 1986 because US President Ronald Reagan was unwilling to abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviet Union was much closer to launching weapons. space-based than the United States. Less than a year later, while the world continued to criticize Reagan for his Star Wars concept, the Soviet Union launched an experimental satellite for its space laser system, which, however, never entered orbit. Had everything worked out, the Cold War might have taken a very different path.

According to Soviet cosmonaut Asif Siddiqi, a historian at Fordham University in New York, Moscow began developing space weapons long before Reagan's March 23, 1983, Star Wars speech launched the American space program on to the fullest. "The Soviets funded two major research and development programs in the late 70's and early 80's aimed at countering imagined American missile defense ideas," he says. The two concepts merged into one: the Skif, an orbital laser "gun", and another weapon called the Cascade, designed to destroy enemy satellites with missiles fired from another orbital station.

Although some details about these programs were leaked back in the mid-90s, even in Russia these plans for space weapons became known in full only a few years ago, says Siddiqi. The former press secretary of Roskosmos, Konstantin Lantratov, piece by piece restored the history of the Pole-Skif. “Lantratov managed to dig deep enough and his research clearly demonstrates the incredible scale of military station projects,” says Siddiqi. "And it wasn't just some side work, it was a real space weapons program."

Space as an arena for peaceful competition

Space as a whole remained free of weapons for a long time, although not because the idea of ​​space weapons did not occur to anyone. Back in 1949, James Lipp, head of RAND's rocket division, was considering using satellites as extra-atmospheric bombing platforms. After considering the technology available at the time, Lipp decided that dropping bombs from orbit would be ineffective and refused to list satellites as a weapon. While they may be useful to the military, the expert concluded, they cannot serve as weapons on their own.

When Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957 and the space age began in earnest, the Eisenhower administration took the position proposed in the longstanding Lipp Report. Realizing the political advantages of fighting for peaceful space, Eisenhower created the NASA civilian space agency to clearly separate space exploration from any military initiatives. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations took the same approach. And although the space race was part of the Cold War, weapons never came into space, despite the fact that the advent of CIA spy satellites turned orbit into a battlefield.

The peaceful nature of space programs was enshrined in 1967 by the Outer Space Treaty. This document, signed by both the United States and the Soviet Union, prohibited the placement of nuclear weapons in Earth orbit and on the Moon. It also forbade in principle the use of space and any celestial bodies for military purposes. In 1972, the two superpowers signed the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, which obligated each side to have no more than two missile defense systems - one to protect the capital and one to protect the base of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Design work began in the 1970s, shortly after the Soyuz-Apollo symbolic "cosmic handshake" between NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. The well-known organization Energia, which already had the construction of the Soyuz spacecraft and the giant rocket to fly to the moon N-1 (a program in the course of which four explosions occurred from 1969 to 1972), in 1976 began studying both concepts: Scythian and Cascade. Energia's original plan was to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles from space at the beginning of their flight, when the speed is relatively low. The Salyut orbital stations, the first of which was launched in 1971, were to serve as a platform for either the laser-equipped Polus spacecraft or the rocket-carrying Cascade. The stations could be refueled directly in orbit, and two astronauts could live in each of them for a week.

However, very soon the designers abandoned this plan, and with it the idea of ​​having astronauts aboard the Polus spacecraft. According to Lantratov, the USSR Ministry of Defense decided that Soviet technology was not yet advanced enough to shoot ICBMs from space, and decided that instead Skif and Kaskad would be used to combat American missile defense satellites that did not yet exist and were not even approved. .

The United States also spent a lot of money in the 50s and 60s trying to develop a missile defense system, but, nevertheless, by the mid-70s this work began to gradually phase out, and during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the movement in the field of missile defense systems was minimal. In 1972, both superpowers signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which allowed each of them to have no more than two missile defense sites, one to protect the capital and one to protect the only base from which ICBMs could be launched.

However, the Treaty prohibited only the deployment of missile defense weapons, but not testing and development - a loophole that both sides took advantage of. Beginning around 1980, when Reagan won the presidential election, scientists at the Livermore State Laboratory. E. Lawrence in California (among them the physicist Edward Teller, the so-called father of the hydrogen bomb), along with scientists from other federal laboratories and a bunch of military and civilian top officials, began to look towards "directed energy" weapons that fire beams instead of bullets, to neutralize the growing superiority of the USSR in the field of launch vehicles and strategic missiles.

Reagan became very interested in this idea and when, three years later, he appeared on television on national security issues, he announced plans to build a defensive shield that would "make nuclear weapons powerless and useless", in fact, changing the military-strategic position of the state from offensive to defensive. This proposal was immediately attacked in Congress by Democrats, who called it unworkable. It was Senator Ted Kennedy who called these plans "Star Wars." Despite the exclamations of skeptics, missile defense funding increased significantly and by 1986 reached almost $3 billion a year.

As Roald Sagdeev, an eminent planetary scientist and adviser to Gorbachev, wrote in his 1994 memoir The Making of a Soviet Scientist: “If the Americans exaggerated [the SDI plans] too much, then we Russians all believed it too much.” In the summer after Reagan's Star Wars speech, Undersecretary of Defense Fred Iklé demanded that the CIA investigate what the Soviets might do. The job went to three analysts, including Allen Thomson, a senior analyst with the CIA's Scientific and Military Research Division. Thomson had already studied other military research programs USSR, including work on the creation of directed energy weapons and devices for detecting submarines from space.

He recalls: "The study showed that both politically and technically, the Soviets have a very wide opportunity to respond to the predicted developments of the States in the framework of SDI." They could build more ICBMs, try to thwart American plans for a shield, or try to provoke international resistance to these plans. “There was some understanding that the USSR could be left penniless if it had to start building new large weapons systems. But there was nothing to indicate their inability to respond,” says Thomson.

In fact, Reagan's SDI was a good kick to the Soviet space weapons program, giving the aerospace design bureaus just what they needed to convince the Politburo of the need for more funding for the Polyus and Cascade. Both projects were slowly cooked at the Salyut design bureau (now the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center) within the framework of the Energia organization, and experiments with a high-power laser for the missile defense system have been carried out since 1981. However, until now, work has been limited to only laboratory conditions, but now, after Reagan's speech, rubles flowed into real flight equipment. The motive was not so much the fear that SDI could prevent Soviet missiles from reaching their targets, but something more sinister and strange: the belief that the Americans were about to have military space stations.

Paranoid fantasies were not uncommon among the top generals of the USSR, according to Peter Westwick, a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara who writes about Cold War science. “It seemed to them that the Americans could launch a space shuttle that would dive into the atmosphere and drop hydrogen bombs,” he says.

Siddiqi discusses how the Soviets misinterpreted US intentions regarding the space shuttle: “To the Russians, the shuttle seemed to be something very important. For them, it was a sign that the Americans were going to take the war into space.” The official US explanation was that the spaceplane, introduced in 1981, was intended to provide permanent access to orbit. By the mid-1980s, however, it was also being used to launch secret military satellites. “The shuttle frightened the Russians very much, because they could not understand why such an aircraft, which does not represent economic interest”, explains Siddiqui. “Therefore, they decided that some kind of unspoken military goal must be present here: for example, the delivery and curtailment of large military space stations or the bombing of Moscow.” The Soviets responded to the perceived threat by building their own space shuttle, practically exact copy NASA shuttle, which made a single flight and was decommissioned in 1993.

Shortly after Reagan's speech, the USSR Academy of Sciences received a request to evaluate the possibility of creating a space anti-missile shield. The working group was headed by the outstanding physicist Evgeny Velikhov. As a result, says Westwick, they came to this conclusion: "We considered and studied the problem, and we decided that nothing would come of it." But there were alarmists among other Soviet scientists who convinced the military and politicians that even if SDI was not an effective anti-missile shield, it could be used offensively to hit ground targets.

The thought of orbital laser launchers bombarding the Soviet Union was truly terrifying. According to Westwick, there were absolutely ridiculous speculations going around the Kremlin regarding the real purpose of the SDI. “Selective political assassination. For example, on May Day, when members of the Politburo stand on the street podium, and a single laser can take them all out at once ... These things fly in the sky, they are invisible and can knock without the slightest warning.

By 1983, the Polus-Skif and Cascade projects had been underway for many years. Preliminary tests were carried out at the Salyut design bureau. However, SDI has served as a powerful catalyst for both projects. If Reagan was going, as the Soviet Union feared, to launch an American battle station into space, Moscow wanted to be ready for it. After Reagan's speech, the rubles flowed in a stream, work accelerated, and ideas began to be embodied in metal.

However, money alone cannot put a satellite into orbit. To speed up the launch, Soviet leaders came up with an intermediate plan: to use for the prototype a small 1-megawatt carbon dioxide laser, which had already been tested against missiles - for this it was installed on the Il-76 transport aircraft. In 1984, the project was approved and named "Skif-D". The letter "D" meant "demonstration".

The problems didn't end there. For the Soviet Proton launch vehicle, even the relatively small Skif-D was too large. However, its creators were lucky - a much more powerful rocket was on the way - Energia, named after the developer and designed to launch the Buran shuttle into orbit. This powerful rocket could carry 95 tons of cargo into space and was able to cope with the Skif-D without any difficulties.

Skif-D was built in haste from existing components, including parts from the Buran shuttle and from the Almaz military orbital station, the launch of which was canceled. It turned out something monstrous, 40 meters long, a little more than 4 meters in diameter, and weighing almost 100 thousand kilograms. Compared to this craft, NASA's Skylab space station looked small. Luckily for its creators, it was thin and long enough to be docked to the Energia by attaching it along its central fuel tank.

Skif-D had two main parts: a "functional block" and a "target module". The functional unit housed the small rocket engines needed to propel the vehicle into its final orbit, as well as a power supply system made from solar panels borrowed from Almaz. The target module carried carbon dioxide tanks and two turbogenerators. These systems provided the operation of the laser - turbogenerators pumped carbon dioxide, exciting atoms and leading to the emission of light.

The problem was that the turbogenerators had large moving parts and the gas was so hot that it had to be bled off. This affected the movement of the spacecraft, making the laser extremely inaccurate. To counteract these fluctuations, Polyus engineers designed a system for ejecting gas through deflectors and added a turret to aim the laser more accurately.

In the end, it turned out that the Skif is so complex that each component must be tested separately in space before sending the station into orbit. However, when the launch opportunity arose in 1985, it was decided to turn a blind eye to this circumstance. The fact is that the Buran project was far behind schedule, and they did not have time to complete it by the planned first flight of the Energia rocket, scheduled for 1986. At first, the developers of Energia thought to test their rocket, replacing the Buran with a blank, but then the creators of Skif intervened. In the end, the authorities decided that Energia would carry a new apparatus into space.

The prospect of a close launch forced the engineers to propose another intermediate solution - to test only the control system of the functional unit, the gas emission system and the laser aiming system and not equip the device with a working laser for the time being. What happened in the end was dubbed "Scythian-DM" (the letter "M" meant "layout"). The launch was scheduled for autumn 1986.

Reflecting on all these horrors, the Soviet military accelerated work on the Polus-Skif laser cannon, designed to destroy SDI satellites. Until then, it was planned to use a powerful laser built by the Astrophysics Design Bureau, but the implementation of this program began to be delayed. The Astrophysics laser and its power supply systems were too large and heavy to be launched on then-existing rockets. So when the Soviet engineers were told to increase the pace of work on the Skif, they came up with an interim plan. They were going to adapt a small 1 MW carbon dioxide laser, which had already been tested on the Il-76 transport aircraft, as an anti-missile weapon. In August 1984, a plan was approved and outlined for the creation of a new spacecraft Skif-D, the letter "D" in the name meant "demonstration". By January 1986, the Politburo designated this project as one of the most important satellites of the Soviet space program.

Meanwhile, American scientists and engineers struggled with their own difficulties in creating space laser systems. As work progressed on such projects as Zenith Star, which were engaged in the study of the problem of putting a chemical laser with a power of 2 MW into orbit, the tasks associated with the creation and launch of such systems became more and more clear-cut. The SDI funded research on beam weapons and an X-ray laser that would be activated by a nuclear explosion, but neither of these projects ever came close to being realized. By 1986, the SDI leadership began to shift its focus from orbital lasers to small kinetic weapons that could hit enemy satellites by crashing into them.

The Russians, however, remained on course and continued to work on a demonstration version of their space laser, scheduled for launch in early 1987. Salyut engineers soon realized that their laser and its power supply system, even a smaller model, were already tested on the plane were still too large for the Proton rocket. But a more powerful launch vehicle was already on the way: the Energia rocket, named after the design bureau that developed it, was created to put the new space shuttle Buran into orbit. The carrying capacity of Energy was 95 tons, that is, it could lift the Skif-D. The purpose of the rocket has changed. To cut costs, engineers looked for existing equipment that could be modified and used, including elements of Buran and part of the canceled military space station"Almaz", designated as a transport supply ship, which later became the main module of the Mir space station.

As a result, Skif-D resembled the brainchild of Frankenstein: 40 m in length, more than 4 m in diameter and weighing 95 tons - larger than NASA's Skylab space station. The complex consisted of two modules, which the Russians called the "functional block" and the "target module". The functional block was equipped with small rocket engines, which were supposed to bring the device into its final orbit. It also included a power supply system using solar panels taken from Diamond. The target module would carry carbon dioxide tanks and two turbo generators to power the laser and a heavy rotating turret to guide the beam. The Polus spacecraft was made long and thin to fit on the side of the Energia, attached to its central fuel tank.

Designing an orbital laser gun was not an easy task for engineers. A handheld laser pointer is a relatively simple static device, but a large gas laser is like a rumbling locomotive. Powerful turbogenerators "pump" carbon dioxide until its atoms are excited and begin to emit light. Turbine generators have large moving parts and the gas that generates the laser beam is very hot and must be vented. Moving parts and exhaust gases create motion that interferes with the operation of a spacecraft, especially one that must have a very precise direction. Polyus engineers have developed a system to reduce the force of the spewing gas by passing it through deflectors. But the ship still needed a sophisticated control system to dampen the vibrations generated by the exhaust gases, the turbo generator, and the moving laser tower. (It was assumed that when firing at the target, the entire ship would be sent, and the tower would serve only for fine adjustment.)

The system became so complex that by 1985 the designers realized that it would take more than one run to test its components. The basic design of the Skif-D1 ship was tested in 1987, and the laser system flew only as part of the Skif-D2 in 1988. Around the same time, the development of another related spacecraft, designated the Skif-Stilet, began. It was supposed to be equipped with a weaker infrared laser, based on the experience of the current ground-based system. The Scythian-Stiletto could only blind the enemy satellites by targeting their optical systems, and the Pole would have enough power to destroy a spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

Work on these projects proceeded at a frantic pace throughout 1985, when a new opportunity suddenly arose. Work on the construction of the Buran shuttle began to fall behind schedule, and it would not have been ready in time for the planned first launch of the Energia rocket in 1986. The rocket designers considered launching a ballast load instead of a shuttle, and the Skif designers saw this as an opportunity: why not test some components of our ship ahead of schedule?

They quickly drew up plans for a spacecraft that could test the functional block control system and additional components such as gas ducts and a targeting system consisting of a radar and a low-power, precise targeting laser that was used in conjunction with a large chemical laser. The ship was named "Skif-DM" - a demonstration model. The launch was scheduled for the fall of 1986 so that it would not interfere with the launch of the Skif-D1, scheduled for the summer of 1987.

Such tight deadlines had their price. At one time, more than 70 enterprises of the Soviet aerospace industry were working on the creation of the Pole-Skif. Describing the history of the project, Lantratov quotes from an article by Yuri Kornilov, the leading designer of the M.V. M.V. Khrunichev, who worked on Skif-DM: “As a rule, no excuses were accepted, they didn’t even pay attention to the fact that it was practically the same group that, at that moment, was doing a tremendous job creating Buran. Everything faded into the background, just to meet the deadlines lowered from above.

The designers realized that as soon as they launch a giant ship into space, and it will spew great amount carbon dioxide, US intelligence analysts will notice the gas and quickly realize that it is for a laser. To test the Skif-DM exhaust system, the Russians switched to a mixture of xenon and krypton. These gases will interact with the ionospheric plasma around the Earth, and then spacecraft will look like part of a civil geophysical experiment. In addition, the Skif-DM will be equipped with small targets in the form of inflatable balloons imitating enemy satellites, which will be thrown out during the flight and tracked using radar and a homing laser.

The launch of the demonstration satellite was pushed back to 1978, in part because the launch pad had to be upgraded to accommodate a rocket as heavy as the Energiya. The technical difficulties were relatively minor, but this delay had an important impact on the political fate of the project.

In 1986, Gorbachev, who by that time had been the General Secretary of the CPSU for only a year, had already begun to defend radical economic and administrative reforms which became known as "Perestroika". He and his government allies focused on curbing what they saw as ruinous military spending, and became increasingly opposed to the Soviet version of Star Wars. Gorbachev acknowledged that the American plan was threatening, Westwick said, but warned that the country was getting too hung up on it, and had already begun asking his advisers, "Maybe we shouldn't be so wary of SDI?"

In January 1987, with only a few weeks left before the launch of the Skif-DM, Gorbachev's associates in the Politburo pushed through a resolution limiting what could be done during the demonstration flight. The device was allowed to be launched into orbit, but it was impossible to test the gas exhaust system or release any targets. Moreover, while the ship was still on the launch pad, an order came demanding to remove several targets, to which the engineers replied that it was better not to touch the fueled rocket, and the order was canceled. The number of permitted experiments remained limited.

That spring, as the launch booster lay inside a huge assembly shop at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Skif-DM was docked to the Energia rocket. Then the technicians wrote two names on the ship. One is Polyus and the other is Mir-2, for a proposed civilian space station that Energia's management hoped to build. According to Polyus historian Lantratov, this was not an attempt to deceive foreign spies about the purpose of the mission, but rather an advertisement for a new Energy project.

The rocket was rolled out to the launch pad and placed in a vertical starting position. Then, on the night of May 15, 1987, Energia's thrusters ignited and a giant rocket took off into the sky. While almost all launches from Baikonur went into orbit at an angle of 52 degrees to the equator, Polyus-Skif went to the north: at an angle of 65 degrees. In the worst case, thanks to this direction, the stages of the rocket and its fragments, or the entire apparatus as a whole, would not fall on the territory of a foreign state.

The launch went flawlessly, the rocket picking up speed as it rose and arced toward the North Pacific. But the "kluge" nature of the experimental apparatus Skif-DM, as well as all the compromises and simplifications, predetermined its fate. Initially, the functional block of the satellite was designed for the Proton launch vehicle and would not have withstood the vibration of more powerful Energia engines. As a solution, the spacecraft, along with the control unit, was placed at the top instead of at the bottom next to the engines. In fact, he flew upside down. Decoupled from its launch booster, it would roll over and take direction away from Earth, with the control unit's thrusters facing down toward Earth, ready to ignite and push the vehicle into orbit.

At a prearranged signal, the Skif-DM separated, the spent Energy fell off, and the protective casing covering the front of the ship also separated. After that, the entire ship, the height of a 12-story building, began a gentle pitch maneuver. Its tail, and in fact - the bow of the ship, turned 90 degrees, 180 ... and continued to rotate. The massive spacecraft tumbled until it had made two complete revolutions, and only then did it stop, staring nose down at the Earth. In a hurry, trying to launch such a complex apparatus, the designers made a small programming error. The engines fired up and the Skif-DM headed back into the atmosphere it had just escaped from, rapidly overheating and disintegrating into burning pieces over the Pacific Ocean.

In the West, the debut of the super-rocket Energia was called partially successful, because, despite the failure of the satellite, the launch vehicle itself worked perfectly. The US government almost certainly monitored the missile's flight with reconnaissance receivers, but the CIA and other agency's findings on the weaponry remain classified.

The failure of Polyus-Skif, coupled with the colossal costs associated with it, gave the opponents of the program the weapon they needed to kill it. Skif's further flights were cancelled. The upcoming hardware was either scrapped or hauled to the corners of gigantic warehouses. And the laser installation never reached the launch stage, so that in general it would be possible to find out if it would have worked.

In his history of the project, Lantratov quotes Yuri Kornilov, the lead designer of Skif-DM: “Of course, no one received any prizes and awards for hectic, two-year, tight deadlines, work. Hundreds of working groups that created the Pole received neither awards nor words of gratitude.” Moreover, after the Skif-DM fiasco, some received reprimands or demotions.

The details of this story are not known to us until now. “Even today, much of what is related to this program is classified,” says Siddiqi. “Russians don't like to talk about it. And our understanding of the Soviet response to SDI is still cloudy. It is clear that among the military-industrial elite of the USSR there were heated internal disputes over the effectiveness of space weapons. And given the fact that the Soviets were so close to launching a military orbital station, one can assume that it was the hardliners who were gaining the upper hand. It's scary to think what could have happened if Polyus had managed to get into orbit."

However, it seems that the Russian space engineers, famous hoarders, had the last laugh. The first component of the upcoming International Space Station was a Russian module called Zarya, also known as the functional cargo block. The device was built in the mid-90s under a contract with NASA by enterprising engineers at the plant. Khrunichev, who met both the deadlines and the budget. Zarya's main purpose was to supply the station with electricity and perform its orbital correction - the same role that the Skif functional unit was supposed to perform. Some Soviet researchers believe that the Zarya began its life as a backup vehicle, originally created for the Pole program. All they had to do was dust off old but perfectly usable equipment, or even just blueprints, and that could definitely help keep the space station module on schedule during the economic chaos that reigned in post-Cold War Russia. This is just a guess, but if it's true, then the old Soviet Union still managed to get a small part of its Star Wars system into orbit. But, ironically, it was the American taxpayers who paid the price.

In the West, the debut of the Energia rocket was considered partially successful. And it was true. Although the satellite did not go into orbit, the rocket worked perfectly. For Energia, this was a great success, but it did not save the Polus-Skif and Cascade projects. The failure of Skif-DM, coupled with the incredible cost of a single test, gave the opponents of the program the necessary arguments to finish it off. Further flights of the Skif were canceled, and the equipment was disposed of. The laser was never tested, and it is now impossible to say whether it would have worked against American satellites.

Details about the Pole” are still unknown. The data is most likely buried deep in the inaccessible Russian archives, as are documents about the reaction of Soviet leaders to Reagan's SDI speech. Just as deeply buried are government documents on the American response to the launch of the Pole-Skif. This project is rarely talked about now, but it is clear that the world narrowly escaped a real test of the effectiveness of space weapons. It is hard to imagine what would have happened if Polyus-Skif had managed to enter orbit, how the Americans would have reacted to this, and what kind of space arms race could have followed.

The most interesting, and there is also hope that The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

"Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away..." - the world-famous movie "Star Wars" by George Lucas began with this caption. Over time, this phrase became so commonplace that no one was surprised when they began to designate quite real programs for creating space-based armed forces.

The book that you are holding in your hands is dedicated to the history of "star wars", but not fictitious, raging in a distant galaxy, but real ones that began here on Earth, in the silence of design offices and computer centers. You will read about the rocket planes of the Luftwaffe, the Red Army and the US Air Force, about space bombers and orbital interceptors, about the missile defense program and how to overcome it.

And at the present time, the history of military astronautics has not yet come to an end. We are experiencing another episode of "Star Wars", and it is not yet clear who will emerge victorious from the eternal battle between good and evil.

SOI Program

Sections of this page:

SOI Program

The successful launch of the first Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 in August 1957 initiated a number of military programs in both powers.

The United States, immediately after receiving intelligence data about the new Russian missile, began the creation of an aerospace defense system for the North American continent and the development of the first Nike-Zeus missile defense system equipped with anti-missiles with nuclear warheads.

The use of an anti-missile with a thermonuclear charge significantly reduced the requirement for pointing accuracy. It was assumed that the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion of an anti-missile would make it possible to neutralize the warhead of a ballistic missile, even if it was 2-3 km away from the epicenter.

In 1963, the development of the next generation anti-missile defense system, Nike-X (Nike-X), began. It was necessary to create such an anti-missile system that was capable of providing protection against Soviet missiles for an entire area, and not a single object. To destroy enemy warheads at distant approaches, the Spartan missile was developed with a range of 650 km, equipped with a nuclear warhead with a capacity of 1 megaton. Its explosion was supposed to create in space a zone of guaranteed destruction of several warheads and possible decoys. Tests of this anti-missile began in 1968 and lasted three years.

In the event that some of the warheads of enemy missiles overcome the space protected by Spartan missiles, the missile defense system included complexes with shorter-range Sprint anti-missiles. The Sprint anti-missile was supposed to be used as the main means of protecting a limited number of objects. She was supposed to hit targets at altitudes up to 50 km.

The authors of the American missile defense projects of the sixties considered only powerful nuclear charges to be a real means of destroying enemy warheads. But the abundance of anti-missiles equipped with them did not guarantee the protection of all protected areas, and if they were used, they threatened to contaminate the entire United States with radioactive contamination.

In 1967, work began on the zonal limited missile defense system "Guardian" ("Sentinel"). Her kit included all the same "Spartan", "Sprint" and two radars: "PAR" and "MSR". By this time, the concept of anti-missile defense began to gain momentum in the United States not of cities and industrial zones, but of the areas where strategic nuclear forces and the National Control Center for them were based. The "Sentinel" system was urgently renamed "Protection" ("Safeguard") and modified in accordance with the specifics of solving new problems.

The first complex of the new missile defense system (out of the planned twelve) was deployed at the Grand Forks missile base.

However, some time later, by decision of the American Congress, these works were also terminated as insufficiently effective, and the built missile defense system was mothballed. and the United States sat down at the negotiating table to limit missile defense systems, which led to the conclusion of the ABM Treaty in 1972 and the signing of its protocol in 1974.

It would seem that the problem is over. But it was not there…

On March 23, 1983, US President Ronald Reagan, addressing his compatriots, said:

“I know that all of you want peace, I want it too.<…>I appeal to the scientific community of our country, to those who gave us nuclear weapons, to use their great talents for the benefit of mankind and world peace and to put at our disposal the means that would make nuclear weapons useless and obsolete. Today, in accordance with our obligations under the ABM Treaty and recognizing the need for closer consultations with our allies, I am taking an important first step. I am ordering a comprehensive and vigorous effort to establish the content of a long-term research and development program that will begin our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat from nuclear-capable strategic missiles. This may open the way to arms limitation measures that will lead to the total elimination of these weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only goal - and it is shared by all the people - is to find ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war.

Not everyone understood then that the President was overturning the ideas that had developed over almost two decades about ways to prevent nuclear war and ensure stable peace, the symbol and basis of which was the ABM Treaty.

What happened? What has changed Washington's attitude towards missile defense so dramatically?

Let's go back to the sixties. Here is how a well-known columnist for the American magazine "Time" described the way of thinking that the American military-political leadership adhered to in those years in relation to the ABM Treaty:

“At the time, some observers found the agreement a bit strange. Indeed, the two superpowers made a solemn commitment not to defend themselves. In reality, however, they reduced the possibility of attacking each other. The ABM Treaty was an important achievement.<… >If one of the parties is able to defend itself against the threat of a nuclear strike, it receives an incentive to spread its geopolitical weight to other areas, and the other side is forced to create new, better models of offensive weapons and at the same time improve its defense. Therefore, the proliferation of defensive weapons is as much a curse on arms control as the proliferation of offensive weapons.<…>ABM is “destabilizing” for a number of reasons: it stimulates competition in defensive arms, with each side striving to equal and perhaps even outperform the other side in ABM; it stimulates competition in the field of offensive weapons, with each side seeking to be able to "overcome" the other side's missile defense system; ABM can finally lead to illusory or even real overall strategic superiority.”

This observer was not a military specialist, otherwise he would not have missed another consideration that guided the parties when deciding to limit missile defense systems.

No matter how strong the missile defense system is, it cannot become absolutely impenetrable. In reality, missile defense is calculated on a certain number of warheads and decoys launched by the other side. Therefore, missile defense is more effective against a retaliatory strike by the other side, when a significant, and perhaps even overwhelming, part of the enemy's strategic nuclear forces has already been destroyed as a result of the first disarming strike. Thus, in the presence of large missile defense systems, each of the opposing sides, in the event of a heated confrontation, has an additional incentive to launch a nuclear attack first.

Finally, a new round of the arms race is a new burdensome expenditure of resources, of which humanity is becoming less and less.

It is unlikely that the people who prepared Ronald Reagan's speech on March 23, 1983 did not analyze all the negative consequences of the announced program. What prompted them to such an unreasonable decision?

It is said that the initiator of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program is one of the creators of the American thermonuclear bomb, Edward Teller, who has known Reagan since the mid-1960s and has always opposed the ABM Treaty and any agreements limiting the ability of the United States to build up and improve its military-strategic potential.

At the meeting with Reagan, Teller spoke not only on his own behalf. He relied on the powerful support of the US military-industrial complex. Fears that the SDI program might initiate a similar Soviet program were dismissed: it would be difficult for the USSR to accept the new American challenge, especially in the face of already emerging economic difficulties. If the Soviet Union did decide to do so, then, as Teller reasoned, it would most likely be limited, and the United States could gain the much-desired military superiority. Of course, SDI is unlikely to ensure complete impunity for the United States in the event of a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike, but it will give Washington additional confidence in conducting military-political actions abroad.

Politicians also saw another aspect in this - the creation of new colossal burdens for the economy of the USSR, which would further complicate the growing social problems and reduce the attractiveness of the ideas of socialism for developing countries. The game seemed tempting.

The President's speech was timed to coincide with the congressional debate on the military budget for the next fiscal year. As Speaker of the House O'Neill noted, it was not about national security at all, but about the military budget. Senator Kennedy called the speech "the reckless plans of Star Wars."

Since then, no one has called Reagan's speech anything other than a "star wars plan". They talk about a curious incident that occurred at one of the press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington. The anchorman, who introduced Lt. Gen. Abrahamson (Director of the SDI Implementation Organization) to reporters, joked, "Whoever asks the general and avoids using the words 'Star Wars' wins a prize." There were no contenders for the prize - everyone preferred to say "Star Wars Program" instead of "SOI".

Nevertheless, in early June 1983, Reagan established three expert commissions to evaluate the technical feasibility of his idea. Of the materials prepared, the report of the Fletcher Commission is the most famous. She came to the conclusion that, despite the major unsolved technical problems, the achievements of the last twenty years in the field of technology in relation to the problem of creating missile defense look promising. The commission proposed a scheme for a layered defense system based on the latest military technologies. Each echelon of this system is designed to intercept missile warheads at various stages of their flight. The Commission recommended that a research and development program be initiated with a view to culminating in the early 1990s with a demonstration of core missile defense technologies. Then, based on the results obtained, decide whether to continue or close work on the creation of a large-scale defense system against ballistic missiles.

The next step towards the implementation of SDI was Presidential Directive No. 119, which appeared at the end of 1983. It marked the beginning of research and development that would answer the question of whether new space-based weapons systems or any other defensive means capable of repelling nuclear attack on the USA.

It quickly became clear that the allocations for SDI provided by the budget could not ensure the successful solution of the grandiose tasks set for the program. It is no coincidence that many experts estimated the real costs of the program during the entire period of its implementation at hundreds of billions of dollars. According to Senator Presler, SDI is a program that requires costs ranging from 500 billion to 1 trillion dollars (!) to complete. The American economist Perlo called an even more significant amount - 3 trillion dollars (!!!).

However, already in April 1984, the Organization for the Implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (OSDI) began its activities. It was the central apparatus of a large research project, in which, in addition to the organization of the Ministry of Defense, organizations of civilian ministries and departments, as well as educational institutions, participated. Approximately 100 people were employed in the central office of the OOSOI. As a program management body, the OOSOI was responsible for developing the goals of research programs and projects, supervised the preparation and execution of the budget, selected the executors of specific work, and maintained daily contacts with the US President's office, Congress, and other executive and legislative authorities.

At the first stage of work on the program, the main efforts of the OOSOI were focused on coordinating the activities of numerous participants in research projects on issues divided into the following five most important groups: the creation of means of observation, capture and tracking of targets; creation of technical means using the effect of directed energy for their subsequent inclusion in interception systems; creation of technical means using the effect of kinetic energy for their further inclusion in interception systems; analysis of theoretical concepts on the basis of which specific weapon systems and means of controlling them will be created; ensuring the operation of the system and increasing its efficiency (increasing the lethality, security of the system components, power supply and logistics of the entire system).

What did the SDI program look like in the first approximation?

The efficiency criteria after two or three years of work under the SDI program were officially formulated as follows.

First, a defense against ballistic missiles must be capable of destroying a sufficient portion of the aggressor's offensive forces to deprive him of confidence in achieving his goals.

Secondly, defensive systems must perform their task to a sufficient extent even under the conditions of a series of serious blows against them, that is, they must have sufficient survivability.

Third, defensive systems should undermine the potential enemy's belief in the possibility of overcoming them by building up additional offensive weapons.

The strategy of the SDI program was to invest in a technology base that could support the decision to enter the full-scale development phase of the first stage of the SDI and prepare the basis for entering the conceptual development phase of the subsequent stage of the system. This staging, formulated only a few years after the promulgation of the program, was intended to create a basis for building up primary defensive capabilities with the introduction of promising technologies in the future, such as directed energy weapons, although initially the authors of the project considered it possible from the very beginning to implement the most exotic projects.

Nevertheless, in the second half of the 1980s, such elements as the space system for detecting and tracking ballistic missiles in the active part of their flight trajectory were considered as elements of the first stage system; space system for detecting and tracking warheads, warheads and decoys; ground detection and tracking system; space-based interceptors that ensure the destruction of missiles, warheads and their warheads; anti-missiles for atmospheric interception of ballistic targets ("ERIS"); combat control and communications system.

The following were considered as the main elements of the system at subsequent stages: space-based beam weapons based on the use of neutral particles; interceptor missiles for intercepting targets in the upper atmosphere ("HEDI"); an onboard optical system that provides detection and tracking of targets in the middle and final sections of their flight trajectories; ground-based radar (“GBR”), considered as an additional means for detecting and tracking targets in the final section of their flight path; a space-based laser installation designed to disable ballistic missiles and anti-satellite systems; ground-based cannon with projectile acceleration to hypersonic speeds ("HVG"); ground-based laser installation for the destruction of ballistic missiles.

Those who planned the SDI structure thought of the system as a multi-tiered system capable of intercepting missiles during the three stages of ballistic missile flight: during the acceleration stage (the active part of the flight path), the middle part of the flight path, which mainly accounts for flight in space after how the warheads and decoys separated from the missiles, and at the final stage, when the warheads rush towards their targets on a downward trajectory. The most important of these stages was considered the acceleration stage, during which the warheads had not yet separated from the missile and they could be disabled with a single shot. The head of the SDI department, General Abrahamson, said that this is the main point of "star wars".

Due to the fact that the US Congress, based on real assessments of the state of work, systematically curtailed (reductions to 40-50% annually) the administration's requests for project implementation, the authors of the program transferred its individual elements from the first stage to subsequent ones, work on some elements was reduced, and some disappeared altogether.

Nevertheless, non-nuclear ground-based and space-based anti-missiles were the most developed among other projects of the SDI program, which allows us to consider them as candidates for the first stage of the current anti-missile defense of the country's territory. These projects include the ERIS anti-missile for hitting targets in the atmospheric area, the HEDI anti-missile for short-range interception, as well as a ground-based radar, which should provide the task of monitoring and tracking in the final section of the trajectory.

The least advanced were projects on directed energy weapons, which combine research on four basic concepts considered promising for multi-layer defense, including ground-based and space-based lasers, space-based booster (beam) weapons, and directed-energy nuclear weapons.

Projects related to the complex solution of the problem can be classified as works that are practically at the initial stage.

For a number of projects, only problems have been identified that need to be addressed. This includes projects for the creation of space-based nuclear power plants with a capacity of 100 kW with power extension up to several megawatts.

The SDI program also needed an inexpensive, versatile aircraft capable of launching a payload of 4,500 kg and a crew of two into polar orbit. The DOE required firms to review three concepts: vertical launch and landing, vertical launch and horizontal landing, and horizontal launch and landing.

As announced on August 16, 1991, the winner of the competition was the project of the device "Delta Clipper" ("Delta Clipper") with a vertical launch and landing, proposed by McDonnell-Douglas.

All this work could continue indefinitely, and the longer the SDI project would be implemented, the more difficult it would be to stop it, not to mention the steadily increasing allocations for these purposes almost exponentially.

On May 13, 1993, US Secretary of Defense Espin officially announced the termination of work on the SDI project. It was one of the most serious decisions made by a Democratic administration since it came to power. Among the most important arguments in favor of this step, the consequences of which were widely discussed by experts and the public around the world, President Bill Clinton and his entourage unanimously named the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, the irretrievable loss of the United States of its only worthy rival in the confrontation between the superpowers.

Apparently, this is what makes some modern authors argue that the SDI program was originally conceived as a bluff aimed at intimidating the enemy leadership. They say that Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage took the bluff at face value, got scared, and lost the cold war because of fear, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is not true. Not everyone in the Soviet Union, including the top leadership of the country, took on faith the information disseminated by Washington regarding SDI. As a result of research conducted by a group of Soviet scientists led by Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences Velikhov, Academician Sagdeev and Doctor of Historical Sciences Kokoshin, it was concluded that the system advertised by Washington "is clearly not capable, as its supporters claim, of making nuclear weapons" powerless and obsolete”, to provide reliable cover for the territory of the United States, and even more so for its allies in Western Europe or in other parts of the world. Moreover, the Soviet Union had long been developing its own missile defense system, elements of which could be used in the Anti-SDI program.

March 23, 1983 President R. Reagan delivered a televised address to the country from his office in the White House, in which he outlined a breathtakingly fantastic plan for the space defense of the US territory from nuclear attacks from the enemy - at that time the Soviet Union. The next day, the New York Post published Reagan's words in an article headlined: "Star Wars Will Destroy Red Missiles," and since then the announced Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program has become known to the world also as "Star Wars"- by the name of the popular film, the 3rd film of which was released in May 1983.

The essence of Reagan's speech boiled down to the need to abandon mutual assured destruction and move on to a new format for ensuring national and world security - deploying defense systems in space.

Reagan's speech came as a surprise to everyone- for the Americans, for the American allies, for Moscow, and in general for the whole world. What's more, it came as a surprise even to Reagan's own cabinet, including Secretary of State Shultz and Defense Department officials. Previously, this whole topic of space defense was not worked out in the US government and its departments. It was not the military and diplomats who imposed this topic on Reagan, but on the contrary, he imposed it on them.

According to his closest associates, Reagan for many years, even before becoming president, saw a threat to US national security in the very presence of nuclear weapons and looked for options to reduce dependence on them and even completely eliminate them. He was greatly impressed, in particular, by a visit in 1979 as part of the election campaign to the Center for the Joint Aerospace Defense Command. North America NORAD in Colorado Springs. During an introductory tour, Reagan asked what would happen to Cheyenne Mountain, where the Center was located, if it was hit by a heavy Soviet missile, to which the general accompanying him replied: "It will blow it to hell." Reagan was then struck by the inconsistency in the scale and level of sophistication of military technology with the level of protection of the country from nuclear annihilation - it was not protected, everything was based on the alleged agreement of both sides - the United States and the USSR - that they both refrain from a nuclear strike, fearing retaliatory destruction. But it was only a concept, nothing more - not formally approved by anyone and never discussed at any negotiations.

Already President, Reagan from January 1982 began to stimulate the discussion of previously disparate military-technical ideas and options with his questions and his interest. He began to discuss with military and scientific and technical experts the ideas of hitting ballistic missiles after they were launched from launch positions in almost any part of their flight path. Reagan asked the question: if a rocket launch can be detected from a satellite, then is it really impossible to destroy it in a short time after this launch? The answer was to place anti-missile systems in space and supplement them with ground and air systems. Many of these systems were based on the use of fundamentally new technical solutions, such as electromagnetic and laser guns. It was also planned to place many new satellites, optical reflectors, and interceptors in space.

Autumn 1982 the leaders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (analogous to the Soviet General Staff) submitted to the president an overview report on space defense, which brought together the previously expressed ideas and proposals. But the Committee could not even imagine that the president would soon publicly declare space defense a military-political priority of his administration.

The emergence of such weapons systems broke the logic of the concept of mutually assured destruction, on which the post-war world was based. Reagan himself viewed SDI as a defensive program in nature and, moreover, was ready later to involve the Soviet Union in it, thereby forcing it to eliminate its nuclear potential.

However, theoretically, it was possible to strike at the enemy and then repel his retaliatory strike, which violated the security system that had developed in the world. By the way, this is precisely why, having started negotiations on the limitation of strategic arms in 1971, the USA and the USSR (SALT) simultaneously limited the anti-missile defense systems - ABM - that could repel or mitigate a retaliatory nuclear strike.

To work on the program within the framework of the US Department of Defense, the Organization of the Strategic Defense Initiative was created.

Despite all the authority of Reagan, his the SDI program met with strong resistance from the very beginning in Washington itself, which, in the end, buried this program. Progressive Democrats (in particular, Senators T. Kennedy and J. Kerry, who became Secretary of State under Obama) pointed to the danger of undermining the concept of mutually assured destruction, which, according to them, only increased the threat of nuclear conflict. The US Department of State and Department of Defense believed that this program was technically unrealizable, and besides, it violated the ABM Treaty with the USSR and the Treaty on open space. US allies feared that, if implemented, SDI would "disengage" joint system defense of the United States and Western Europe.

The Soviet Union immediately accused Washington in an attempt to unilaterally create a strategic advantage for themselves and achieve military superiority over the USSR. Initially, Moscow's reaction was mainly propagandistic in nature - in general, everything that came from Washington was condemned. Moscow considered that the SDI program was designed to intimidate the Soviet Union and put pressure on it in the disarmament negotiations, which by that time had stalled. It is also important that Reagan made the announcement of the start of the SDI program just 2 weeks after he called the USSR in a conversation with American evangelical preachers "evil empire".

However, after a while, as the Americans began to work methodically on SDI, Soviet assessments of the prospects for this program became more and more alarmist - the USSR understood that America had the scientific, technical, industrial and financial potential in order to carry out everything what was stated. In the same way, the USSR understood that they would not be able to oppose the United States with anything similar, although they themselves carried out certain developments on the placement of weapons in space. In Moscow, SDI has generally begun to be presented in an even more fantastic form than its authors themselves - they say that the Americans plan to deploy combat stations in space similar to those depicted in Star Wars to strike at the USSR.

The total cost of deploying SDI was estimated at about $150 billion ($400 billion in 2017 prices).

With the departure of Reagan from the presidency in early 1989, the SDI program gradually came to naught., and in May 1993 B. Clinton actually closed it, although some promising scientific and technical work continued. The United States spent about $40 billion on it from 1984 to 1993 ($100 billion in 2017).

It is rather difficult to present the SDI program as an integral system in military-technical terms.

• rather, it is a sketch of possible solutions. Were various options SDI, depending on the degree of development of the various components of its systems.

The influence of this program on Soviet-American relations should neither be underestimated nor, at the same time, overestimated. SDI convinced the Soviet military-political leadership of the futility of the arms race - the USSR (even before Gorbachev) returned to the table of disarmament negotiations interrupted by Andropov, began to discuss the option of a real reduction, and not limitation, as before, of nuclear weapons. Upon coming to power in March 1985, Gorbachev made no secret of his disbelief in the realism of SDI and urged the Soviet military not to intimidate themselves with this program. He considered it necessary to normalize Soviet-American relations and reduce armaments even without SDI. However, in subsequent negotiations, he linked the cuts to the US withdrawal from SDI.