Russia has revealed new details of the new special aviation complex with an aircraft-mounted laser to operate as an anti-satellite weapon, the InterFax news agency reported.
Russia is currently developing a new combat aircraft will be capable of destroying satellites with a high accuracy laser. Russia actively used the developments gained in the A-60 laser weapon programme and has completed work on an appropriate anti-satellite complex, noted Interfax.
“The development of this complex took place, all the work done will allow making a step forward in the creation of such aircraft,” the source said.
This special aviation complex with an aircraft-mounted laser will likely be used to dazzle adversary intelligence gathering, navigation, and military communications satellites or burning through sensitive optics and sensors using intensive energy laser bursts.
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In 2016, the deputy CEP of Russia’s Concern of Radio-Electric Technologies (KRET, an affiliate of Rostec), Vladimir Mikheyev said that Russia’s newly-developed combat aircraft will be capable of destroying enemy targets with a high accuracy laser.
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“It will boast super-accurate navigation. The crew is to be able to precisely determine the plane’s position to direct the narrow laser beams at the selected targets,” Mikheyev said.
Similar developments were carried out in the USSR, where an experimental flying laboratory A-60, carrying laser weapons, was developed on the basis of the Il-76MD aircraft. The works were frozen in 2011 and resumed in 2012.
