|
Terra-3
Terra-3 (Russian language, Russian: терра–3) was a Soviet laser testing centre, located on the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile (ABM) testing range in the Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan. It was originally built to test missile defense concepts, but these attempts were dropped after the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed. The site later hosted two modest devices used primarily for experiments in space tracking. Several other laser test sites were also active during this period. During the 1980s, officials within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) suggested it was the site of a prototypical anti-satellite weapon system."Soviets could have laser able to blind US satellites" ''Gadsden Times'', 10 April 1984 The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The concept was announced on March 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan,Federation of American ScientistsMissile Defense Milestones Accessed March 10, 2007. a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a " suicide pact". Reagan called upon American scientists and engineers to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the US Department of Defense to oversee development. A wide array of advanced weapon concepts, including lasers, Duarte, F. J. (Ed.), ''Proceedings of the International Conference on Lasers '87'' (STS, McLean, Va, 1988). particle be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dazzler (weapon)
A dazzler is a non-lethal weapon which uses intense directed radiation to temporarily disorient its target with flash blindness. They can effectively deter further advances, regardless of language or cultural barriers, but can also be used for hailing and warning. Targets can include electronic sensors as well as human vision. Initially developed for military use, non-military products are becoming available for use in law enforcement and security. Design Dazzlers emit infrared light against various electronic sensors and visible light against humans. They are intended to not cause long-term damage to eyes. The emitters are usually lasers, making what is termed a ''laser dazzler''. Most of the contemporary systems can be carried by a person, and operate in either the red (a laser diode) or green (a diode-pumped solid-state laser, DPSS) areas of the electromagnetic spectrum. The green laser is chosen for its unique ability to react with the human eye. Dazzlers maintain eye sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-satellite Weapon
Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) are space weapons designed to incapacitate or destroy satellites for strategic or tactical purposes. Several nations possess operational ASAT systems. Although no ASAT system has been utilised in warfare, a few countries (China, India, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States) have successfully shot down their own satellites to demonstrate their ASAT capabilities in a show of force. ASATs have also been used to remove decommissioned satellites. ASAT roles include: defensive measures against an adversary's space-based and nuclear weapons, a force multiplier for a nuclear first strike, a countermeasure against an adversary's anti-ballistic missile defence (ABM), an asymmetric counter to a technologically superior adversary, and a counter-value weapon. Use of ASATs generates space debris, which can collide with other satellites and generate more space debris. A cascading multiplication of space debris could cause Earth to suffer from Ke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vympel NPO
Vympel NPO is a Russian research and production company based near Moscow, mostly known for their air-to-air missiles. Other projects include SAM and ABM defenses. It was started in the Soviet era as an OKB (experimental design bureau). History Vympel started out after World War II as OKB-134, with leading the team. The first product they designed was the K-7 missile. Their first missile built in serial production was the K-13 (R-13) in 1958. Toropov moved to Tushino Aviation Facility in 1961 and was replaced by . Somewhere between 1966 and 1968 the OKB got renamed to Vympel. In 1977 Matus Bisnovat of OKB-4 Molniya died, and all missile related work was passed to Vympel. G. Khokhlov led the team until 1981, when Genadiy A. Sokolovski succeeded him. In 1992 the GosMKB Vympel got started on the basis of the OKB and in 1994 Sokolovski became the director of development at the company. In May 2004 the Tactical Missiles Corporation was formed and Vympel became a part of it, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sary Shagan
Sary Shagan ( rus, Сары-Шаган; kz, Сарышаған) is an anti-ballistic missile testing range located in Kazakhstan. On 17 August 1956 the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union authorized plans for an experimental facility for missile defense located at Sary Shagan, on the west bank of Lake Balkhash. The first missile launched from the facility was a V-1000 on 16 October 1958, but the facilities for full-scale testing were not ready until 1961. Sary Shagan remains in use to this day, with the latest known launch on 2 December 2022. The town of Sary Shagan was a closed city until 2005. The administrative center, Priozersk remained a closed city. The length of the site is 480 km. The Sary Shagan range was the intended landing site for the sample return canister of the Russian Fobos-Grunt mission. History The first and only one in Eurasia test site for the development and testing of anti-missile weapons. In USSR, the official name of the test site was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omega (laser)
Omega (Russian: омега) (1965-) was a Soviet program for developing high-power laser weapons for air defense purposes, similar to the Terra-3 laser. The scientific director of the Omega program was A. M. Prokhorov. Practical work was carried out by Strela Design Bureau, (later - Almaz). History Boris Vasilyevich Bunkin (Raspletin's deputy) and his brother Fedor Vasilievich Bunkin (employee of Prokhorov) showed that low-flying targets could be destroyed with a neodymium-emitting glass laser with an active medium volume of approximately . General Designer of the KB-1 Academician Alexander Andreevich Raspletina and Prokhorov raised the idea before the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers. The proposal received support in the defense department of CPSU-CC and in the Military-Industrial Commission (MIC) of the USSR Council of Ministers. On February 23, 1967, a Decree was issued, and on June 26 the MIC signed on. These documents determined the direction of w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
STS-41-G
STS-41-G (formerly STS-17) was the 13th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the sixth flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. ''Challenger'' launched on October 5, 1984, and conducted the second shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center on October 13, 1984. It was the first shuttle mission to carry a crew of seven, including the first crew with two women (Sally K. Ride and Kathryn D. Sullivan), the first American Extravehicular activity (EVA) involving a woman (Sullivan), the first Australian-born person to journey into space as well as the first astronaut with a beard ( Paul D. Scully-Power) and the first Canadian astronaut (Marc Garneau). STS-41-G was the third shuttle mission to carry an IMAX camera on board to document the flight. Launch and in-orbit footage from the mission (including Sullivan and Leestma's EVA) appeared in the 1985 IMAX movie '' The Dream is Alive''. Crew Backup crew Spacewalk * ''Leestma and Sullivan'' – EVA 1 * EVA 1 Start: October 11 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bomber Gap
The bomber gap was the Cold War belief that the Soviet Union's Long Range Aviation department had gained an advantage in deploying jet-powered strategic bombers. Widely accepted for several years, the gap was used as a political talking point in the United States to justify a great increase in defense spending. One result was a massive buildup of the US Air Force bomber fleet, which peaked at over 2500 bombers to counter the perceived Soviet threat. Surveillance flights by the U-2 aircraft indicated that the bomber gap did not exist. Appearance On February 15, 1954, ''Aviation Week'' published an article describing new Soviet jet bombers capable of carrying a nuclear bomb from their bases to the US. The aircraft was the Myasishchev M-4 ''Bison''. Over the next year and a half, the rumors were debated publicly in the press and soon in Congress. Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Missile Gap
In the United States, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S. (a lack of military parity). The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals did not exist except in exaggerated estimates, made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR's weaponry, which showed a clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional. John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. It was later learned that Kennedy was apprised of the actual situation during the campaign, which has led scholars to question what Kennedy knew and when he knew it. Ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> Cold War")