Cold War Weapons | Lasers: Episode 1 | RT Documentary

In the late 1950s, the Americans deployed a massive number of ICBMs and the USSR had no systems that could intercept them. For this reason, Soviet scientists proposed to develop a laser weapon to take down intercontinental warheads with the help of laser radiation.

That’s how a super-secret arms race began. After the Terra-3 testing site was launched it became one of the USSR’s most secret military projects. Scientists managed to build an experimental laser installation, a beam guidance and retention system, as well as a powerful laser locator that could accurately determine the coordinates of a target, obtain data on its shape, and plot its flight path. In 1984, the American spy shuttle Challenger was to investigate the Terra-3 site; however, the crew did not expect that the laser located there could disrupt the spacecraft’s electronic systems some 400 km away. How was that possible?