Moscow prefers nuclear-missile build-up as a simpler and cheaper option to a hi-tech ABM system worth billions of dollars.
The Soviet Union and Russia have already invested heavily in a national ABM system featuring numerous unique technical solutions, whose importance has not been fully appreciated.
It appears that Russia does not want to take advantage of its leading position in the ABM sphere because, in spite of numerous test launches, each costing the equivalent of an average annual municipal budget, the world's first missile-interceptor system, set up around Moscow, proved ineffective.
Soviet military leaders admitted that the U.S. program for deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) dashed hopes for building a more effective A-35 ABM system, which could not cope with numerous decoys and active electronic counter-measures. In short, this system became obsolete even before entering service in 1971.
Although the U.S.S.R. and Russia made considerable headway in the ABM sphere, Moscow obviously believes this program cannot be implemented effectively and is therefore placing its bets on strategic offensive arms.
In the 1970s, the creators of the A-35 system also opted for an offensive strategy. For instance, Defense Minister Marshal Dmitry Ustinov, who coordinated all of the Soviet Communist Party's defensive initiatives, instructed the Kometa Central Research and Production Association in Moscow to work on the Fon (Background) program.
At that time, California Governor and former actor Ronald Reagan was still on his way to the White House and knew nothing about Star Wars or the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). However, designers in Ulyanovsk, a city on the Volga River, were already working on advanced space-based ABM system that had the potential to destroy all U.S. ground, submarine-launched and air-launched missiles before they were fired.
In the late 1970s, Moscow launched the Fon-1 program, envisioning different types of ray guns, electromagnetic cannons, missile interceptors and multiple-launch rocket systems. However, Soviet designers eventually decided that it would take the missiles some 20 to 25 minutes to reach their targets, and that this was not enough to simultaneously destroy all missiles and their carriers.
In 1983, the Fon-2 program, meant as a counterweight to SDI, got underway and produced different laser systems and weaponry based on powerful fluctuating electromagnetic fields for destroying enemy radio-electronics. Likewise, under the project Terra, Moscow was to have developed and assembled a powerful ground laser capable of destroying enemy planes and spacecraft.
An experimental laser system with a high-precision UHF radar was deployed in Kazakhstan and tested in the mid-1980s. However, it turned out that was not powerful enough to destroy ICBM warheads. Nonetheless, the situation was bound to change sooner or later.
In the late 1970s, it became obvious that the U.S. Space Shuttle program would soon succeed. Soviet generals believed that the Space Shuttle could change its flight path during re-entry and launch a nuclear warhead against Moscow.
In late 1983, Ustinov suggested using the Terra system for tracking Space Shuttles. On October 10, 1983, a laser beam was "beamed" at the Challenger spacecraft while it was flying over the Kazakh testing site at an altitude of 363 km.
The Challenger crew later said telecommunications and electronic equipment had malfunctioned, and the astronauts themselves did not feel very well. Therefore one can say that a "reconnaissance in force" for a future global war in orbit was conducted about 25 years ago.
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