Laser weapons are very promising R&D area - Putin
MOSCOW. Jan 24 (Interfax) - Laser weapons are a very promising R&D area, Russian President Vladimir Putin told members of university sports organizations on Thursday.
"Who would have thought at the time when the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin book was written that [those weapons] would become real? Yet, they are," he said.
Gen. of the Army Nikolai Makarov said in his being the General Staff Chief that Russia was working on a combat laser.
"It would be premature" to speak about characteristics of Russian laser weapons, he said.
In turn, a source in the Russian defense sector told Interfax-AVN earlier that Russia was developing a laser system to be mounted on an Ilyushin Il-76 plane to counteract enemy reconnaissance in various environments.
"The laser can incapacitate enemy reconnaissance systems based in space, air and on land," he said.
The former Soviet Union started the laser project in 1965. Specialists concluded in the 1980s that lasers can significantly cut the efficiency of optical electronic reconnaissance systems of the enemy. It was decided to mount the laser on a plane for higher efficiency of energy transfer.
An Il-76 was transformed into a laboratory and made its first flight in August 1981. Test flights started in 1983 after the laser's bench tests. The first field test was conducted in April 1984 when a laser ray hit an air target.
The tests were completed in the early 1990s but the "flying laser" project was frozen by the shrunk military R&D budget.
Russia is not the only country developing laser weapons. The United States tested the first airborne laser on February 11, 2010.