1K11 Stilet Multipurpose Laser
Laser guidance systems had been developed in anti-missile laser systems. The SLK 1K11 Stiletto used radar to detect a target, probes it with a laser to detect any lens gleam and hits the spot with a powerful laser impulse. The system was fitted with a mobile power supply and installed on the chassis of a tracked mine-laying vehicle. The Stiletto was delivered to the Red Army in this form in 1982 but was still classed as experimental. While only two units were ever produced, it is formally still in service with the Russian Army.
In 1978, Luch Central Design Bureau was transformed into an NGO Astrofizika. Approximately at the same time an the "Ray" enterprise under the leadership of the general designer N.D.Ustinov, work began on the creation of mobile laser weapons. The first project was "Stiletto" . According to the authors, this machine was supposed to detect on the battlefield enemy armored cars, determine the location of their optical instruments and hit the latter with a precisely directed laser beam.
Russian engineers are working to breathe new life in Soviet-era plans to develop a laser tank, a staple of Hollywood blockbusters and video games, Russian media reported in 2015. During the closing years of the Cold War, the USSR tried to make that part of science fiction come true and it worked, but not too well. In its May 28, 2015 article the state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper hinted that Russian engineers were now working on similar laser weapons “without advertising it.”
By the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union was eagerly pursuing laser weapons on land, at sea, in the air and in outer space as a useful counter to US and Western European optics, missiles, spy satellites and other high-tech systems. In 1982, it built the first full-size prototype of an energy weapon for a ground vehicle and installed in on a tracked chassis. “Creators of the wonder-weapon began thinking about what to call their development so no one would guess anything and, most important, so there also was no mention of a laser,” the Moscow-based Rossiyskaya Gazeta noted.
“They called it a portable automated sighting device, designated the vehicle the 1K11 and dubbed it the Stilet — or Stiletto. It was meant to burn out enemy cameras, scopes and seekers,” it added. Far more impressive was the 1K17, which boasted a far more powerful multi-channel laser on a T-80 tank chassis.
The 1K11 laser and the corresponding equipment were installed on the chassis of the self-propelled gun SAU-100P. The laser could work in a weak mode for target designation of guided weapons and in a strong one - in this case, at a distance of about 5-7 km (sources give different data), optical cells of optical systems and transmitting tubes of cameras were sensitively damaged. With the appropriate combination of circumstances, an enemy tanker looking through an optical device could get a serious burn of the retina.
At the same time the range of the "Stiletto" exceeded the range of fire of most tanks. The laser was aimed at the target horizontally by turning the tower, vertically by the mirror system. In 1982 two experimental cars with slightly different composition of additional equipment were built. Serially "Stiletto" was not built.
In the early 2000s, one of the copies of the "Stiletto" was seen at the 61st tank repair plant in St. Petersburg. Perhaps, in the intervening time it was recycled. The remains of the second "Stiletto" (undercarriage without target equipment) were found by enthusiasts at the Kharkov 171st tank repair plant in 2010.
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