The Soviet Union developed laser pistols in the 1980s for use by their cosmonauts to disable American spy satellites in orbit. In 1971 the Soviet government saw development of the American space shuttle as a vehicle intended to capture spy satellites out of orbit or even to carry a nuclear warhead into space in order to bomb Moscow with no warning. Soviet scientists immediately began developing countermeasures to this perceived weaponization of near space by the United States. Scientists at the Military Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces in Moscow designed and tested two different pistols. Initial requirements were for a laser that could burn through an American astronaut’s space suit, disable satellite optical instruments, and even function as a cauterizer for any wounds suffered by the cosmonauts. They created a prototype which met these requirements using a fiber optic cable as a laser resonator but was several meters long. What was needed was a pistol-sized weapon that could be used within the confines of one of the planned Salyut space battle stations. The first pistol design partially met this need by winding the fiber optic cable around a spool to reduce its overall length and developing one-time-use flash lamps the size and shape of 10mm bullets. The flash lamps were filled with zirconium foil and pure oxygen and ignited by a tungsten-rhenium filament, producing a 10-millisecond flash of light that generated up to five joules of energy on target. The breech of the pistol tilted up to expel the used flash lamp, and the next one was loaded from the 8-shot magazine in the grip via a bolt action lever. The laser could be safely fired through the windows of Soviet spacecraft when targeting American optical instruments. The second design was a semiautomatic pistol which held six flash lamps in a revolving cylinder, allowing for faster follow-up shots. There is no record of either pistol ever making it into orbit with Soviet cosmonauts and the project was shelved in 1989. It was not revealed to the world until 2011. #cosmonaut #space #laser #ussr #coldwar