[FPSPACE] Skif, Polyius

[Keith Gottschalk]

congrats JimO,

   on finally trawling this scoop from the internet! I know that  Polyius/Skif has long been one of your pet interests. The Skif itself seems to have two manoeuvering rocket aft pods, one on each  side.  But now that we know what it looks like, the $64 000  question remains: 

    What exactly could it do? How powerful was its "battle laser"?  It must have been tested on the ground umpteen times. Was it more powerful, or less powerful, than the most powerful US "star wars" laser ever made?   Subsidiary questions are was its power source MHD, & how long could it give out a pulse for?

   There is no point wasting it on an ablative-coated warhead, so presumably it could only have been aimed at spysats & other milsats, comsats, or ICBMs & SLBMs during their powered phase? Smoke, fog & dust would make it less lethal against most ground targets, certainly in the smokey south Asia area.  

  Plus making a kebab out of any little green men who were not frightened away by that famous Almaz ack-ack gun, & wanted to abduct cosmonauts  :)

Keith