Sokol Eshelon

The A-60 program began in the mid-1970s at the Beriev Aircraft Company, using the Il-76MD transport as the base platform. Two flying laboratories were created: 1A (first flight Aug 19, 1981) and 1A2 (first flight Aug 29, 1991). The 1A was lost in a fire in the early 1990s. The 1A2 received specialized equipment in 2005, was named Sokol Eshelon, and resumed flight tests. It successfully hit a hypothetical target at 1500km altitude in 2009. The program was suspended in 2011 due to funding shortages but resumed in 2012. The A-60's 1MW-class laser was designed for ASAT operations — blinding or disabling US reconnaissance satellites. The laser fired upwards through a sliding port on the upper back of the aircraft. Two 2.1MW generators near the landing gear powered the weapon. The A-60 was destroyed on November 25, 2025, when Ukrainian strikes triggered fires at Taganrog Yuzhny Air Base. In the R306/R307 airborne census (R301 register), the A-60 scored as a NEAR-MISS: it proved MW-class airborne prime power (Axis 3: YES airborne, Axis 4: YES public) but was a CW laser, not pulsed power (Axis 1: NO, Axis 2: NO). It is the foreign equivalent of the US ABL YAL-1 — both broke the MW prime-power barrier but neither addressed the MJ pulsed-store barrier.