Beriev A-60

The Beriev A-60 was a Russian airborne laser laboratory aircraft based on the Ilyushin Il-76 transport, developed in the Soviet Union for its airborne forces. In 1977 Beriev started design of a flying laboratory, designated 1A, to solve the engineering problems of building an airborne laser and to study how beams travel through the upper atmosphere, working with many enterprises and institutes, chiefly TsKB Almaz. The Il-76MD was reworked heavily: a steerable beam-director turret replaced the nose cone, a retractable dorsal turret carried the main laser optics, and two large nacelles housed the turbo generators and the targeting lidar power unit. The laser was a 1 megawatt carbon-dioxide system. The 1A first flew on 19 August 1981 and was destroyed by fire at Chkalovsky in June 1988; a second aircraft, the 1A2, flew in 1991 and had been retired by 2016.