Project Skif

17F19

Mission Profile

Project Skif (17F19) was a classified Soviet military space weapons program from the 1980s, aiming to develop a space-based laser weapons platform capable of intercepting ballistic missiles as part of the Soviet response to the US Strategic Defense Initiative. The Skif-DM demonstrator — carried as the primary payload on Energia's first flight on 15 May 1987 under the public name Polyus — was successfully launched but failed to reach orbit when its orientation control system commanded the wrong attitude during orbital insertion. The 80-tonne payload would have been the largest ever attempted at the time had it succeeded. Skif represented the peak of Soviet interest in space-based directed energy weapons before the program was cancelled following the Soviet collapse.