The phantom spaceplane

The 1980 CIA report marked the beginning of a rumor that persisted in the West throughout the 1980s—namely, that the Soviet Union was simultaneously developing two shuttle systems, a small spaceplane orbited by a conventional rocket and a large shuttle similar to its American counterpart. The speculation entered the public domain in the early 1980s via annual Defense Department publications known as Soviet Military Power and America’s leading aerospace magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology (sometimes jokingly called Aviation Leak).

Speculation about the spaceplane was fueled by a series of mysterious test flights in 1977-1979 in which the Proton rocket deployed two heavy objects that re-entered after a single orbit (Kosmos-881/882, 997/998, 1100/1101). Many observers inter­preted these “Double Kosmos’’ missions as re-entry tests of a spaceplane. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Russians revealed that these had been test flights of the return capsules of the TKS spacecraft, which were transport ships for the Almaz military space station of the Chelomey design bureau. There are no indications, however, that the missions were linked to the spaceplane program by US intelligence analysts. In fact, the classified 1980 CIA report had correctly identified the missions as re-entry tests of the TKS return vehicles, although it wrongly interpreted the TKS vehicles as successors to the military Almaz space stations rather than transport vehicles serving those stations.

The first irrefutable evidence for the existence of a Soviet shuttle program came in April 1983, when the Australian Air Force publicly released images of the Indian Ocean recovery of the BOR-4 vehicle Kosmos-1445, one of the Spiral scale models that had been modified to test heat shield materials for Buran. Unaware of BOR-4’s roots in the canceled Spiral program, analysts quite logically concluded that the vehicle, which was aerodynamically completely different from the big shuttle, must be a subscale model of the rumored spaceplane.

By the early 1980s US intelligence was aware of the development of the Zenit medium-lift launch vehicle, which it called SL-X-16. The spaceplane was now linked to that booster rather than the Proton, putting it in a somewhat lighter class (roughly 15 tons). Once again a series of mysterious test flights lent credence to this idea. In 1986-1987 the Zenit flew four missions in which it deployed heavy, inert payloads into low Earth orbits (Kosmos-1767, 1820, 1871, 1873), interpreted by some outside the intelligence community as being mass models of the spaceplane. Not until the turn of the century did the Russians reveal that the heavy Zenit payloads had been mass models of the Tselina-2 electronic intelligence satellite with an additional mock payload attached to see how the Zenit would perform when placing heavy payloads into orbit.

This is not to say that there was unanimity among Western observers about the existence of the spaceplane. A report in May 1986 said it was now thought the BOR-4 test flights could have been merely tests of the thermal protection system for the large shuttle [8]. Others interpreted the BOR-4 flights as pure technology development tests analogous to the American PRIME and ASSET programs in the 1960s, not con­nected with any specific follow-on project. It was also noted that the Soviets had never before employed orbital flight tests of subscale models [9].

When Soviet officials finally began disclosing details about the Energiya-Buran system in 1987-1988, there still was no mention of the spaceplane. As preparations for the first flight of Buran were nearing completion and the maiden mission of the

Illustration from Soviet Military Power 1987 shows purported Zenit-launched spaceplane (source: US Department of Defense).

spaceplane had still not materialized, the US intelligence community was beginning to have some doubts as well about the program’s existence. In a classified assessment of the Soviet shuttle program in September 1988, just two months before the flight of Buran, the CIA did not exclude the possibility that BOR-4:

“is only a test vehicle used to gather aerodynamic, aerothermal, and materials

data for the larger shuttle orbiter.’’

However, the overall consensus among CIA experts still was that a separate space – plane program was underway. Unlike the large shuttle, the spaceplane was believed to have significant military potential. It was expected to be able to change its orbital inclination by as much as 15° and change its orbital altitude by about 4,200 km, making it ideal for reconnaissance, inspection, and combat missions. Its expected cross-range capability of up to 2,400 km would provide many additional opportu­nities each day to return to selected military airfields. It was also expected to have limited space station support capability, being used for rapid return of high-priority cargo or crew rescue missions.

The report did acknowledge that the spaceplane had apparently taken a backseat to the large shuttle for several reasons. Two of its primary missions—real-time

Purported spaceplane attacking an enemy satellite. Illustration from Soviet Military Power 1985 {source: US Department of Defense).

reconnaissance of critical targets and post-strike reconnaissance—were by now being fulfilled by newly developed near real-time imaging satellites. Furthermore, resource constraints had possibly forced the Russians to complete the two costly programs sequentially rather than simultaneously. Finally, Soviet attempts to inhibit American anti-satellite and SDI efforts, including a self-imposed moratorium against ASAT testing, were expected to keep the program at a low level at least into the early 1990s. [10].

The Russians elected not to disclose the purpose of the BOR-4 missions until after Buran had flown. One week after the mission, an article in Pravda officially described them as test flights of Buran’s heat shield [11]. However, in February 1989 Scientific American magazine published an article on the Soviet Union’s space pro­gram, which again identified the BOR-4 vehicles as scale models of a small space – plane. With nothing to hide anymore, the Russians were quick to react. Soviet deputy Defense Minister Vitaliy M. Shabanov called the story about the spaceplane a “canard”, not ruling out the possibility that it was just a ploy to obtain funding for a new Dyna-Soar type program. Asked what kind of vehicle was shown in the BOR-4 picture published in the magazine, Shabanov said:

“Well, this is obvious. In order to test the Buran reusable spacecraft four scale models were launched. They were placed into orbit with the designations Kosmos-1374, 1445, 1517, and 1614. The models were used to test elements of the heat shield, control systems, and so on. One of them was photographed by the Australians” [12].

What Shabanov failed to mention, however, was that the vehicles had not been scale models of Buran, but of a spaceplane canceled back in the 1970s.

Even in subsequent years the rumored spaceplane, which some claimed was called Uragan (“Hurricane”), occasionally resurfaced in Western publications. One article in 1995 said that Richard Ward, a noted international technology analyst based with Lockheed, had been told the story of the 1980s space fighter in private discussions with Soviet engineers in May 1990. Ward had been part of an American delegation visiting aerospace centers in Moscow and Kiev, where he talked to several representatives of the aviation industry. He was told that the BOR-4 missions had indeed served as a test series for a full-scale interceptor. Launched by Zenit, the operational vehicle would have had a crew of two and would have been armed with a recoilless gun for on-orbit attacks. The project had reportedly been given impetus after the US announcement that military Shuttle launches from Vandenberg were slated to begin in the autumn of 1986 [13].

Despite the persistent rumors, twenty years on not a single shred of convincing evidence has appeared to counter the notion that the Zenit-launched BOR-4 derived spaceplane was no more than a figment of the imagination of Western analysts. All indications are that BOR-4 was indeed flown for the official reason given by the Russians—namely, to test Buran’s heat shield. It is also known now that there was a parallel effort to convert BOR-4 vehicles into space-to-ground weapons as part of a

Soviet “Star Wars” program (see Chapter 8), but, again, here its role was not that of a subscale model for a piloted spaceplane.

After the cancellation of Spiral in the late 1970s, the Soviet Union did continue conceptual studies of various other small spaceplanes (notably LKS, MAKS, and OK-M), but all of these were aerodynamically different from BOR-4 and its alleged full-scale version. NPO Energiya’s OK-M was intended for launch by Zenit, but primarily seen as a space station support system. However, new evidence shows that NPO Molniya’s air-launched MAKS was supposed to carry out many of the same military tasks that had been eyed for Spiral (see Chapter 9). If there was a need for a military spaceplane in the 1980s, MAKS perfectly fitted the bill. It inherited the military advantages of Spiral, being more flexible and less vulnerable than a Zenit – launched spaceplane. The most plausible conclusion at this stage is that the Russians did consider a military spaceplane in the 1980s, but it was not the one that many Western analysts believed was under development and it was never given the same priority as Buran. Although the BOR-4 missions indirectly provided data applicable to MAKS, they were not seen as precursors to MAKS.