Terra-3 (Russian: терра–3) was a Soviet laser testing centre, located on the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile (ABM) testing range in the Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan. It was originally built to test missile defense concepts, but these attempts were dropped after the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed. The site later hosted two modest devices used primarily for experiments in space tracking. Several other laser test sites were also active during this period. During the 1980s, officials within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) suggested it was the site of a prototypical anti-satellite weapon system. The site was abandoned and is now partially disassembled. History Development of laser weapons in the Soviet Union began in 1964–1965. Among many proposals for laser weapons was an explosively pumped gas dynamic laser. Construction—consisting of a large concrete bunker lined with steel plates—was begun at Sary Shagan, but the facility was far from complete when the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1972, and these efforts ended. The buildings were then re-purposed for more modest laser systems. Vympel NPO led the construction and developed the tracking and aiming systems. The lasers were developed at Astrofizika, a company newly formed from the laser departments of several defense contractors. They installed two lasers at the site, a visible-light ruby laser that was installed in 1979, and an infrared carbon dioxide laser that was installed in 1982. Tracking systems were tested by fitting aircraft with laser detectors and then looking for signals when the lasers fired. There were also tests against satellites that passed over the site, in an effort to demonstrate the ability to blind optical sensors. Instead, these experiments demonstrated the inability of the tracking system to point the lasers with the required level of accuracy in order to be effective. Anti-satellite weapon claims With the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the early 1980s, the DoD began claiming that the Soviets were developing an anti-satellite laser weapons system at the Sary Shagan site. These statements were part of an argument suggesting that a sort of "laser gap" existed between the US and the USSR, harkening back to the mythical bomber gap and missile gap of previous decades. As it would turn out, this comparison was quite accurate, as the laser gap turned out to be equally mythical. Throughout, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was returning reports on the site that were quite accurate,