Quite significant – still an important and the most survivable way to target OTH.

RORSATs?. I would have agreed until the US SM-3 shot a couple of years back. Now, closely netted, HALE UAV’s in volume I’d say offer the only real surviveable possibility.

And how was the technology dangerous and unreliable? That’s as dumb as saying the USSR couldn’t run a series of satellites.

The power systems were unreliable. After their 70-day lifespan they were intended to shoot the reactor section into an alleged ‘safe’ parking orbit before the rest of it came down. Operationally the problem was the relatively large quantity of debris that they ejected with the payload stayed in the same orbital plane causing significant hazard to follow on sats. That is not to mention the wider problem that at least 4 satellites reactor sections failed totally and didnt go up…..but came down. Only pure dumb luck saw those reactors miss populated areas. You find the concept of dumping 50lb of uranium on some unsuspecting populace an acceptable risk for the operation of the RORSAT’s?. If so I’m rather glad the politburo of the day saw things a bit differently!.

Anyway we are moving away from the basic point here which was that Legenda was intended to operate a pair of active satellites and a pair of passive ELINT birds as its system components. That was last achieved, IIRC, in 1986 and the last active radar bird flew in 1988. Legenda failed as a system, significantly, in 1986 and almost totally in 1988. ELINT is a method of tracking ships at sea but, unlike the RORSAT component, it is totally dependent on the target emitting on something recognisable. The RORSAT had no such limitation which was one major reason why it was there in the first place.

Pretty sure I read somewhere that the USSR got real time coverage of the Falklands showdown via the Legenda system.

You did read that and Legenda did track the RN group. Apparently when the Task Group was on station in the south atlantic Legenda was able to follow them closing the islands and moving off until the seas got too heavy for uncluttered returns.

The concept worked Dionis I agree with that. The US are trying to do something similar with the concept at the moment with SBR. What I said was that Legenda flopped and it did. There were no RORSATs in orbit after 1988 and only half a system for two years preceeding that – where you say it flopped between 86-88 is academic.