I was wondering if anybody had seen any timelines on this board discussing the development and deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) technology. Search function only turned up one or two fairly short threads from a few years back.
But Polyus was an ASAT weapon, not ABM weapon. Even a successful one would only demonstrate that the Soviets continued their development of the ASAT weapons, a system that is not that hard to develop. After all, the US had a number of those deployed already.
Polyus was on a different level though. It's a functional and useful Laser.
American ASAT systems were all direct-assent systems, and most deployed systems relied on nuclear weapons (which is bad, because the EMP and radiation released could harm friendly satellites, which you probably won't be able to replace soon.) The Standard SM-3 is the exception there, as it uses a Kinetic Kill Vehicle.
IIRC Soviets also deployed a satellite with kinetic weapons, which succeeded in killing another satellite (I don't remember exactly the number Kosmos something and Kosmos something else). However, killing satellites is fundamentally different to killing nuclear missiles. I don't think Polyus could be useful in this role.
An obvious POD would be Polyus reaching orbit safely. The American reaction to that would be pretty interesting...
Can I suggest the easier task of TABM, perhaps the successful emplacement of IRBM in Cuba and scud use in Vietnam so the task isn't just the hardest anti-ICBM role. You could have a couple of Safegaurd sites plus smaller TABM systems to pad it out and give extra impetus to the development of ABM.