Salyut-3 has the distinction of being the only known armed spacecraft, although there were certainly more during the cold war. It had a 14.5mm automatic cannon bolted to the hull.

Salyut-2 lost attitude control and fell back to Earth before a crew could board, but Salyut-3 and Salyut-5 are the only armed, crewed military spacecraft ever flown – that history actually knows ...

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On June 25, 1974, the Salyut 3 space station and its two-cosmonaut crew blasted into space. On the surface, it seemed like just another space exploration mission.

Salyut 3 (OPS-2) was marginally more successful, with its onboard cameras performing their surveillance duties and the Rikhter R-23 autocannon being to this day the only cannon to have been fired ...

After Salyut 7’s launch into orbit in April 1982, the first mission to the new station further extended that record to 211 days. The station was enjoying a relatively trouble-free start to life. [4] ...

In reality, Salyut 3 was the Almaz 2 military space station. The mission of the Almaz stations was surveillance, similar to the U.S. Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory in the 1960s.

On April 3, 1973, the Soviet Union launched a small space station called Salyut 2. This was the second space station ever launched and the first military space station.