Although Spiral itself never made it to the launch pad, it is rumoured that the design was reused and enlarged to build a piloted space interceptor known as "Uragan" (Russian for "Hurricane") in the 1980s. This craft was to have been launched by a Ukrainian-built Zenit expendable booster and was intended to intercept and destroy (if necessary) military space shuttle missions launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Its armament purportedly consisted of space-to-space missiles.
It is not known how many times the vehicle flew into space, if any. It is known that two Soviet Air Force cosmonaut groups, consisting of six in the first group and at least three in the second, were selected and trained to pilot the vehicle. The possibility that the shuttles could now be intercepted and shot down caused quite a stir in the US Department of Defense at the time, which issued several artists' conceptions showing the vehicle on the pad, in space, etc.
After the fatal Space Shuttle Challenger disaster prompted NASA and the DoD to cancel all planned launches from Vandenberg, it is said that the Soviet Union had no further need for the craft and, in turn, cancelled the Uragan program.
To this day, Russian officials continue to deny that this craft ever existed, leading some to believe that the purported space interceptor was all part of a successful Soviet disinformation program meant to scare the American military into thinking twice about its plans for the Space Shuttle.
The current whereabouts of any completed Uragan craft or components, if they exist, are unknown.
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