During the Cold War, the Soviet Union built the Polyus (aka 17F19DM), an orbital weapons platform. It never actually made it to orbit, but had it done so, it would have been straight out of Star Wars (the movie). The equipment list included radar/optical guided recoilless cannon (!), barium cloud generation system (!!), launcher for nuclear space mines(!!!) and a laser communication link for radio silence.

All this with a fashionable matte-black paint job and golden rims for the booster rocket.

Some more information on this engineering marvel can be found from here or here.