Thursday, November 12, 2009

Litvinenko's tea came from this government isotope research lab


Inside Russian Plutonium development center pellet storage lockers. Probably stores all those poison pellets for the famous umbrella, tea, coffee, ballpoint pen and other methods of killing


mysterious simplicity, though a turret housing an irradiation source


primitive nuclear technology using rubber hoses- shock absorbers in case of a strike by a nuclear weapon?


log-cabin feel to the plutonium site: "no entry without an engineer" -is the blue glow between the doors a Cherenkoff effect?


Isotope tea, anyone? - this where Livinenko's teabag was prepared.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Revealing notice exposes Russia's strategic cable


Russian-Byelorussian notice to protect underground communication lines has an address and a phone number, which I had someone look up. A non-descript address in Minsk, Belorussia, connects it to a Belorussian front for Russian FSB's infrastructure management agency.

In other words, this is a Russian military cable access well.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The intelligent and funny Russians monitoring of B-52, RC-135

mobile cellphone monitoring
P-3 Orion is"lumberjacky", and more quips of that sort.
Below is the translated transcript of the most interesting part of a cellphone conversation between OSNAZ sigint/elint veterans on the holy soil of their own motherland. One of my well-wishing acquaintances with the talent for comprehending Russian military lingo, has in his possession government-issued mobile-phone monitoring device and the sense of smell for good stuff: herebelow the veteran had monitored US and NATO dating back to 1986.

...during my time, U-2 flew only over the Mediterranean, from Acrotiri in Cyprus...they are not here...they sniffed Lybia together with P-3 Orion...
there was a war in 1986...our guy from GCCS latched on to 24 F-111 flying the England-Gibraltar-Mediterranean lengthwise route...

...transferred it to his op officer, who in turn forwarded it to Moscow, who said they [the US] won't have guts, but within 4 hours Libya no longer had air defenses, part of its navy and air force. They [the Russian monitors] did their job, they warned within 4 hours...
Instead of U-2 they flew TR-1 (the improved version) over West Germany, surveilled the GSVG (Formations of Soviet Forces in Germany)... from the altitude of 27000 and the speed of 700, had plenty to look at during the 5 hours...

The record has RIDDLE 26, time 0745, had the habit of talking directly to Croughton, not SKYBIRD...that day the call sign was SHAMROCK. The same day there was INLACK 83 at 10:04, frequently for a radio check, and 2-3 hours afterward followed up with an opreport of "normal" and 4-digit time stamp...

Radio exchange resembles RC-135, only with a different transmitter background...flight zone. RC-135 often hung around the Baltic, sent HARVARD and then BROTHER messages, who knows what that meant, but they always mentioned the nautical mile distance from the shore (of the USSR), while within the international airspace...

These flights were reconnaissance as well as for provocation, along borders. At the end of the tape there is this handsome guy, at 53:53, FLOME24, after broadcasting the 0810 time says five zero nautical miles off shore in international air space and continuing mission. Property-Croughton...RC-135: BOWK33 29:13 sends two 3-digit number messages, ISSUE40 at 30:32 sends 5 number messages...

All of the B-52 used call sign Muse, even during their training at Saragossa, Spain, with MUSE CONTROL as the base station, which was trackable as Croughton...the bombers used their own radio operators...According to the treaty with us [the Soviets] they could not remain in Europe permanently. Those were the happy days, they reported every broadcast...Mind you, the SR-71 at 59:13, call sign CURNEY83, the distinguishing number were two digits of 04, no time stamp, and that was the same guy speaking...

What's interesting is that Croughton can't hear him, and the GLADIOLA, the HQ comm center answers him...he always came across with echo...the most lumberjacky plane was P-3, call sign minus numbers, like NUS, loiters for 8 hours, hourly roars out alphanumerics, annoyed the heck out of us as well as his own guys, he was KRUPP (38:58), or ROME (57:18) over the Mediterranean...over the Baltic, the exchange was like that of RC-135, with HARVARD, BROTHER, and MIND and some more alphanumerics.
При мне U-2 летали только в Средиземном море с Acrotiri о. Крит, здесь их нет, вынюхивали Ливию на пару с P-3 Orion, в 86-м там война была, парень с GCCS словил 24 F-111 по маршруту Англия-Гибралтар-Сред. море поперёк, отдал оперативному, тот в Москву, там, подумали не посмеют, через 4 часа у Ливии не было ПВО, части флота, части ВВС. А предупредили почти за 4 часа, т.е. выполнили задачу разведки. Вместо U-2 летал TR-1(улучшенный) над ФРГ, за ГСВГ наблюдал, с высоты 27000 и скорости 700 за 5 часов много высматривал. В записи есть, Riddle 26, время записи 07:45, имели привычку выходить не SkyBird, а напрямую на Croughton, позывной в тот день Shemrock. И ещё один в тот же день, Inlack 83, 10:04, часто первый выход Radio check, через 2-3 часа op's normal время 4 цифры. Радиообмен похож на RC-135, но другой фон передатчика, зона полёта. RC-135 часто торчали в Балтике, давали радиограммы Harvard и сразу после Brother, почему так назывались, не знали, но в них всегда говорили в скольких морских милях от берега (СССР) находятся в международном воздушном пространстве. Такие полёты были и разведовательные и провакационные, вдоль границ. В конце плёнки есть такой красавец, 53:53, Flome24 после времени time 0810 говорит 50(five-zero) nautical miles of shore in international air space and continuing mission. Property-Croughton.RC-135: Bowk33 29:13, выдаёт две кодогруппы по 3 символа, Issue40, 30:32, выдаёт 5 кодогрупп. Все B-52 позывной Muese(на этих учениях), даже на время их нахождения на учених в Сарагосе, Испания, работала станция Muese-control, пеленговалась как Croughton, просто свои люди сидели для бомберов. По договору с нами постоянно базироваться в Европе они не могут. Докладывался каждый выход на связь, были весёлые дни. Обрати внимание на SR-71 59:13, позывной Curney 83, отличительный признак время в двух цифрах 04, без указания часа, так говорил только он. Но интересно, что Croughton его не слышит и отвечает ему ВКП ГК в Атлантике Gladiola, его всегда было слышно с эхо. Самый дуболомный самолёт-P-3, позывной слово без цифр, как у НУС, летает 8 часов, орёт каждый час буквы-цифры, доставал и нас и их, если в Сред.море, Krupp 38:58, Rome 57:16, Если в Балтике, то на RC-135 радиообмен похож, Harvard и сразу после Brother.Mind, 46:56, и ещё буквы-цифры.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

China moves on from copying designer clothes to fighter jets


You thought China stopped at copying consumer products -

Russia Admits China Illegally Copied Its Fighter
By Wendell Minnick, Published: 13 Feb 12:29 EST (17:29 GMT), BANGALORE, India

After years of denial, a Russian defense official conceded that China
had produced its own "fake" version of the Su-27SK fighter jet in
violation of intellectual property agreements. "We are in discussions
with China on this issue," said Mikhail Pogosyan, first vice president on
program coordination, Russian Aircraft Corp., during a press conference
here at the Aero India trade show.

In 1995, China secured a production license to build 200 Su-27SKs, dubbed
J-11A, for $2.5 billion for the Shenyang Aircraft Corp. The deal required
the aircraft to be outfitted with Russian avionics, radars and engines.
Russia cancelled the arrangement at 95 aircraft in 2006 after it discovered
that China was developing an indigenous version, J-11B, with Chinese
avionics and systems.

China produced six J-11B fighters for testing, but despite efforts to
produce a suitable replacement for the Russian engine, the new fighter
was outfitted with the same AL-31F, said Andrei Chang, a China military
specialist at the Kanwa Defense Center. One J-11A was outfitted with the
indigenously-built WS10A Tai Hang turbofan engine, but the J-11Bs are still
using Russian AL-31Fs due to technical difficulties, Chang said.

Pogosyan and Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov traveled to Beijing
in December to attend the 13th session of a Chinese-Russian joint commission
on military and technical cooperation and apply pressure to Chinese
officials. Ultimately, China agreed to protect intellectual property rights
and stop illegally copying Russian military equipment.

"I think this was a big step to make this issue more transparent and more
precise in our future discussions," said Pogosyan, who also serves as the
general director of Sukhoi.

Russia fears that China would mass-produce cheaper export versions of the
Su-27 for the international market, and China feared that Russia would
cancel future orders for advanced arms, such as the Su-33 combat jet for
China's aircraft carrier program, Chang said. Chinese violations of the
end-user agreement would be particularly upsetting to Russia's long-time
strategic partner India, if Pakistan buys the Chinese-built Su-27 version.

However, Pogosyan downplayed the quality of the Chinese effort, saying a
copy of a copy would not be a good aircraft. "If we speak about the copy
of the airplanes, I think that in this case, the original will always be
better than a slightly modified copy," he said. "The original made by the
designer who developed the product is always better, and it is a better
start for a new program with the original designer and developer than
making a fake copy."

He said buying copies makes it difficult to overcome problems occurring
during the lifetime of the aircraft, while the original developer knows from
experience how to deal with these issues.

Chang does not believe China will honor the intellectual property agreement,
or any agreement with Russia, and will continue to develop the J-11B as a
totally indigenous aircraft. However, China will move cautiously until it
secures deals for the Su-33 carrier-based fighter. China is beginning to
build its first aircraft carrier and needs Russian technology and
experience, Chang said.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Why nobody has poked around Leningrad looking for osnaz's elephant cages?

Somebody wrote to me and tangentially made a sweeping generalization that Leningrad has no Krug installations, since it is on the periphery of what the Russians regard as the interesting part of radio communications of interest.

Here is the Шипун-210 Shipun Center (The Hisser). It still has the address of Military Detachment (в/ч) 41480, , Town of Gatchina, 188350

Here is a special Krug cage, with the outer antennas for low frequency work, and the inner ShP (ШП) antennas for the frequencies above 15 Mhz.



An astute observer has spotted up to a dozen military personnel arriving at the facility each morning. Every 2-3 days a military vehicle brings women in military dress uniforms arriving at the center.
It makes sense. A friend has connected the dots, and pointed out that the gaining command for the facility is none other than the famous Training Center of the Military Detachment (в/ч) 44085, 59°36'35"N 30°8'3"E This is the 193rd Engineering and Technical center of the Defense Maintenance and Repair Department of the Federal Special Construction Agency (!!!).
Check out these exotic sets of antennas and Russian antenna porn.

Friday, April 17, 2009

KGB's archives affords me a glimpse at Vatican's Intelligence Service



Stanislav Lekarev, a well-placed investigative reporter and a former Soviet official, reveals the results of his heart-to-heart with a friend that still has access to the documents from KGB's 5th Chief Directorate that was also responsible for dealing with religious dissent. Despite the Holy See's curt, Jesuit-like denial of having any involvement in intelligence activities, the archives shed rare light on the Vatican's well-though-thinly-cloaked clandestine activities in USSR.

Vatican's Secret Service is a well-compartmentalized into its many cover organizations conveniently subdivided by their religious activities that afford the Holy See the advantages over any other intelligence service.

The strategically important service is the responsibility of the Jesuits. The order is under the direct command of the pontiff.

The Jesuits manage information -gathering functions for the Vatican. Thus the Russian department is conveniently set up under the cover of the Congregation of the Eastern Churches, Actione Catolica, Russia Christiana, and has its operations center at the St. Georgio Institute in Medona, and at the Modesto Monastery in Seriate, a picturesque suburb of Milan.

The department that runs its agents in Russia is the mysterious Russicum, which has a legitimate appearance of any other Catholic outreach facility, recruiting into its ranks residents of Eastern Europe.

Information gathering takes place under the guise of very conventional missionary activity, a non-governmental charity work, seemingly innocent purchase of a government's archives.

The Russian desk is still run by its Vatican's former USSR directorate which bears the name of the St. Teresa Russian Catholic College.

The external and hands-on operations are also performed by the Dominican Order. The order uses its international resources to exfiltrate its agents, to discredit undesirable officials, and other cloak and dagger operations. Its low-profile department of Sodalicium Pianium is responsible for internal security, taking care of the Vatican's own heretics, and vetting out Vatican's security apparatus.

Thus Vatican has plenty of organizations to also collaborate with other intelligence agencies. Joint projects with CIA, MI6, SDECE and Mossad has been through The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. Pinochet and the Polish Solidarnosc (Solidarity) are good examples of Vatican's intelligence networking par excellence.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The real Bolshoi ballet of antennas

Moscow's secret antennasI am absolutely fascinated by Russians' obsession with radio snooping. That mean that Russia must be bristling with antennas.
Kitty corner from the Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) Metro's Line 3 terminal station Primorskaya, the there is an office building with this Swan Lake of antennas. The location is great - it looks out over the Gulf of Finland

Moscow's triangulation antennas
On Veshnyakovskaya st., bldg. 9, section 2 there is this farm.
You could understand the location of Leningrad tracking antennas. But what foreign traffic :-) is there to monitor in the heartland, in Moscow? Maybe Russians know better - in Butovo they do have one of many tracking stations for monitoring foreign radars(???).
The wind speed-looking device is not for measuring wind speed . The real name for it is HE314A1.

detail of a Russian triangulation antenna
It is BKAS (БКАС), active in the 150-3700 MHz range, vertical polarization.
My fdriends have also reported that the same type of natenna farm is found on the roof of the building at Bolshaya Olenya Street, 15A (55°48'30"N 37°41'26"E), which is the Radio Tracking Center co-located with the Central Design Institute of Communications No. 17, a. k. a. the military unit (В/ч) 25801.

This is most likely a R&S Doppler triangulation antenna, seen on the roof the both buildings is R&S PA055, that has 16 vertical concentric dipoles, and covers the 20-1000 Mhz range.

The second photo also shows this skirt-like antenna between the parabola and the umbrella-shaped antennas. The famous R&S HK014, for receiving omnidirectionally anything in the 80-1600 Mhz range:

Russian sigint antenna

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

A GRU dial radio is a typical part of a Soviet (Russian) secret cache

This telephone-dial spy radio found in caches planted by Soviet or modern-day GRU makes for slow but sure and secure communication.
This one is Р-353 "Proton" - the workhorse of GRU's osnaz or KGB's spetznaz. Contains classic Soviet-era tubes, like the famous GU (ГУ) 19. My friends tested the set and found it to produce signals of more than 50 watts. For those who are somewhat familiar with Soviet technology, this set is related to R-350 Orel (or Р-350 "Орел".)

The set is great for transmitting data, especially telegraphy. It contains the typical coder-decoder pair, and a magnetic tape drive. Data transmission is under 1000 baud due to the use of the telephone dial, which ensures precision. Also contained therein are flip-style CW Morse key, comprehensive chart of GRU's and KGB's favorite, alternative, SSB, and other frequencies, discreet night light, even a lanyard with an all-weather pencil. The power supply is ahead of its times (1960's !!!) and challenges modern laptops: it is of the smart type, capable of charging its battery from any outlet and voltage in the 80-240 VAC range, and has an external 12 VDC socket. These rigs are always found packed in thick, well closed plastic bags, and plenty of desiccant packets. They are always ready to transmit. Scary?

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Russian cellphone COMINT and antenna porn

On his business trip last month to St. Petersburg, my friend used a digital cellphone scanner that he used to successfully overhear the following conversation between a Russian Navy Warrant Officer and a distant civilian who seemed to be the insider on the Russian Navy ECM technology.

CIVILIAN: "...как лучше подавлять связь по Link-11?"
W. O. " ... возьми ... что-то типа КВ...Р-743 ... у нас на корабле передатчик...к нему УКВ "Утес" или Р-625 с формирователем помехи."
translation:

CIVILIAN: "...how to better jam communication on LINK-11?"
W. O. "...take...something like SW...R-743...we have a transmitter on our ship...together with USW "UTES" or R-625 with an interference generator."

Very important systems being mentioned here:
LINK-11 is USN's advanced digital communication system.


R-625 ("Пихта") is a USW station manufactured by the Musson factory in Sevastopol, Crimea, for simplex and duplex TTY/telephone-telegraph communications on naval and merchant ships. It looks like this:

russian spook radio station
UTES is a widely used rig which in its 3rd generation looks like this:
russian ECM rig
Here are the R-625's shipboard antennas - the single on an Akademik Ioffe "scientific" ship (this is the same ship that during 1980's in the name of underwater science killed whales by testing its roaring new Elac deep sonar, ADCP thermal current analyzer, a parametric and Echos multibeam sonar across North Atlantic all the way to Azores[USN Station Lajes]):


r-625 antenna

and the double from a Vishnya-type AGI (SSV).
naval double  rig antenna
Can you put it all together? The Russkies can.

Monday, February 16, 2009

These top Russian Comsecgru brass use openly their email boxes

my bot reports that Widnows XP Porofessional computers licensed to Russian Federation opneed critical US documents dirextly from the email boxes ( i.e. mail.xxxxx.zz) of these top directors of the facility:

ALFEROV, Alexander Pavlovich (Алферов Александр Павлович)
KISELEV, Boris Valentinovich (Киселев Борис Валентинович)
PYARIN, Victor Anatolevich (Пярин Виктор Анатольевич)
MITROFANOV, Sergey Vasilevich (Митрофанов Сергей Васильевич)

the computers are assigned or located at the FAPSI commnads:
В/ч 2580
В/ч 16660 one of the commands at the Russia's equivalent of US NSA - FAPSI, ФАПСИ, formerly ЦОПУПС, TsOPUPS, Central Separate Field Center for Government Communications (Центральный Отдельный Полевой Узел Правительственной Связи)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Aircraft sends interesting number message

ACARS is Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. The originating aircraft, registration number VP-BWA is an Airbus 319-111, was on its way from Vienna to Moscow, when it transmitted classical number groups extremely typical and consistent with modern shortwave radio's number stations. My properly informed friends tell me that international regulations do not allow the ACARS to be used for espionage purposes.

The typical content of an ACARS message is an estimated time of arrival, a 4-character airport code, and some terse, telegraphic readable content.

Don't ask me how I got this :-)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The same Russian in USA obtains a schedule of NATO plans

Our bot has found the following message from August 2007 - the Russian already has the schedule of upcoming NATO exercises:

The source is the same as in this post. Who could this guy be?

Russian illegal in US reports on military traffic?

This is an unexpected harvest my bots brought in:


It shows that somebody very loyal to the Russian Federation, and not associated with the Russian Embassy in USA, has easily intercepted US-UK radio traffic. The first message deals with a mysterious emergency search and rescue by NATO in the Atlantic. The second message, stored on an unnamed server, this individual says that he left his recording equipment listening to the 6697 Hz frequency, Upper Side Band, RATT transmission mode. What he picked up is a Nimrod, a British maritime surveillance plane leaving US on the way to RAF Kinloss. The Russian listener appears to be professionally experienced in the US-NATO radio traffic patterns. The telegraphic style of the message is chillingly old school.

Do you see anything consistent with the material in this post?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Letterheads of FSB's, Putin secret memos

The classified FSB memo with the keyworded, compartmentalized information reading list:


Quite some time ago I started getting comments of supposedly demeaning intent, caused by the truth on this blog hurting the ex-iron evil empire apparatchiks' consciousness. This post, for example, now sounds as if the rather brusque requests (if I was interested in having enough "beer money") came really from Moscow, NOT Britain. The British nowadays are mired in the permanent marshland of politically correct complacency, symbolic pomp and circumstance, and knifings by its baggy pants youth.

On November 12, 2008 I came back from a long hiatus wherein I worked hard, and provided sustenance for my palatial domicile and its dear occupants. I was also involved in tricky negotiations about Russian documents I have gotten hold of in the process.

Few posts prior was the distant July 25, when the BAE document caused upset stomach with the document's owners in Moscow.

The bottom line: I am not posting the documents in their entirety on this blog. I have sold them to a major news agency, though I can still show the letterheads on the blog. For those of you who contacted me by the comments that I never post, here are the rest of the letterheads:

The above memo is unique because it uses English in its letterhead, and yet it is internal, sent from the Lubyanka HQ January 17, 2008, faxed the next day, and its content points to interesting instructions regarding FSB-Administration-Diplomatic strategy of responding to the Litvinenko poisoning inquiries.

This memo of 16 January 2008 instructs an interesting interested party on the focus of Lugovoi-Scaramella angle of inquiries.

And the most lucrative document of them all - the one penned by V. V. Putin himself on November 26, 2008, about gas revenge politics (I thought he was the PM, and not the president already):

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Here's the list of secret Soviet (or contemporary Russian) supply dumps in United States

Drawn out from alcoholic ex-soviet diplomats, overheard by expert friends in St. Petersburg,(Russia), and one reserve U. S. Air Force officer in St. Petersburg, FL, or gathered by sources and methods that nobody in his right mind would reveal:

Upper Marlboro, MD: somewhere on Brown Station Rd, between John Rogers and Marlborough pike - Andrews AFB is only 5 miles away - unknown contents

Mitchellville, MD, between Enterprise Golf Course and I-50 - unspecified "emergency supplies," 7 miles from Washington, DC and Andrews AFB

Busch Gardens Europe, Williamsburg, VA - unspecified dead drop near "a hot dog concession stand"

Fort Marcy Park, Rivercrest, MD - coincidentally, the site of Vince Foster's suicide - unknown communication equipment, street-bought handguns.

Corner of Seabreeze and Surf Avenue, Brighton Beach, NYC - "emergency supplies"

Between Nixon Court, Shore Parkway and Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, NYC, - unspecified "tactical" supplies

more to follow!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Agencies curious about this blog

All the while I am working my way through the new materials, I am getting a whole lot of not-so-friendly comments that I do not post for simple reason of not losing my Adsense account. As someone threatened in a previous post, I do need Adsense to buy a beer once in a while.

You might be aware that I am using bots to find and check info. Bots can query servers more efficiently than a human operator. I also use bots to find servers that tried to research this blog, either by Googling the author's ID, blog ID, and other Boolean operators, or back-end log entries.

But my bots are the ones that report what is going on behind my back. Here are the ISPs that originated unnatural curiosity about my blog:

Su29 Telecom Isp, Russian Federation: a lot of Russian military detachment inquiries

Wittenberg-net Germany diplomatic corps-related searches

kvkure.borda.ru -Russian air defense college, SIGINT and ELINT queries

host.194.telekom.ru - FSB internal departmental employee queries

gw1.gov.ee -Department Of Data Communications, (query: сотрудник отдела «П» ФСБ, Саша Дюков, штатный провокатор и сотрудник отдела «П» ФСБ Российской Федерации, имеющий имеющий оперативный псевдоним «Флаг»)

195.20.126.199, Headquarters Of National Armed Forces Republic Of Latvia - SIGINT inquiries

93.81.155.202 Investelektrosviaz Ltd, Russian military detachment inquiries

The situation gets ever more curious!