Summary of Russians intercepting SR-71's

All the billions of taxpayer dollars that we sank into SR-71, only to operate it as a high-speed party crasher (ref. having it fly over dictators' palaces and parades). The Soviets, of course, knew it was coming hours in advance, without any need to have a spy in place either in USAF command or as a landscaping contractor near its air base.
Here is a rough translation of an email from a Russian communication intelligence specialist recalling the ease of detecting the SR-71. What a crude use of such a fine machinery!

"As far as the SR-71 in transit, I have none [i.e., data of my own - blog], however, several of them are over Barents Sea, for example, as Blimey 99, at 17:16 according to the the time marker. Opus 38, at 26:08, communicates through Gold 23 (KC-135), Croughton [RAF base - blog] does not hear, but we in Kaluga  - 5 AUs. One of the best ways to ID them is their mentioning of the real time GMT:
Op's normal at 34while RC-135, TR-1 и U-2 communicate in the 4-digit format: 0834.
[Other telltale signs] are of course, the pilot's voice, stifled by the high altitude pressure suit, the typical background noise of the radio, the Barents triangulation, then Baltics, and the KC-135Q modified for high altitude refueling, loitering along its [SR-71] route.
It always felt pleasantly reassuring to know that it was escorted by Mig-25, so it would never get lost or get bored.
[SR-71] always presented real danger, since in an hour that it spends over Barents Sea, it always detected all of our mobile SA launchers and could have directed a strike against them. We did not have the mobile launchers like the S-300, so we had to redeploy to other sites, and that was hours of hard work. That is why the main countermeasure against it was to guess its ETA, to turn off all the mobile systems, and leave only the fixed sites. Then the Dumb Yanks would come the next day, a different aircraft, and there were two of them at Mildenhall in England.
After the flight, this machine was not so reliable. Its speed up to 3200 and the latitude 25000 [was something]. One time it experienced a malfunction upon exiting Barents area, barely limped to Norway, the the HC-130 rescue was deployed, the helicopters. A week after it flew over to England, and ion another 2 weeks back home to Edwards [AFB], Nevada, all the while, by an unusual track - the way of SR only - not over the Atlantic, but over the [North] Pole and Canada, the way he reported through radio comm.
Let me know if anything not clear here, I will explain, just let me know the call sign and time of comm. Even though it has been 21 years, I still remember almost all."

Что касается SR-71-на перелёте нету, а так несколько штук в Баренцевом море есть, например Blimy 99, 17:16 по таймеру записи, Opus 38, 26:08, работает через Gold 23 (KC-135), его Croughton не слышит, а у нас в Калуге 5 баллов. Отличительным разведпризнаком SR-71 является упоминание текущего время Гринвича только в минутах текущего часа, т.е. Op's normal at 34, тогда как RC-135, TR-1 и U-2 в 4-х значном формате, 0834, 8 часов 34 мин. Ну и конечно сдавленный голос в высотном костюме, характерный фон радиостанции, пеленг Баренцево, потом Балтика, болтающиеся KC-135Q по его маршруту-модификация танкеров, сделанных для его заправки на большей высоте. И приятное осознание того, что летит он в компании двух МиГ-25, чтобы нескучно было и не заблудился. Он представлял реальную опасность, за 1 час нахождения в Баренцевом море вычислял все наши мобильные комплексы ПВО и мог навести на них удар. Мобилок, как С-300 тогда не было ,по-этому приходилось свёртываться и перебазироваться, а это несколько часов нелёгкой работы. По-этому в борьбе с ним главное было угадать когда прилетит ,мобильные комплексы выключались, оставались только стационарные. Тогда пиндосы прилетали на следующий день, на другом, их два в Mildenholl'е в Англии было. После полёта ТО на пару дней, машина не очень надёжная. Зато скорость до 3200 и высота 25000. Один раз сломался при выходе из Баренцево, еле допукал до Норвегии, HC-130 спасательные поднимали, вертушки. Потом через неделю перелетел в Англию, а ещё через 2 недели улетел домой в Эдвардс, Невада, причём по необычному маршруту, так летел только SR-не через Атлантику, а через полюс и Канаду., где и отмечался на связи. Кому что непонятно, спросите, укажите время записи и позывной, подскажу, всего-то 21 год прошёл, почти всё помню.

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.

The real Bolshoi ballet of antennas

I 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


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.


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 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:


UTES is a widely used rig which in its 3rd generation looks like this:

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]):




and the double from a Vishnya-type AGI (SSV).

Can you put it all together? The Russkies can.