A rare view to Moscow subway's secret STP-89 communication center

I have been traveling, and visiting Russia, the Land of the Sleeping Bear. That's where a friend snapped for me a rare picture of the Moscow Subway's emergency strategic communications room , of unknown affiliation.

They refer to it as STP-89 strategic operations room. Inside the equipment as state of the art as Russian petrodollar can afford to achieve, except the hand drawn Fire evacuation plan

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.

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.

Putin's Exotic Tropo Site

This is the center for Russia's Tropospheric Radio Relay network called Sever ("North," ironically, it is truly severed from the rest of the country), near Norilsk. According to my source, besides the typical Gorizont-M and TP-120 systems , it has unique, custom produced signals processing equipment supplied by a group of military ("OOO" and "unitary") enterprises that also include the famed Tochmash of the silenced handgun fame.

The area is off-limits, though the landscape is too wintry and forbidding throughout most of he year, and its perimeter is studded with "photography prohibited" signs. The source says the military sections of the Russian radio spectrum are exceptionally active (thanks to Putin, no doubt) around the installation.

The center, despite its high security status, responds to anyone who knows how to exploit the tropospheric communications technology whenever the center's callsign "Луч" (LOOCH) is heard on its hailing frequency.

The installation and the network ares staffed by employees sent directly from the Moscow Electrotechnical Communications Institute, now MTUSI; Bonch-Bruevich Saint-Petersburg Electrotechnical Communications Institute, now SPbGUT; Minsk Radiotechnical Institute, now BGUIR; and Sverdlovsk Communications and Electronics Technical School, now UrTISI.

OSNAZ (ОСНАЗ) SIGINT center in Cuba

The following photos are of the OSNAZ regiment (в/ч) 54234-В, Lourdes. More detailed shots of the installation interior and the men to follow as they (gradually) become available.





The white building in the center of the photo below is the main monitoring center. Here the enlisted servicemen manned short-wave communication. Equipment repair shack is to the left. The antenna farm is in the background. The main antenna could be rotated to fine-tune the reception.

Casing out the Byelorussian secrets

The pictures of the Byelorussian KGB are here. Remember, this is the land where communism has never really died. You cans see the old embroidery-spangled flag of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic still unfurled over the City Hall/The Government Building in Minsk. These guys still think the USSR is alive and well.
By the way, note the antenna so typical of secret Soviet/Russian underground command centers.


And on Lenin Street there is a building having no number nor plaque, however festooned with an impressive suite of antennas.

This no ordinary TV antennas for the bored security guard's to watch the reruns of the stolid, tacky Communist song shows.

We were in the process of zeroing in on other features of the building, when a Byelorussian door lady scurried out onto the street and screamed at us in perfect Russian, "Movie cameras are forbidden!" We were using a tiny Canon digital gizmo with no hint of a camera.



and this is the KGB buidling. We were free to approach it and look it over from all directions, looking for any sign of good recce, but, apparently, the really interesting goodies are still inside, whereas only their classic defense-grade antennas and triangulators could be glimpsed on the turret.


Nobody ran out to arrest us. There was no sign of life, or even of a bureaucratic activity, or even of a faint scream of a political prisoner. It's just like scoping out the French Embassy in Moscow.

Next post is of the Russians in Cuba. It's a matter of organizing the photos. Sorry for the long delay.

Recce of French Embassy

The joke from a late-night show that seems to be appropriate for this post - "an ad on Ebay: French rifle, never fired, dropped once."

Most people don't think much about what the French are up to, but they are not behind the leading militaries of the world, and the same is true in the sense of their electronic warfare and intelligence.

Our man in Moscow (not the one that contributed here, nor here)- I know it sounds corny - has been lucky to gain a vantage point from where he succeeded to take a digital look at the French Embassy in Moscow. Don't ever underestimate the French.


You would have thought that this group is just a regular planar spike, but the upturned direction of the whips and the Rode & Shwarz HF dipole with an attenuator testify to its unexpected use.


this is a look from a yet different (I could only wonder) vantage point:

and these thistle whips - according to additional sources, whatever you may call these spikey finials, they have been known to radiate the most exotically encrypted traffic (some of which, unbuttoned, we will publish soon) you could pick up in this city. Note the magnetic antenna to the right of the R & S rig:



and here the gentlemen from France (remember Saturday Night Live's Coneheads? "We're from France!") have installed what might look like an average TV antenna, except - remember not to underestimate the French! - the rig and the microwave minisaucer further to the right are all aimed at the Russian Defense Ministry building.



beside being an average rooftop, they surely had to have the modest suite of satellite dishes.

and this standalone dish is accompanied by an interesting and shy Yagi-esque rig and a satcom disguised as a barstool:


as a collateral lesson from this recce exercise we have learned to appreciate the French taste for stylish rooftop radio shacks.

Next posts:
Centerfolds of KGB and other communication centers in Byelorussia, the land where communism never died
The candid shots of Russian listening outpost on Cuba, the site which has never ceased to operate.

Airport, Mooonscape and Diplograms

In this post:

PICTURESQUE RECCE EXERCISE
SLANT IMAGERY OF RUSSIA'S NOVA TERRA
DIPLOMATIC TELEGRAM ANALYSIS

We have been away, but not idle. We have met a bunch of interesting people, one of them is a former Tu-154 pilot who now flies for a discount airline. We call him Captain Alex, and he likes to take pictures in flight, from his pilot's seat. Here are some of the pictures that also serve us a breathtaking material for recce exercise.

Vnukovo Int'l Airport this winter.
The newly built, partially underground railroad spur serving the passenger terminal is visible to a knowledgeable analyst. The Russkies feel the bulge in the petrowallets, hence they feel that they can built some more megalomaniac projects to the airport.

Captain Alex took the picture and self-censored himself at that. The famous 06-24 runway is cut off below the photograph, because it serves the Government Terminal. Captain Alexey, however, was flying high and fast when he took the pictures below:



We can see the Government Terminal as the grey, black and brightly lit rectangular area towards the far (24) end of the 06-24 runway, below the T-juntion of the highways.

SLANT IMAGERY OF RUSSIA'S NOVA TERRA

Novaya Zemlya, that is. A high-level official who is actually in charge of declassifying DOD materials, has released the following imagery on condition that no other details would be divulged. The material has been declassified, but still has the stuck-in-limbo FOUO (for offficial use inly) markings.
Thus a special recognaissance platform that still remains classified is capable of obtaining imagery at extreme slant angles. That means the method is equivalent to a person shooting landscape phtographs from the ground level. Here is an image inside Severnyy, a Russian outpost on the lunar landscape ravaged by catastrophic nuclear explosions. The angles are marked on satellite map for visualizing the orientation of elements in the photograph.

What are these Russkies up to nowadays? What goof-ups can they suprise us with over there?


DIPLOMATIC TELEGRAM ANALYSIS

A certain someone sent in this telegram, fully confinced that it is a Russian code-word or other type of code text.

It is sufficient to have studied comparative analysis of Slavic languages to spot Bulgarian suffixed articles ( -te, -to) at the end of the nouns. As far as we know, no other Slavic country uses Latin X to represent the "sh" sound. Our contributor is an avid ham radio operator who claims this was a RTTY message sent in an easily decodable diplomatic format. Note the year. We have some really recent material, but are being very careful with what we release.

Good luck to us all, and happy new moon month.

Another Moscow radar site

Few people in the business know about the Chulkovo radar station. Another one of those non-descript dome-shack-and-a-mast site that has never been talked about or reported. However, this very installation is responsible for most of radar and communications monitoring, also for ensuring secure communications for Russia's government and military transmissions, including those originating from Moscow's airports, one of these located nearby the neighboring Bykovo. Google Maps here

This is another view, courtesy of Google Earth.

And this crowning touch is from our friendly and erudite photog, the very one that took the pictures of Butovo Radio Surveillance Site, after his plane took off from the aforementioned Bykovo airport.

Russian Radio Surveillance Center

One of our Moscow-touring friends who also happen to have an admirable college education and a sharp eye for all things hi-tech, secret and Russian, has stumbled on (surely one of many) Russian Federal radio surveillance center, for decades having been tucked next to Butovo, a quaint village next to Moscow. The giant city by now has swallowed up this village and given it a subway station, but the pictures disclose an intriguing side of the Russian heartland.

As one would expect from similar outpost anywhere in the world, the most exciting, government secrecy, hi-tech installations usually occupy a non-descript, humble, pastoral house just like this



Just when our friendly photographer had finished taking the pictures, he was approached by a serious looking but polite plain-clothes officer-type, and asked for ID. Speaking perfect Russian, but having a foreign passport, our photog seemed to have placed the officer into an uncomfortable predicament, which was resolved by our photog offering to erase the pictures from the Flash card. Herein lies a comment on the IQ of Russian well-dressed gentlemanly perimeter guards. He accepted the offer smilingly and bid our photog farewell, the images safe in the camera's memory.

And just to show that this is not your average ham radio club, feast your eyes on what must be a Western-import, most probably Thomson, interferometric tracking array, adapted to one of those numerous, Russkie-ingenuous radio spectrum snooping ideas. Birch trees look Pasternak-esque, don't they?


Could anyone name this if it was an abstract sculpture at the Burning Man festival?

More Siteseeing of Russian Secrets

• A well-defined, staggered pattern ABM site housing Gazelle missiles, 55°34'39"N 37°46'15"E
• Federal State Unified Facility, officially an establishment similar to U. S. General Services Administration, comprising of a concrete plant, miscellaneous warehouses and numerous sheds - except it is under the FSB command, 55°33'55"N 37°45'24"E
• GRU's OSNAZ (ЦРПУ) unit 309 is based at the Military Detachment 34608 here 55°22'8"N 37°28'45"E
• Recently declassified village of Berezki, containing a secret communication facility that has since passed on to Rostelecom for an unspecified use, 55°14'53"N 37°31'10"E
• summer cottages for KGB's 15 & 16 Departments, 55°15'1"N 37°25'22"E
• GRU and SVR summer cottages, 55°14'50"N 37°24'45"E
  
• A seemingly abandoned site known only as "UTK" that is reported to be an engineering reconnaissance training center, and guarded by armed roaming patrols, 55°11'27"N 37°39'17"E
• Rostelecom satellite communications support facility, with huge, dome-enclosed satellite dishes 55°45'31"N 38°39'34"E
• Former ammunition depot, the traces of which is visible in the tell-tale pattern, the rectangular off-limits perimeter now serving as a training center for armored corps 55°56'37"N 38°28'47"E
• Military Base, a Military Detachment, detachment number undisclosed 55°48'36"N 37°55'31"E
• FSB Training Center and Military Detachment No. 2056, also home to the Border Guard training center; an off-limits, well-guarded Microbiology Research Facility is located less than 1 km NE of the military base, at 54°58'23"N 37°13'25"E
• Headquarters and Operations Center for the important Early Missile Detection (Warning) Strategic System, including a Don or Dunay phased array, at Kurilovo, 55°4'1"N 37°2'45"E
• Military Detachment No. 64035, (Long Distance Communication Unit), together with the General Staff Communication Center, all inside the formerly classified city of Chekhov-3, 55°8'50"N 37°16'50"E
• Declassified town of Zarya, 55°45'31"N 38°4'56"E, associated with the Strategic Air Defense Headquarters 4.5 km WNW at 55°46'37"N 38°1'15"E
• One of the first and few baseball diamonds in Russia, at 55°47'45"N 38°1'2"E, which unwittingly served as a recce scale reference for metrics on the nearby Severniy-2 (55°47'47"N 38°1'26"E) classified town converted into summer cottages for the Defense Ministry's flag officers, and for the Strategic Air Defense Headquarters, see above, one of the terminal stations of the Moscow's secret subway.
  

Secret Russian Facilities, An Eye On Gold

• Russian Air Force Materials Research Center (ВИАМ) 55°45'50"N 37°40'39"E
• A Military Transport Park 55°36'51"N 37°27'45"E
• The SVR Headquarters 55°35'1"N 37°31'2"E
• A C-300 Missile site E. of Moscow 55°47'47"N 38°21'28"E,
• next to C-25 55°47'54"N 38°20'58"E
• High Command College For The Lines of Communications and Engineering Corps (MVKUDIV) Training Center 55°57'57"N 38°23'51"E
• Makarov Missile Support Center 55°59'43"N 38°20'14"E
• The 51st Kilometer Testing Grounds 55°58'20"N 38°16'59"E
• An antenna Farm, officially as a Mayak radio station, 56°3'50"N 37°56'50"E
• An off-limits part of a reservoir, classified, recent bathing unempeded 56°1'53"N 37°48'0"E
• An ABM site (Про А-135) a base for relatively new Gazelle and Gorgon missiles 56°10'51"N 37°47'13"E
• The modified Don 2NP large multifunction phased-array radar at Pushkino 56°10'18"N 37°46'14"E
• A Military Shooting Range, formerly tank, allegedly sniper, 56°10'40"N 37°11'46"E
• Early Warning System Command Center near Solnechnogorsk, 56°14'29"N 37°0'49"E
• The rebuilt Aquarium, the famous GRU headquarters, 55°46'55"N 37°31'24"E
• The Ministry of Defense Auto Pool 55°46'38"N 37°32'26"E
• The President's Transportation Support Facility 55°46'3"N 37°31'16"E
• US Embassy's Summer Cottage 55°47'15"N 37°24'49"E
• The Military History Archives 55°46'4"N 37°41'7"E
• The Bauman College, or Moscow State Technical University, for Special Technologies (satellites, missiles, warheads and ammunition) 55°46'11"N 37°41'26"E
• Federal State Unified Facility "Salyut", a jet engine factory supplying AL-31F powerplants for Su-27