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.

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.

Milk, Gold, Rupees and Rubles

This should not be a secret, but it is, to most of the world.

Gold prices fell,

Bid/Ask 661.60 - 662.40

Low/High 659.90 - 677.70

Change -0.70/-0.11%, about $22

even though Russia broke records in Gold vs. Forex Reserves. Russian Central Bank said its gold and foreign exchange reserves reached $413.1 billion as of July 20. The amount is the record one in the histories of both the former USSR and Russia.

Carry traders in Japan and Switzerland have been borrowing money (since this is what carry trade is about) in countries with low interest rates and investing in gold. You can see this in the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Whatever investments sunk into the trades are adversely affected.

Gold demand dipped today as prices headed up but dealers ported moderate sales taking place late the previous day, when prices dipped to one-week lows. This is almost a mumbo-jumbo according to the cold-hard as gold truth about gold.

Ned Schmidt, the editor of the Value View Gold Report said that it is the “beginning of the demise of paper assets…spilling over into the gold market."

Let these carry traders trade. Instead, watch India, the largest consumer of gold. Watch the weather in India as well. The good monsoon at propitious time will yield good harvest, which will lead to an unusually bustling mid-August wedding season, and that should mean strong gold demand. See, no quiet intergovernmental agencies at work here. Sometimes a secret is not really a secret.

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There are more to this than the Mitrokhin archives, though. Milk jugs in Russian’s cellars should hold entire home movies shot by KGB officers ignorant of the future. While much of these stashes are irretrievably lost to the alcohol-induced amnesia and realigned priorities, there is a lot to be learned just from various officials discussing the subjects, and attempts to recover the jugs. That’s when Echelon and SALWISS come in. As a background reading, here is more on Echelon and SALWISS.

Got milk?