[HN Gopher] Soviet radar hidden in Chernobyl's shadow
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Soviet radar hidden in Chernobyl's shadow
Author : wglb
Score : 145 points
Date : 2020-03-12 19:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| mechhacker wrote:
| I was there a few months back.
|
| If you go on the day-long Chernobyl tour from Kiev, they will
| take you into Pripyat as well as the Duga radar installation.
|
| It's a very interesting trip.
|
| I took some photos inside the radar control building. They had a
| lot of soviet era electronics laying around, as well as pictures
| of expected U.S. missiles that they were meant to track.
|
| https://thesolidconcept.com/a-trip-to-chernobyl/
| folli wrote:
| I really enjoyed the read, thanks!
| walrus01 wrote:
| People have flown FPV quadcopters around it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhJpdCZNSDc
| trevyn wrote:
| TLDW: A 1970s over-the-horizon radar for ICBMs that apparently
| didn't work very well.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar
| rrmoelker wrote:
| I couldn't quite figure out from the video if it was an early
| launch detection system and/or a signal jammer. Cause the video
| mentions both.
|
| A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article also didn't clear it
| up. Does anyone know?
| reportgunner wrote:
| From reading the wikipedia article it seems like it was
| primarily a launch detection system that had a side effect of
| jamming signal.
| sciurus wrote:
| It was a detection system, but it operated on frequencies
| that already in use by shortwave broadcast stations (much
| more prevalent then than now), amateur radio operators, etc
| and interfered with them.
|
| You can get more details on how it and similar systems work
| at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar
| saber6 wrote:
| Fun fact: The radar in PUBG was based off the Duga radar.
| greatartiste wrote:
| The Russians have just started transmitting from a new OTHR
| called Konteyner ..
|
| https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/russian-othr...
|
| also ..
|
| https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/konteyner-fo...
|
| The HF bands are full of OTHRs at the moment. There are Russian
| ones , Iranian ones and a British one from Cyprus among many
| others.
| jve wrote:
| Thar guy takes out his phone and says something along the lines
| that the phone is way better than that, believe me.
|
| Really? Is phone hardware capable of transmitting that far? I
| have hard time believing that. Processing power? Sure.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Of course it can transmit that far, it just takes a few hops.
|
| What he was actually comparing the phone with was the so-called
| "huge computer" that processed all the data wires coming from
| the radar receiver sensors, not the radar transmitter itself.
|
| 4:25> Each radio receiver has lots of sensors. Each sensor has
| to be supplied with data wires and power. All data wires were
| going to the main control centre. It looked like a huge (let's
| say) computer. But believe me, this thing (waves phone) is much
| better than anything here. (laughs)
| timeattack wrote:
| Whenever I read, see or, especially, visit such enormous
| abandoned man-made objects I have very specific feeling which is
| hard to put in words. Some wild yet soothing blend of awe and
| fear.
|
| Does anyone else experience it? Is there a name for such feeling?
| mesofile wrote:
| Really I think you're just describing awe, which as
| traditionally defined [0] always included (or at least,
| certainly did not preclude) an element of fear. This seems
| completely natural to me, but I grew up with a sort of old-
| fashioned understanding of certain English words. The use of
| the adjective 'awesome' in recent decades has perhaps helped
| people to forget its negative connotations.
|
| [0] "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration and
| wonder" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/awe
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I once watched a old black and white video on YouTube of an
| Ekranoplan (ground-effect vehicle) flying / gliding on the sea.
|
| I was terrified the whole time and I'm still terrified if I
| look at it again. I have no idea why (I can watch any military
| hardware video without any fear).
| nitrogen wrote:
| Videos I've seen of the sound of an A-10 firing its main gun
| can inspire similar feelings, particularly when you hear the
| supersonic crack of the individual rounds before the rumble
| of the gun itself.
| paulmd wrote:
| I mean, it is conceptually kind of a nerve-wracking thing to
| fly. It's a plane that is constantly two seconds from nailing
| the ground/sea and crashing. And as you're ripping along at
| 300 mph you have to constantly scan for any ships that might
| be in your way, because you can't just fly over them.
|
| One of the noted problems with it was pilot fatigue, for
| exactly this reason.
| nradov wrote:
| Ground effect aircraft are usually designed with enough
| extra power available that they can temporarily climb to
| higher altitudes to avoid surface obstacles or high waves,
| at the cost of increased fuel consumption.
| jellyksong wrote:
| The sublime.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)
| rubenrails wrote:
| Probably you're already familiar with it, but if not, you'll
| love this:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AbandonedPorn/
| t3rabytes wrote:
| Same here, I also have the same feeling in very large rooms
| when I'm not on the floor -- say an engine room in a ship.
| ericwood wrote:
| This definitely resonates with me. These sorts of constructions
| have been an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember.
| There's a very specific feeling they conjure that I've never
| been able to put into words either, and I'm guessing it's
| similar to what you're feeling! There's definitely a morbid
| curiosity aspect to it which is why seemingly sinister things
| like this (or my fave, 33 Thomas St) have even more appeal.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| In case you have not heard of it: The video game Control is
| set in a building inspired by Oldest House:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_(video_game)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've seen this used as a location in movie/tv show. It was used
| as the wall/barrier/border. I can't remember which one though.
| If it was not the actual Russian site, it had to have been the
| source of inspiration for the artists working on the show. I
| had to pause the show to look up images of the antenna array
| for comparison, and it was spot on. Just wish I could remember
| the title to look for screen shots.
| ikura wrote:
| I think you're thinking of the movie "Divergent"
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, I think that was it. Thanks. Pretty sad that I
| remember nothing about the movie except this minor thing.
|
| https://www.tumblr.com/search/divergent%20locations
| creeble wrote:
| Totally. It's like that sound obsession thing, what's it
| called?
|
| It's a deep, weird variation of _awe_.
|
| Btw, the US PAVE PAWS [0] doesn't quite do it, maybe not big
| enough. Weird though.
|
| [0] https://www.peterson.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001504934/
| yetihehe wrote:
| Probably you mean kenopsia[0]?
|
| [0]
| https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/27720773573/...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| That's the perfect word to describe many cities and public
| spaces today.
| casefields wrote:
| So that's what I feel on massive sound stages that are dark
| after we are done shooting for the day.
| stevehawk wrote:
| The secret radar? The massive, seen from the air, heard on the
| radio, reproduced in one of the top selling games of the last few
| years (PUBG) radar is a secret?
|
| I can't wait to hear about the secret arch built in St Louis for
| the World Fair.
| rospaya wrote:
| So secret that I booked a trip there a year ago and visited.
| And knew about it beforehand.
| finleymedia wrote:
| Pictures of the radar array show up on Reddit r/AbandonedPorn
| all of the time. People have climbed on top of it for pictures.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| not when it was turned on though...
| wglb wrote:
| The signals were not secret, the physical structure was not
| necessarily viewed in the west until satellites took pictures.
| Certainly the mission in all its details and expectations are
| still classified and therefore secret.
| teeray wrote:
| It was apparently informally known as "the woodpecker" because of
| the sound of the interference it would make. It's interesting to
| read the amateur radio community's response to it at the time:
| https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html
|
| > "If you want to screw up a radar signal, all you have to do is
| send a return signal on its frequency which blocks out the echos.
| Hams, from the earliest woodpecker days, have been driving the
| monster off their bands by getting on the frequency and sending
| properly spaced dots back. The screen somewhere in Russia blanks
| out and the operators utter some Russian oaths and change the
| frequency to get rid of the interference."
| xxpor wrote:
| The opposite behavior is kind of scary. What prevents someone
| from faking a "missile echo" response?
| paulmd wrote:
| wikipedia says the transmitter used a pseudorandom sequence,
| so unless you could copy the PRNG output then you couldn't
| predict the sequence and generate appropriate returns.
|
| Amateurs would just jam the whole frequency so the radar
| couldn't hear any returns at all.
| oliveshell wrote:
| What the Hams are doing is radar jamming/interference; it's
| not the ability to make the radar screen show whatever you'd
| like. That would be much, much, much more difficult (if it's
| even possible).
|
| As far as this sort of spoofing between nation-state actors,
| discussion is difficult because both the U.S. and Russia have
| been developing sophisticated 'electronic countermeasures'
| [1] for decades, and all their most interesting capabilities
| in this regard are certainly classified.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_countermeasure
| jeherr wrote:
| Put a reinforcement learning network on the task to
| recreate signals from a radar with a ham radio and see if
| it can learn it. That would be pretty sweet.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Well, that is kind of stale news. The sending of a few dots
| worked for a few weeks. I even participated. But a pack of
| angry hams sending dots was worse than the woodpecker. But
| anyway, after moving off the ham bands for a while, the
| woodpecker came back with a chirped signal. That was
| essentially unjammable.
|
| Over-the-horizon HF radar needs to closely follow the MUF,
| staying just under it. So the woodpecker would drift up and
| down through the ham bands as the day want on.
| femto wrote:
| I was working on the Jindalee OTHR at the time. We used to
| sit in the control room listening in on the Woodpecker. We
| also had quite a bit more power then the HAMs (beamformed) so
| they didn't ignore us.
|
| (Jindalee also stayed clear of the HAM bands. The radar had
| frequency exclusion tables built into it and there was a
| switch which allowed the tables to be overridden if
| necessary. A number of techs were HAMs and made sure the HAM
| bands were respected.)
| dboreham wrote:
| I've visited, including inside, the US equivalent :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FPQ-16_PARCS
|
| This was before 9/11. Probably these are no longer allowed, but
| they would have an annual "open house", and my wife is from that
| area (which is sparsely populated) so we'd pop in. Inside I saw a
| 16-CPU parallel processing system developed by Western Electric
| specifically for this project in the late 60's (still operating).
| vsnf wrote:
| I've visited this radar installation - of course, as another
| poster pointed out it was an OTH missile detection system. But a
| fun conspiracy theory floated by my guide was that this
| installation was intended as a Soviet weather control experiment.
| The evidence for that, such as it can be considered, was that
| allegedly there were supposed to be 12 reactors at Chernobyl, not
| just the famously exploded Reactor 4, which would have been an
| immense amount of energy production capability for one single
| location. Additionally, the nearby Pripyat was inhabited by the
| brightest of the bright, most elite of the Soviet population in
| an already highly secret portion of the Soviet Union. Who better
| to attempt that sort of endeavor? Plus, what powerful government
| doesn't wish it could control the weather?
|
| Whether or not it's true, it clearly didn't work. But it sure is
| fun to think about.
|
| edit: typos
|
| Also, while I was there I picked up some forgotten artifacts in
| the form of old computer operations manuals, including one for
| the Russian ES EVM, which was a copy of the System/360. I scanned
| all the pages, maybe it would be interesting some people here:
| https://chernobylbooks.netlify.com/
| dylan604 wrote:
| The US had HAARP[0] which was researching use of high frequency
| radio waves in the upper atmosphere which was also surrounded
| by conspiracy theories. One theory was that HAARP was
| responsible for the massive flooding in the early 90s of the
| Mississippi river due to the Jet Stream to severely change
| course due to the effects of HAARP. Another was that HAARP
| opened up a hole in the atmosphere which allowed a small
| portion of Alaska to receive a much more intense dosing of
| solar radiation.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_
| ...
| [deleted]
| jlj wrote:
| HAARP isn't the same type of installation as the Soviet
| example in the article. It is a radio transmitter, not used
| for radar.
|
| Alaska had the "dew line" which was an installation similar
| to the Soviets for detection of ICBM's. It covered the
| perimeter of the horizon towards Russia.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line
|
| Clear AFB in Alaska has (maybe had) an operational radar
| station that looks very similar to the Russian one. Saw it in
| person a few times driving by as a kid. Not sure if it still
| exists or was upgraded with something smaller.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sorry, wasn't trying to compare HAARP to Woodpecker by like
| for like purposes. I was mentioning more on totally odd
| radio installations cloaked in conspiracy.
| creeble wrote:
| For non-hams, "high frequncy" here refers to the "HF" band of
| roughly 3-30MHz.
|
| Or, as anyone else might call it, low frequency.
|
| Afaik, it didn't work at whatever it was trying to do, which
| IIIRC had something to do with submarines.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That was one of the stated purposes. They thought that they
| would be able to communicate with deeply submerged
| submarines with something more than 3 letter codes using
| ELF. They also thought they would be able to communicate
| further distances by reflecting the signals off of the
| ionosphere. They also thought they could disrupt warheads
| on re-entry. There was a lot of ideas about this place. I
| guess when you are getting the government to fund such a
| project it's going to need a lot of things it can pivot to
| when the original idea fails.
| johnbrodie wrote:
| I went there too, trip of a lifetime. Of course, the disaster
| tourism angle makes it hard to get too excited, especially if
| you've spent time in Ukraine and spoken with the people
| affected.
|
| Either way, the pictures do not do justice to the true scale of
| this thing. You come around the corner of an old single lane
| road through the woods and suddenly you can see part of it. It
| just keeps on getting larger and larger looking as you get
| closer.
|
| Our tour was allowed to climb up a few levels, but most of us
| chickened out at the first platform.
| ar4herjer5hjr5 wrote:
| There is a now-defunct Soviet-equivalent to HAARP called Sura
| Ionospheric Heating Facility, as well as facilities in Ukraine
| that contain similar arrays of antennae:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sura_Ionospheric_Heating_Facil...
|
| http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/10/abandoned-ionospheri...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpN3KXLgCz0 (location not
| disclosed, but this Youtuber makes several videos of abandoned
| sites around Ukraine)
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I visited the Duga installation a couple of years ago (along with
| Chernobyl) and it really was utterly inspiring. I highly
| recommend it for nerds and non-nerds alike.
| tastroder wrote:
| Huh, that looked familiar, YouTuber shiey climbed around on that
| thing a few months back: https://youtu.be/jGPjj4B_jEk?t=7755
| ripley12 wrote:
| His footage from Duga is really amazing, he managed to shoot it
| with incredible lighting from the sunrise. I'd strongly
| recommend checking this out even if urbex isn't normally your
| thing.
| spongeb00b wrote:
| His channel is well worth watching for anyone who dreams of
| being so fearless to sneak into factories and climb
| unbelievably high structures.
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| Apparently it never worked properly (from
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2017.13...):
|
| > Meanwhile, the top Soviet EW warning commanders called OTH
| radar "virtually useless."[88] Danilevich agreed, arguing that
| LUA was impossible before the development of satellites: "there
| were only above-the-horizon systems; there were no over-the-
| horizon systems ... These systems were not sufficiently reliable.
| They did not allow the reliable detection of launches. The only
| way to reliably determine the beginning of an attack is through
| human intelligence, but it is dubious that such data could be
| obtained."[89] Apparently OTH radar operators would consult
| public reports about planned NASA space launches and then claim
| that they had tracked a launch on the appropriate day. But the
| ruse became obvious when weather delayed a launch.[90]
|
| [88] Fischer, "The Soviet-American War Scare of the 1980s," 502.
| [89] Hines interview with Col. Gen. Danilevich, 24 September
| 1992, in Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, "Soviet Intentions
| 1965-1985, Vol. II", 41. [90] Bruce G. Blair, The Logic of
| Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution
| Press, 1993), 205.
| gumby wrote:
| Warning: video
| ohiovr wrote:
| It became the brain scorcher in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadow of
| chernobyl games.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Wow, the Pokemon Go graffiti at 4:58 is hilarious!
| CalChris wrote:
| The Stanford Dish, built in 1961, was used to detect these and
| other sorts of signals. Rather than over the horizon it was via
| earth moon earth bounce.
|
| https://medium.com/dish/tech-history-the-story-behind-stanfo...
| kratom_sandwich wrote:
| For a longer and more detailed treatment of the Duga antenna and
| its connection to Cherbobyl, I can recommend the documentary "The
| Russian Woodpecker":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russian_Woodpecker
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