A few days ago, a publication appeared on Voennoye Obozreniye in the News section, which spoke of the transfer of several S-300PS air defense missile systems to Kazakhstan. A number of site visitors have taken the liberty of suggesting that this is a Russian payment for the use of an early warning missile station on the shores of Lake Balkhash. In order to understand what the modern Russian early warning system is and how much Russia needs this facility in independent Kazakhstan, let's go back to the past.
In the second half of the 60s, land-based ballistic missiles and deployed on submarines became the main means of delivering nuclear weapons, and long-range bombers were relegated to the background. Unlike bombers, nuclear warheads of ICBMs and SLBMs on the trajectory were practically invulnerable, and the flight time to the target, in comparison with bombers, decreased many times over. It was with the help of ICBMs that the Soviet Union managed to achieve nuclear parity with the United States. Prior to that, the Americans, who had invested huge amounts of money in the air defense system of North America (USA and Canada), not without reason hoped to repel attacks from relatively few Soviet long-range bombers. However, after the massive deployment of ICBM positions in the USSR, the alignment of forces and predicted scenarios of a nuclear conflict changed dramatically. Under the new conditions, the United States could no longer sit out overseas and hope that Europe and northeast Asia would become the main areas of use of nuclear weapons. This circumstance led to a change in the approaches and views of the American military-political leadership on the methods and means of ensuring security and the prospects for the development of strategic nuclear forces. By the beginning of the 70s, there was a reduction in the number of radar posts for illuminating the air situation in North America, primarily this affected the ships of the radar patrol. On the territory of the United States, numerous positions of long-range air defense systems, useless against Soviet ICBMs, were almost completely eliminated. In turn, the Soviet Union was in a more difficult situation, the proximity of numerous American bases and airfields of tactical and strategic aviation forced to spend huge amounts of money on air defense.
As ICBMs and SLBMs became the backbone of nuclear arsenals, the creation of systems capable of timely detecting missile launches and calculating their trajectories in order to determine the degree of danger began. Otherwise, one of the parties received the opportunity to deliver a preemptive disarming strike. At the first stage, over-the-horizon radars with a detection range of 2000-3000 km, which corresponded to the notification time of 10-15 minutes before approaching the target, became the means of warning about a missile attack. In this regard, the Americans deployed their AN / FPS-49 stations in the UK, Turkey, Greenland and Alaska - as close as possible to Soviet missile positions. However, the initial task of these radars was to provide information about a missile attack for anti-missile defense (ABM) systems, and not to ensure the possibility of a retaliatory strike.
In the USSR, the design of such stations began in the mid-50s. The Sary-Shagan training ground became the main object, where the missile defense research was carried out. It was here, in addition to purely anti-missile systems, that radar and computing facilities were developed that could detect a launch and calculate with high accuracy the trajectories of enemy ballistic missiles at a distance of several thousand kilometers. On the shore of Lake Balkhash, adjacent to the territory of the test site, head copies of new radars of the missile attack warning system (SPRN) were subsequently built and tested.
In 1961, with the help of the station TsSO-P (Central Range Detection Station), it was possible to find and track a real target here. To transmit and receive a signal, the CSO-P, operating in the meter range, had a horn antenna 250 m long and 15 m high. In addition to practicing missile defense radar missions, CSO-P monitored spacecraft launches, it also studied the effect of high-altitude nuclear explosions on electronic equipment … The experience gained during the creation of the CSO-P was useful in the creation of the Danube missile defense radar with a detection range of objects up to 1,200 km, operating in the meter range.
Using the developments in the radar station TsSO-P, a network of stations "Dniester" was created. Each radar used two "wings" of the TsSO-P, in the center was a two-story building, which housed a command post and a computer system. Each wing covered a 30 ° sector in azimuth, the scanning pattern along the height was 20 °. The Dniester station was planned to be used for the guidance of anti-missile and anti-satellite systems. Construction of two radar nodes was carried out, spaced apart in latitude. This was necessary for the formation of a radar field with a length of 5000 km. One node (OS-1) was erected near Irkutsk (Mishelevka), the other (OS-2) at Cape Gulshat, on the shore of Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan. Four stations with chillers were erected at each site. In 1967, the radar station "Dnestr" took up combat duty and became part of the outer space control system (SKKP).
However, for the purposes of early warning systems, these stations were not suitable, the military was not satisfied with the detection range, low resolution and noise immunity. Therefore, a modified version of the Dniester-M was created. The hardware of the Dnestr and Dnestr-M radars was similar (except for the installation of antenna sectors at the angles of the elevation), but their work programs were significantly different. This is because detecting a missile launch required an elevation scan ranging from 10 ° -30 °. In addition, at the Dnestr-M station, the element base was partially transferred to semiconductors in order to improve reliability.
To test the key elements of the Dniester-M, a facility was built at the Sary-Shagan test site, which received the designation TsSO-PM. The tests showed that, in comparison with the Dniester stations, the resolution increased by 10-15 times, the detection range reached 2500 km. The first early warning radars, which are part of separate radio engineering units (ORTU), began to function in the early 70s. These were two stations of the Dnestr-M type on the Kola Peninsula near Olenegorsk (RO-1 node) and in Latvia in Skrunda (RO-2 node). These stations were intended to detect approaching warheads from the North Pole and track launches of PRBMs in the Norwegian and North Seas.
In addition to the construction of new ones, for their use in the missile attack warning system (scanning in elevation 10 ° - 30 °), two existing stations at the OS-1 and OS-2 nodes were modernized. Two other stations "Dniester" remained unchanged for space monitoring (scanning in elevation 10 ° - 90 °). Simultaneously with the construction of new radar early warning systems in Solnechnogorsk near Moscow, the construction of a missile attack warning center (GC PRN) began. The exchange of information between radio engineering units and the main center of the PRN went through special communication lines. By order of the Minister of Defense of the USSR of February 15, 1971, a separate anti-missile surveillance division was put on alert, this day is considered the beginning of the work of the early warning system of the USSR.
On January 18, 1972, by a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a decision was approved to create a unified missile attack warning system. It includes ground-based radars and space surveillance equipment. The Soviet early warning system was supposed to promptly inform the military-political leadership about a missile attack from the United States and ensure the guaranteed implementation of a retaliatory counter strike. To achieve the maximum warning time, it was supposed to use special satellites and over-the-horizon radars capable of detecting ICBMs in the active phase of the flight. The detection of missile warheads in the late sections of the ballistic trajectory was envisaged using the already created over-the-horizon radars. This duplication makes it possible to significantly increase the reliability of the system and reduce the likelihood of errors, since different physical principles are used to detect launching missiles and warheads: fixing the thermal radiation of the engine of the launching ICBM by satellite sensors and registering the reflected radio signal by radars. After the start of the unified missile attack warning system, the stations "Danube-3" (Kubinka) and "Danube-3U" (Chekhov) of the Moscow missile defense system A-35 were integrated into it.
Radar "Danube-3U"
Radar "Danube-3" consisted of two antennas, spaced apart on the ground, receiving and transmitting equipment, a computer complex and auxiliary devices that ensure the operation of the station. The maximum target detection range reached 1200 km. At the moment the radars of the Danube family are not functioning.
As a result of further improvement of the "Dnestr-M" radar, a new station "Dnepr" was created. On it, the viewing sector of each antenna in azimuth is doubled (60 ° instead of 30 °). Despite the fact that the antenna horn was shortened from 20 to 14 meters, thanks to the introduction of a polarization filter, it was possible to increase the measurement accuracy in elevation. The use of more powerful transmitters and their phasing in the antenna led to an increase in the detection range to 4000 km. New computers made it possible to process information twice as fast.
Radar station "Dnepr" near Sevastopol
Radar "Dnepr" also consisted of two "wings" of a two-sector horn antenna 250 m long and 14 m high. It had two rows of slot antennas in two waveguides with a set of transmitting and receiving equipment. Each row generates a signal scanning a sector of 30 ° in azimuth (60 ° per antenna) and 30 ° in elevation (5 ° to 35 ° in height) with frequency control. Thus, it was possible to provide scanning of 120 ° in azimuth and 30 ° in elevation.
The first Dnepr station was put into operation in May 1974 at the Sary-Shagan test site (OS-2 node). It was followed by a radar station near Sevastopol (RO-4 node) and Mukachevo (RO-5 node). Later, other radars were modernized, with the exception of the stations for tracking objects in space in Sary-Shagan and Mishelevka near Irkutsk.
Radar station "Daugava" near Olenegorsk
In 1978, the Daugava installation with active antenna arrays with phase control was introduced into the node in Olenegorsk (RO-1), after which the station received the designation "Dnepr-M". Thanks to the modernization, it was possible to increase the noise immunity, reduce the impact on the reliability of information from the aurora in the ionosphere, and also increase the reliability of the node as a whole. The technical solutions used on the Daugava, such as the receiving equipment and the computer complex, were later used to create the next generation Daryal radar.
Dnepr radar antenna at the Sary-Shagan training ground
Evaluating the Soviet first-generation early warning radars, it can be noted that they fully corresponded to the tasks assigned to them. At the same time, a large, highly qualified staff of technicians was required to ensure the operation of the stations. The hardware part of the stations was largely built on electric vacuum devices, which, with very good gain values and a low level of intrinsic noise, were very energy-intensive and changed their characteristics over time. Bulky transmit and receive antennas also required attention and regular maintenance. Despite all these shortcomings, the operation of some radars of this type continued until recently, and the transmitter of the Dnepr radar near Olenegorsk is still used in conjunction with the receiving part of the Daugava. The Dnepr station on the Kola Peninsula is planned to be shaded in the near future by the Voronezh family radar. As of January 1, 2014, there were three Dnepr radars in operation - Olenegorsk, Sary-Shagan and Mishelevka.
Google earth snapshot: radio engineering center of early warning system in the Irkutsk region
Station "Dnepr" in the Irkutsk region (OS-1), apparently, is no longer on alert, since a modern radar "Voronezh-M" has been built nearby, two antennas of which with a viewing sector of 240 ° allow you to control the territory from the west coast of the United States to India. It is known that in 1993, on the basis of another radar station "Dnepr" in Mishelevka, the Observatory for Radiophysical Diagnostics of the Atmosphere of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences was created.
Google earth snapshot: Dnepr radar station at the Sary-Shagan training ground
The joint use of the Dnepr radar station in Ukraine (near Sevastopol and Mukachevo) since 1992 has been regulated by the Russian-Ukrainian agreement. Maintenance and operation of the stations was carried out by Ukrainian personnel, and the information received was sent to the Main Center of the PRN (Solnechnogorsk). According to the intergovernmental agreement, Russia annually transferred to Ukraine up to 1.5 million dollars for this. In 2005, after the Russian side refused to increase the payment for the use of radar information, the stations were transferred to the subordination of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU). It is worth saying that Russia had every reason to refuse to discuss the increase in the cost of payment. Information from Ukrainian stations was received irregularly, in addition, President Viktor Yushchenko officially allowed American representatives at the station, which Russia could not prevent. In this regard, our country had to urgently deploy new Voronezh-DM radar stations on its territory near Armavir and in the Kaliningrad region.
In early 2009, the Dnepr radar stations in Sevastopol and Mukachevo stopped transmitting information to Russia. Independent Ukraine had no need for an early warning radar station, the leadership of "Nezalezhnaya" decided to dismantle both stations and disband the military units that were involved in their protection and maintenance. At the moment, the station in Mukachevo is in the process of being dismantled. Due to the well-known events, the dismantling of the capital structures of the Dnepr radar station in Sevastopol did not have time to start, but the station itself was partially looted and is inoperative. The Russian media reported that the Dnepr station in Crimea is planned to be commissioned, but this seems to be an extremely unlikely event. The developer of the stations is the Academician A. L. Mintsa (RTI), who was also engaged in modernization and technical support throughout the entire life cycle, said that these over-the-horizon early warning radar stations for more than 40 years of service are hopelessly outdated and fully depleted. Investing in their repair and modernization is an absolutely hopeless occupation, and it would be much more rational to build a new modern station on this site with better characteristics and lower operating costs.
It is unclear whether the Dnepr radar station is still in use in Kazakhstan (OS-2). According to the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine, this station was redesigned from tracking space objects to detecting real launches of foreign ballistic missiles. Since 2001, the Sary-Shagan radio engineering center has been on alert as part of the Space Forces and has provided control over missile-hazardous areas from Pakistan, the western and central parts of the PRC, covers India and part of the Indian Ocean. However, despite repeated modernization, this radar, created half a century ago, is worn out, outdated and very costly to operate. Even if it is still efficient, its withdrawal from combat duty is a matter of the near future.
In the early 70s, in connection with the emergence of new types of threats, such as multiple warheads of ICBMs and active and passive means of jamming early warning radars, the creation of new types of radars began. As already mentioned, some of the technical solutions implemented in the next generation stations were applied in the Daugava installation - a reduced receiving part of the new Daryal radar. It was planned that eight stations of the second generation, located along the perimeter of the USSR, would replace the Dnepr radar.
The first station was planned to be built in the Far North - on the Alexandra Land island of the Franz Josef Land archipelago. This was due to the desire to achieve the maximum warning time in the main missile-hazardous direction. Perhaps an example in this case was the American radar station in Greenland. Due to the extreme climatic conditions, when creating the new radar, strict building standards were laid: for example, the top of the receiving structure with a height of 100 meters with a hurricane wind of 50 m / s should not deviate by more than 10 cm. The transmitting and receiving positions are separated by 900 meters. The capacity of life support and energy systems would be sufficient for a city with a population of 100 thousand people. It was planned to equip the station with its own nuclear power plant. However, due to the excessive cost and complexity of the Daryal radar, it was decided to build in the Pechora region. At the same time, the construction of the Pechora SDPP began, which was supposed to provide the facility with electricity. The construction of the station proceeded with great difficulties: for example, on July 27, 1979, a fire broke out on an almost finished radar during adjustment work at the transmitting center. Almost 80% of the radio-transparent coating was burnt out, about 70% of the transmitters were burnt or covered with soot.
Radar "Daryal" (transmitter on the left, receiver on the right)
The Daryal radar antennas (transmitting and receiving) are 1.5 km apart. The transmitting antenna is an active phased array with a size of 40 × 40 meters, filled with 1260 replaceable modules with an output pulse power of 300 kW each. The receiving antenna with a size of 100 × 100 meters is an active phased array (PAR) with 4000 cross-vibrators placed in it. Radar "Daryal" operates in the meter range. It is capable of detecting and simultaneously tracking about 100 targets with an RCS of the order of 0.1 m² at a distance of up to 6000 km. The field of view is 90 ° in azimuth and 40 ° in elevation. With very high performance, the construction of stations of this type turned out to be extremely costly.
Planned geography of the Daryal radar station
The first station near Pechera (RO-30 unit) was put into service on January 20, 1984, and on March 20 of the same year was put on alert. She has the ability to control the area up to the northern coast of Alaska and Canada and completely views the area over Greenland. The station in the north of 1985 was followed by a second radar station, the so-called Gabala radar station (RO-7 node) in Azerbaijan.
Gabala radar station
On the whole, the fate of the project was unfortunate: of the eight planned stations, only two were put into operation. In 1978, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the vicinity of the village of Abalakovo, the construction of the third station of the Daryal type began. During the years of "perestroika", nine years after the start of work, when hundreds of millions of rubles had already been spent, our leadership decided to make a "gesture of goodwill" to the Americans and suspended construction. And already in 1989 it was decided to demolish the almost completely built station.
The construction of an early warning radar station in the area of the Mishelevka village in the Irkutsk region continued until 1991. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was discontinued. For some time, this station was a subject of bargaining with the United States, the Americans offered to finance its completion in exchange for withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. In June 2011, the radar station was demolished, and in 2012 a new radar station of the Voronezh-M type was built on the site of the transmitting position.
In 1984, at ORTU "Balkhash" (Kazakhstan), the construction of a radar station according to the improved project "Daryal-U" began. By 1991, the station was brought to the stage of factory testing. But in 1992, all work was frozen due to lack of funding. In 1994, the station was mothballed, and in January 2003 it was transferred to independent Kazakhstan. On September 17, 2004, as a result of the deliberate arson of the receiving position, a fire broke out, destroying all equipment. In 2010, during an unauthorized dismantling, the building collapsed, and in 2011 the buildings of the transmission position were dismantled.
Burning building of the reception center of the station "Daryal" at the landfill "Sary-Shagan"
The fate of other stations of this type was no less deplorable. The construction of a Daryal-U type radar station at Cape Chersonesos, near Sevastopol, which began in 1988, was discontinued in 1993. Radar stations "Daryal-UM" in Ukraine in Mukachevo and in Latvia in Skrunda, which were in a high degree of readiness, were blown up under US pressure. Due to technical problems and high power consumption, the Gabala radar station in the last years of its existence functioned with periodic short-term switching on in the "combat operation" mode. After Azerbaijan tried to raise rents, in 2013 Russia abandoned the use of the station and handed it over to Azerbaijan. Part of the equipment was dismantled and transported to Russia. The station in Gabala was replaced by the Voronezh-DM radar near Armavir.
Google earth snapshot: Daryal radar station in the Komi Republic
The only operating radar station of the "Daryal" type is the station in the Komi Republic. After the closure of the radar station in Gabala, it was also planned to dismantle it, and at this place to build a new radar station "Voronezh-VP". However, some time ago, the press service of the RF Ministry of Defense announced that the station should undergo a deep modernization in 2016.
In addition to over-the-horizon radars in the Soviet early warning system, there were over-the-horizon radar stations (ZGRLS) of the "Duga" type, they used the effect of two-hop over-the-horizon radar. Under favorable conditions, these stations were able to observe high-altitude aerial targets, for example, to record the massive takeoff of American strategic bombers, but they were mainly intended to detect plasma "cocoons" formed during the operation of engines of massively launched ICBMs.
The first prototype ZGRLS "Duga" began to function near Nikolaev in the early 70s. The station demonstrated its efficiency by recording the moment of the launch of Soviet ballistic missiles from the Far East and the Pacific Ocean. After evaluating the results of trial operation, it was decided to build two more over-the-horizon radars of this type: in the vicinity of Chernobyl and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. These stations were intended for preliminary detection of the launch of ICBMs from the territory of the United States, before they could be seen by the radars "Dnepr" and "Daryal". Their construction is estimated at more than 300 million rubles in prices of the early 80s.
Control sectors ZGRLS "Duga"
ZGRLS "Duga-1" near Chernobyl was put into operation in 1985. I must say that the location of this station was not chosen by chance, the proximity to the nuclear power plant ensured a reliable power supply with a very high energy consumption of this facility. But later this was the reason for the hasty withdrawal of the radar from operation due to the radiation contamination of the area.
The station, sometimes referred to as "Chernobyl-2", was impressive in size. Since one antenna could not cover the operating frequency band: 3, 26 -17, 54 MHz, the entire range was divided into two sub-bands, and there were also two antenna arrays. The height of the high-frequency antenna masts is from 135 to 150 meters. In the Google Earth images, the length is approximately 460 meters. The high-frequency antenna is up to 100 meters high; its length in Google Earth images is 230 meters. The radar antennas are built on the principle of a phased array antenna. The ZGRLS transmitter was located 60 km from the receiving antennas, in the area of the village of Rassudovo (Chernihiv region).
Vibrators of the receiving antenna ZGRLS "Duga-1"
After the launch of the station, it turned out that its transmitter began to block radio frequencies and frequencies intended for the operation of aviation dispatch services. Subsequently, the radar was modified to pass these frequencies. The frequency range has also changed, after the upgrade - 5-28 MHz.
Google earth snapshot: ZGRLS "Duga-1" in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
However, the Chernobyl accident prevented putting the modernized radar on alert. Initially, the station was mothballed, but later it became clear that with the existing level of radiation it would not be possible to return it to operation, and it was decided to dismantle the main radio-electronic units of the ZGRLS and take them to the Far East. At the moment, the remaining structures of the station have become a local landmark; with such dimensions, the receiving antennas are visible from almost anywhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
In the Far East, the receiving antenna and the Krug ionosphere sounding station, which was intended as an auxiliary to the ZGRLS, as well as to generate current information about the passage of radio waves, the state of the environment of their passage, the choice of the optimal frequency range, were placed 35 km from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, not far from the village of Kartel. The transmitter was located 30 km north of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, near the military town "Lian-2", in which the 1530th anti-aircraft missile regiment is stationed. However, in the Far East, the ZGRLS service was also short-lived. After a fire in November 1989, which happened in the receiving center, the station was not restored, the dismantling of the receiving antenna structures began in 1998.
A snapshot of the ZGRLS receiving antenna near Komsomolsk shortly before its dismantling
The author happened to be present at this event. Dismantling was accompanied by a total plundering of the entire reception center, even communication equipment still suitable for further use, elements of the energy and cable facilities were mercilessly destroyed by the "metalworkers". Spherical elements of vibrators, which were used as a metal frame in the construction of greenhouses, were very popular among local residents. Even earlier, the Krug ionosphere sounding station was completely destroyed. At present, fragments of concrete structures and underground structures filled with water have remained at this place. On the territory where the receiving antenna of the Duga ZGRLS was once located, the S-300PS anti-aircraft missile division is currently located, covering the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur from the south-western direction.
