In the field of creating devices for the destruction of their own kind, people, perhaps, have reached perfection - the entire surface of the planet is dotted with military objects: bases, fortresses, fortifications, missile ranges and coastal artillery batteries … Among them there are truly enchanting specimens - for example, the legendary Grum airbase Lake, better known as Area 51. The Tyura-Tam rocket range, which later became the Baikonur cosmodrome. The formidable adornments of many European cities are the "anti-aircraft towers of the Luftwaffe." Daryal missile attack warning station. 30 km ZEUS low-frequency transmitter. The Great Wall of China, finally.
The list could be endless, but there are exactly 10 positions in the top ten. This review presents 10 of the rarest, most amazing and, to some extent, paradoxical of modern military facilities.
For example, the place where the aircraft of the first largest air force in the world are stored in conservation - more than 4400 units of aviation and rocket and space technology are arranged in even rows in the middle of the Arizona desert. Like terracotta warriors from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the planes froze in anticipation of their hour X.
The giant open-air storage of aircraft is nothing more than Davis-Montan airbase., the seat of the 309th US Air Force Aerospace Repair and Maintenance Group (309th AMARG). Each "mummy" of the aircraft stored here is carefully wrapped in plastic film, the insides are carefully removed - the decommissioned aircraft is an object of "cannibalization" and a source of spare parts for combat vehicles.
The Davis-Montan hangars are in full swing - the outdated Falkens and Phantoms are being converted into unmanned drones and QF-4 and QF-16 aerial targets. Specialists in "aviation archeology" scrupulously poke around in the remains of old cars, the most recent samples are selected for subsequent modernization and sale to third countries.
The airbase is a source of considerable income - according to the Pentagon, every dollar invested here brings in $ 11 in profit. And the fantastic landscapes of Davis-Montan themselves are in great demand among directors of Hollywood ("Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Cowboy").
Siachen
“Leave talking! Forward and upward, and there … After all, these are our mountains - They will help us!"
The world's highest theater of military operations, located on the body of the Siachen glacier (Karakorum mountain system, Himalayas). The main danger of these places is 6000 meters above sea level, according to scant statistics, 95% of the soldiers who died on the Siachen glacier fell victim to the unbearable natural and climatic conditions in this kingdom of scorching frost and thin air.
Not even grass grows here, but the two irreconcilable opponents continue their mad confrontation at the utmost height. The casualties of the military personnel of India and Pakistan are already in the thousands; people die en masse in avalanches, get frostbite in thousands, suffocate and disappear in the bottomless chasms of the glacier.
A quarter of a century ago, a real ice battle took place here, and most of the Siachen glacier came under the control of India. Fighting in such extreme conditions drains $ 300 million annually from the Indian treasury, but the Indians continue to stubbornly press the enemy. To date, the Indian fortified area has about 150 outposts - the highest checkpoints are located at heights of up to 7 kilometers. Fear and icy horror.
The world's highest mountain helicopter base. 6400 meters above sea level.
“The sunset flickered like the steel of a blade. Death counted its prey. The fight will be tomorrow, but for now
The platoon buried itself in the clouds. And was leaving
along the pass …"
HAARP
The HAARP research project is not deprived of attention from various conspiracy theorists, schizophrenics and other overly impressionable citizens who see climatic, geophysical or psychotronic weapons in a strange design.
Officially, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a program for the study of the Earth's ionosphere using high-frequency radiation. The scope of the program is immense: at the US Air Force Gakona (Alaska), a whole complex was built, consisting of 180 radio antennas, located on an area of 13 hectares. The antenna field is complemented by an incoherent radiation radar with a wavelength of 20 meters, a set of laser locators (lidars), magnetometers and a powerful computing center.
The declared radiation power of HAARP is 3.6 megawatts, the facility is powered by a gas power plant and six additional diesel generators.
A powerful tool allows you to stimulate specific areas of the ionosphere, like auroral flares. Officially - for studying the nature of the ionosphere, solving applied problems of radio communication at long waves, etc. innocent jokes with nature.
However, funding under Pentagon articles and the veil of secrecy surrounding HAARP raise doubts about the true purpose of the American "plasmagan". According to Russian experts, HAARP is designed to disrupt radio communications and radio navigation in any selected area of the Earth. With the help of HAARP, you can disable the equipment of ships and aircraft, burn the electronic stuffing of spacecraft. Also, the possibility of manipulating the weather on a global scale is not excluded.
Critics of conspiracy theories, on the contrary, refer to the insignificance of the energy capabilities of HAARP - the energy of processes in the earth's ionosphere (for example, under the influence of the "solar wind") exceeds the declared power of the antennas of the American installation by several orders of magnitude.
The worldwide hysteria around the secret base in Alaska ended unexpectedly - in May 2013, due to funding cuts, it was announced that the HAARP project was terminated.
SBX (Sea-Based X-band Radar)
Really? "Mobile" HAARP?
The strange design is nothing more than a naval self-propelled radar base built as part of the US missile defense program. Nominally, the SBX is assigned to the port of Adah in Alaska, but to date, the radar platform has never appeared there. Instead, the SBX travels to the Pacific Ocean where it performs missile defense missions.
The SBX is built on the basis of the CS-50 semi-submersible oil platform. Installation length - 116 meters. The height from the keel to the top of the radar fairing is 85 meters (from a 25-storey building!). The displacement is about 50,000 tons. The platform is able to travel independently over short distances - it is equipped with six 12-cylinder Caterpillar diesel generators with a capacity of 5000 hp each. each.
The main intrigue is hidden inside - under the white casing is a giant radar with an active phased array of 384 square meters. meter! The radar operates in the X-band, emitting pulses with a wavelength of 3.75 to 2.5 cm. The power consumption of the AFAR SBX is estimated at 1 megawatt.
It is reported that the vigilant station is able to "see" the warhead of a North Korean ballistic missile from a distance of 2000 km, and the unique mobility of the SBX allows you to deploy a missile defense radar installation in any corner of the oceans.
Norfolk
"Harbor of a Thousand Ships." The world's largest naval base, with countless marinas and marinas stretching 17 kilometers along the Atlantic coast.
The employees of the GVMB (main naval base) Norfolk provide more than 3,000 maritime operations per year related to the meeting, mooring and sailing of ships and vessels from dozens of countries around the world. Every six minutes Norfolk takes to the air or lands from Naval Station - Air Operations Command aircraft and private chartered airliners carry 150,000 passengers annually and deliver 260,000 tons of mail and miscellaneous cargo needed to operate the base.
Norfolk is the main base of the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet, from which operations are carried out in the Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. In addition to numerous loading and unloading berths, warehouses, arsenals and oil storage facilities, Norfolk has a solid infrastructure for the maintenance and repair of marine equipment. Near the base there are 8 shipbuilding and ship repair yards with seven dry and three floating docks, as well as 16 slipways - inclined coastal platforms for lowering ships from the slipway or lifting them out of the water using rail carts.
The water area of the naval base and port reaches 26 square meters. kilometers. The depth of the fairway passages is 13-14 meters, which allows the basing of ships of all existing classes.
Currently, the Norfolk naval base is the home base for 75 warships of the US Navy, including: five nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, nine amphibious helicopter carriers, 29 missile cruisers and destroyers, as well as six nuclear submarines and 15 vessels of the Naval Operations Command.
Balaclava
Another naval example is the secret anti-nuclear shelter for Soviet submarines, officially known as Object 825GTS.
In the early 1950s, the leadership of the USSR decided to build a super-protected submarine base. If the US Air Force manages to deliver a nuclear strike on Soviet cities, thereby ending the existence of the Soviet Union, the festive banquet at the White House will not last long - from the foot of Mount Tavros (Balaklava, Crimea) 7 "avengers of hell" will crawl out with nuclear torpedoes on board, and set off on a return visit to the shores of Europe and North America.
The underground complex was under construction for 8 years - from 1953 to 1961. The work was complicated by the strictest secrecy - the removal of the excavated soil from the adits was carried out in the middle of the night, on barges into the open sea. In total, thus, it was possible to take out 120 thousand tons of rock. A class "A" shelter capable of withstanding a direct hit from a 100 kt warhead.
An additional condition for the safety of the underground base was secrecy - the entrances to the adits were skillfully closed with camouflage nets, if necessary, they were blocked by floating hydraulic gates weighing 150 tons.
By now, the object has largely lost its significance - the dimensions of modern nuclear-powered ships do not allow them to pass inside the adit. Ten years ago, on the site of the former underground submarine base, the Balaklava Naval Museum Complex was organized. The areas around the artificial canal, which runs through the mountain, several workshops of the shipyard and the nuclear arsenal, where torpedoes and warheads were stored, are open for inspection. Domestic and foreign tourists from Europe, the USA and other countries call the underground base a "miracle of engineering".
Edwards Air Base
Yankees don’t feed hamburgers, just let’s set some record. And the bottom of Rogers Salt Lake (California) is ideal for setting records.
A specialized Air Force test facility was built here in 1932, which later became the Edwards Flight Test Center. The Yankees cleared the bottom of the dry lake, tracing 13 incredible runways on the table-smooth surface. The main attraction is the runway 18/36 (L, C and R) - the world's longest runway with dimensions of 12,000 x 290 meters.
During World War II, the Bell XP-59A "Eiracomet" jet and German captured V-2 were tested at Edwards airbase. In 1959, a 6-kilometer track was built to test ejection seats and Polaris ballistic missiles. During one of the "races" the rocket sled accelerated to 3, 3 speeds of sound, after which it went off the rails and crashed.
A number of world speed records were also set here:
- On October 14, 1947, the Bell X-1 rocket plane under the control of Chuck Yeager reached supersonic flight speed for the first time.
- in the period from 1959 to 1970, flights of hypersonic rocket gliders X-15 were carried out. After separation from the carrier (B-52 bomber), the aircraft plunged into the sky, rising to suborbital altitude and developing a speed of 5-6 M. Record figures were achieved in 1963: Joseph Walker was able to accelerate his X-15 to 6, 72M, reaching desperate "dynamic jump" of 107.9 km! After an insane 15-minute flight, the X-15s landed at the bottom of Rogers Lake.
The SR-71, YF-12 and Valkyries were tested here, from here the Hev Blue (predecessors of the F-117), B-2 stealth bombers, YF-22 and YF-23 prototypes of the future Raptor fighter flew into the air.
On April 14, 1981, an unusual guest arrived at Edwards AFB (although how can you surprise the Flight Test Center staff?) - at 10:20 local time, the Columbia shuttle crashed into the bottom of a salt lake, opening a new space page in the history of the record-breaking base.
Cheyenne Mountain
A Rocky Mountain anti-nuclear bunker, a key command post in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It was designed to coordinate the actions of the American armed forces in the event of a nuclear attack from the USSR.
The bunker is designed to protect against thermonuclear explosions with a capacity of 30 megatons. The entrance is a 1400-meter tunnel leading to the main sluice - a pair of 25-ton gates, which remain airtight at an excess external pressure of 40 atmospheres.
Inside there is an underground base with a computer center, meeting and recreation rooms, a canteen, a medical block, as well as an autonomous power plant and a water supply system. The lower levels of the bunker store 1,500 tons of diesel fuel, and there are also 4 battery groups. 6, 8 million liters of drinking water and 20 million liters of water for technical needs were pumped into four reservoirs.
To prevent the walls from collapsing in the event of a powerful shock, 1380 springs weighing 450 kg each are integrated into the structure of the bunker. Also, the integrity of the complex is ensured by 115 thousand steel pins twisted into granite to a depth of 2 to 9 meters.
The Cheyenne bunker reached operational readiness in 1966, and has been used by NORAD for the past 40 years. In July 2006, a decision was made on the "hot" conservation of the complex, due to the inexpediency of its further maintenance in an active state. "Hot" conservation means that, if necessary, the functionality of the underground base "Cheyenne" can be restored to its full extent within a few hours.
Chernobyl-2
A mystical abandoned object in the vicinity of the emergency station.
The over-the-horizon radar "Duga" (5N32) of the missile attack warning system was able to control the airspace over North America. For its characteristic sound on the radio, it received the nickname Russian Woodpacker ("Russian woodpecker") in the West.
The height of the low-frequency antenna masts is 150 meters; the length of the antenna array is about 500 meters. With such dimensions, the "Duga" is visible from almost any point of the ChNPP Exclusion Zone.
The proximity of the Duga construction site to a nuclear power plant is sometimes explained by the high energy consumption of the radar (according to declassified data, the Duga consumed about 10 MW).
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the presented object is only half of the Duga radar station. Chernobyl-2 is a receiving station with a phased array antenna. The Dugi transmitter is located in a completely different place, 60 km from the receiver.
The tragic accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant put an end to the further operation of the Chernobyl-2 system - most of the equipment was dismantled and taken to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where a similar station operated.
And the metal structures of the "Chernobyl radar" soaring up into the sky continue to amaze desperate tourists who ventured to look at the once-secure military facility of strategic importance.
Echelon
Greetings from Edward Snowden!
A global electronic intelligence system approved by an alliance of five Anglo-Saxon countries - Great Britain, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Project Five Eyes). With the escalation of the Cold War, many NATO countries joined the project - Norway, Denmark, Germany and Turkey.
By now the Echelon system has developed into a gigantic network of listening devices. Large "field" stations look especially impressive - white clusters of "balls", whose shells protect the sensitive equipment hidden under them.
Menwith Hill Base, Yorkshire, UK
The exact description of the Echelon is classified, however, according to the report of the European Parliament, dozens of ground-based radio interception stations on all continents of the Earth are involved in this project, including the British Menwith Hill complex, the Australian Pine Gap, similar objects of the Misawa airbase (Honshu island, Japan), a radio engineering complex on the territory of Buckley airbase (USA), etc., etc.
The head curator of the project is the former employer of the fugitive Snowden spy, the American technical intelligence agency NSA.
"White domes" are capable of intercepting signals from commercial and military communications satellites, listening to any radio channels in the selected wavelength range, including mobile phone calls (however, this is possible only at a short distance, in the line of sight).
Western media regularly hear accusations that the Echelon system, in addition to combating terrorism, tracking drug trafficking routes and conducting "usual" radio-technical intelligence in the interests of the military, is often not used for its intended purpose. The impressive capabilities of the global wiretapping system allow NSA employees to conduct large-scale operations in the format of international commercial espionage and invade the privacy of US citizens. The version of secret contacts with UFOs using these devices is quite popular.
However, how it really is is unknown. After all, even the name itself - "Echelon" - is nothing more than an invention of the media. NSA officials do not comment on the white ball pitches.
Signal intelligence systems at Buckley Air Force Base (Colorado)
