Seventy-second edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Mon, 03 May 2004 22:40:41 +0200)

Voice stations | Morse stations | Various modes
Intelligence profile : Armenia | Unid stations | Military stations | Logs
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Military stations

CIS navy Morse communications

Compiled by Fritz

We received a number of updates to last month's article. Enough for Fritz to rewrite it.

Contents

1. Introduction

Nowadays there still is much Morse traffic to listen to. And the Navy must have good reasons to do so - even aboard of aircraft. Morse CW is cheap and straightforward; many examples suggest, it often is used as last attempt in case of technical - or propagational problems with fast transmission modes. It is however absolutely clear: the vast amount of data is exchanged by transmission lines via satellite or landline, the keen CW listener is feed off with a few crumbs, don't expect to catch RIW daily on 11000!

Much of the following informations may be outdated, incomplete or even wrong. Please forgive me! I did browse my own loggings, many Navy Websites (with inconsistent contents), some WUN/N&O Newsletters, the archive CD of Klingenfuss Publications, Trond's Website and tried to make the best out of it.

Thanks go to Tom DL8AAM, Ary and several correspondents who wish to remain anonymous, who came up with many useful remarks for the draft of this little work. If you do have additions, corrections, amendments - and there is no doubt, many do - please let the Editor know, thanks.

Fritz

Around 30 years ago monitoring the Soviet Navy Morse communications was very rewarding. Every flotilla had its individual "style". Comparing preambles, call signs or just some habits of the operators frequently allowed listeners to assign the messages unambiguously to a fleet and/or vessel.

Especially the Black Sea Fleet was easy to trace from Europe when they sailed Odessa. Much has changed since complicating the life of the inclined eavesdropper. Maybe one of the reasons of the modernization was the disastrous Warsaw Pact adventure in the former CSSR 1968.

Serious supply gaps, due to comms problems, forced operators to order provisions even in plain Russian.

Years later WAPA came up with a common format of messages for all forces. It is well known and still in use at all tactical and point-to-point CIS networks:

The preamble may include the senders callsign too. If the message is preceded by the (senders callsign) QTC the message is sent blind or broadcast (to a CQ callsign).

• ppppp or 11111
  encryption information
• 5ALG/5FGx28
  txt in accented letter groups or figure groups, normally encrypted.

Accentuated letters used in the text are:

• azkbz (or 18028 final group, date and effective groups in message or aeipwi)

The code of the final group is usually as follows and does not contain accentuated letters:

Another alternative with accentuated letters is this set:

• + ar may be replaced by "k", "rpt al QLN +", or similar endings.
• QLN = rpt via landline

CIS Navy stations do use this format or variants, e.g. the last group is not coded, group count may differ by 1, etc. The same preamble is used for Meteo bulletins and Nautical Warnings, which in turn, may originate from merchant shipping. As we do not know, to a large extent, the meaning of the call signs, it is not even possible to separate RUS and UKR stations positively.

Without professional DF-Systems, (my Grahn Loop definitely is not good enough) we often cannot assign stations to a geographical region. Even worse: Tactical networks in Russia and Ukraine normally change call signs daily (maybe every ten days). And be careful, when trying to distinguish stations on the base of the local time group: this is the message preparation time, which may differ by hours from the local transmission time. Navy Nautical Warnings often have been issued the day before. Using "CIS" instead of RUS, BLR or UKR keeps me on the safe side. One of our correspondents is perfectly right however with his remark that tactical nets messages are less delayed than naval traffic. You wouldn't see "old" messages in their networks.

2. Main branches of the CIS navy

Should one include any numbers of ships, aircraft, etc here? They must be wrong, I knew in advance. Which are correct figures? The following numbers come from sources on the net. I received (thanks a lot) however reactions, saying, that "all the numbers .... are GREATLY exaggerated in all of the fleets". Cutting the number by 2/3 should be ok. The Pacific Fleet for example only has around 15 submarines and "less than 30 combatants of corvette size and up".

(*) Russian and Ukrainian sources state quite different figures.

After the desintegration of the former Soviet Union 1989 a series of agreements arranged the Black Sea Fleets partition between Russia and Ukraine.

The Caspian Flotilla is a small fleet for coastal defence and waterways patrol. Command and equipment are shared with Azerbaijan and Kazakstan.

The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991 and the powerful Soviet Mediterranean Eskadra withdrew from the Mediterranean. In 1996 battle ships, guided missiles cruisers and some auxiliary ships of the Russian Navy for the first time again deployed in the Mediterranean to show flag. Since then Russian Navy ships came back to monitor the crisis in former Yugoslavia and for bilateral operations with the US Navy.

Our expert commentator makes the additon however, that today the "Med Eskadra is defunct, and definitely has no carriers, destroyers or SSBNs with SLBMs on board". In Tartus "is always one ship" - sort of auxiliary. Not heavy Morse traffic to be expected thus, I guess.

Naval Air Force (Aviatsiya Voyenno - Morskoyo Flota AV-MF)

(*) These call signs actually are in use. The allocations would make sense, but are absolutely not confirmed.

Another, quite trustwordio/nsnthy approach I found elsewhere:

3. CIS navy headquarters Moscow call sign RIW

RIW is more or less regularly on the air. It listens on several frequencies and answers on 14556 11000 9145 in first instance. Two or all three frequencies may operate in parallel.

Many examples of traffic suggest, RIW prefers to use CW if propagation or technical problems do not allow the use of fast transmission modes. RIW operates very smart, keeps calling for a long time, reduces speed and even uses words in plain. If the station does not comply with regulations, RIW will tell him soon or even pretend not to understand, thus making the station repeating over and over again the text. The signal becoming weak or nil may mean RIW turns antennas and you may be nulled-out. Don't draw a line from Moscow to your QTH, making guesses: RIW is a function (HQ) and not a transmitter site. Smolensk is just one possibility. Khiva, a large military site and a preferred target for US eavesdropping from former Persia, is situated south of Lake Aral and often mentioned to use RIW. It is not a naval installation however.

As one of its main purposes, RIW allocates frequencies for further traffic, which in many cases is in voice. Two systems are known:

• "Yakhta" a Voice Scrambler with its typical superimposed 100 Bd FSK signal for key exchange
• MS-5, a parallel 12 tone 200 Bd Voice Encryption (VOCODER) system, easy to recognise for its pilot tone 3300 Hz above the signal frequency. I was told, a new MS-5 variant is under tests presently. Leif heard it in March 2004 on 7687 kHz with 20 75 bps tones and the pilot tone. If data have to be transmitted CIS Navy would use - Navy Broadcast 36-xx (Bee). A synchronous bit stream FSK system starting with 36 Bd. Tfc is in higher speed. (See the note about station RDL).

CIS Navy possibly uses one or several systems of

• Simplex RTTY like CIS-81, CIS-36 MFSK 33 tones or
• Duplex RTTY like CIS-11, CIS-14, etc, systems which are in wide use in RUS Intel and other CIS Forces. The 81-81 two-channel system still seems to be quite "popular", the single-channel variant with 40.5 Bd however less (tnx to the experts for infos), as my knowledge and equipment are just below basics to tell anything clever about that topic. Please consult "WUN's Digital FAQ" with good system descriptions and Baudrate tables.

Examples of traffic with Navy HQ:

For MS-5 traffic RIW would use the following instructions

CIS Forces use an extended set of Q-Codes. Some are known, many others not. Accented letters are not used. Recently I noted the use of "new" Z-Codes. They just replace Q with Z, e.g. ZTC = I have message for you. Doesn't make it easier for us...

Luckily we can hear one of the CIS Forces xxx Flash Messages

• uuu - The Cyrillic "Y" used as vvv ?

• Friendly people told me, "uuu" gives the message a status less urgent than xxx.

• REO - Collective call, unit unknown.

• WLHN - Is believed to be a collective call.

• k - Individual units are asked to confirm.

Messages in the normal CIS format are sent from time to time

If a station does not reply fast enough or has other problems, RIW will keep it waiting or will tell it.

• QRS - Send slower

• QCZ - You are violating circuit discipline.

Other possibilities might be:

• QCA - You are delaying traffic.

• QXX - Op hampers traffic, request relief.

Quite often RIW relays messages to others

• sml - Priority status, a precedence higher than routine.

Another example of RIW traffic

• rpt corcol 5 - I repeat group 5

• QRC = ??

Did something go wrong?

• QSU1 - Use USB Voice Scrambler or Use Morse. There are several sets of meanings in different CIS forces.

This time again it lasted a long time to establish a MS-5 QSO.

• QCM - Your transmission is affected by technical problems.

RIW ITU registrations amounts to 76 frequencies. The following may be worth to try.

RIW has contacts to many stations, some of them are listed here. Most of the call signs I cannot assign. Namely the meaning of collective calls are of vital interest to get any further.

The RMxx calls are most probably Naval Vessels, but this is not the case for ALL RMxx calls: RMXV, RMEG, RMDZ, RMBB, RMLZ, RMUE.

R*** probably Naval Vessels: RBIZ, RCJG, RCRE, RDND.

• RMP
  HQ Kaliningrad

• REO
  Collective call (units unknown)

• WLHN
  Collective call for Naval Vessels (units unknown)

Navy call signs, nowadays some warships appear to use this format too:
RAL46, RAL59, RAL68, RFE76, RFF78, RFH70, RFV99, RFX56, RGV82, RJH25, RJH57, RJK69, RJT22, RLA88.

4. The Northern fleet HQ (RIT)
Baltic fleet HQ (RMP)
Black sea fleet HQ (RCV)
Pacific fleet HQ (RJS)

Due to propagational reasons I wasn't lucky enough to copy RJS so far. RIT didn't appear often in my logbook recently. RMP and RCV clearly favour certain frequencies and their Weather Forecast - or Nautical Warnings Broadcasts can't be missed. They are sent in plain language and seem to correspond to those transmitted by Coastal Stations. The header used is the normal preamble. RCV is nearly daily on 5775 around 1600z. We may assume, that the call signs RKZ and REO used for Fleet Broadcasts are collective calls. Knowing collective calls used by RJS would help us much. Sometimes HQs maintain contact with other stations. Traffic may be Duplex - or Simplex Mode. Messages are 5FG or 5ALG with or without encryption group and coded end-group. Coincidence or not: I never copied these HQs with an xxx-message.

Some examples of traffic follow:

• nawip - often used, similar to outdated NAWS of NATO ?

• RJD69 - this time called as station

• ZRK7 - A tactical callsign, as used by the Baltic Fleet warships.

• 4FG - rare, but it happens.

• RMAE - Naval Vessel

N&O Newsletter Nr.70 received this logging:

Some current frequencies:

Other call signs beginning with R*****

There are MANY other call signs of which it is not clear, whether they really are Navy calls. Many can be heard having QSOs, others are somewhere listed, but never have been copied. Here follow a few examples:

One of the comments that I got: "...not all Rxx## calls are vessels and not all are Navy.... They pick and choose. Shore stations use Rxx## calls too".

5. Naval air force AV-MF

Please remember the reservation made in 2. concerning call sign allocations and the correct designation of these forces.

8816 kHz is allocated to Aeronautical Mobile Services for the following Regional And Domestic Air Routes Areas:

8816 is regularly, but obviously illegally, used by CIS Naval Air Forces. Consequently their Four-Letter Location Indicators are for "internal" use. XLLS, XMKK, etc apparently are used because ICAO did not assign the X*** series. ULOL Velikiye Luki, a town about 400 km West of Moscow, is often served and does belong to the Russian Federation Series UL** of Location Indicators. UMWS most probably is an airport in Kaliningrad or Belarus, but not officially listed.

Let's have a look at the following example. Aircraft 26855 reports his flight from location XMKK to location XMKK. On its way it passes UMWS and ULOL and will, later in the evening, return to XMKK. Reports are made to the Regional Air Traffic Control RCB and to the HQ RJF94. Both stations do repeat the whole message until acknowledgement by the mobile.

• 8816 kHz, 30.01.2004

Official Q-Code series as well as CIS Codes are used:

The following contacts have been logged:

Aircrafts 26858, 26855, 26896, 26869, 52880 had QSOs with the ATCs and HQ. RJF94 had QSOs with the ATCs. The ATCs had QSOs among themselves. Only RJC48 once contacted a "foreign" station: RDG90.

6. The station RDL

Listening to the CIS Forces communications without copying sooner or later RDL is rather unlikely. Officially it is listed as CIS Military HQ Moscow and many transmitting sites like Molodechno, Smolensk, Arkhangelsk, Krasnodar, Tashkent or Nizny Novgorod show up. A reasonable conclusion suggests RDL does form part of a VLF network together with RLO (St. Petersburg) and RKS (Moscow), both belonging to the CIS Navy. I believe RDL has to do with the CIS Navy, but unfortunately don't have any information about RKS and RLO.

RDL officially is listed on 19 frequencies, probably not all the right ones for the inclined listener .... Try these (no guarantees here):
4031, 6902, 7008, 7657, 9182, 10535, 10490, 11139, 11468, 11470, 12740, 12832, 14300, 14656, 14664, 19257.5, 20096, 21284, 22864 kHz.

The most popular frequency however is 18.1. RDL is regularly on the air, traffic is on both in Morse CW and BEE/36-50 (a FSK synchronous bitstream system, starting with 36 Bd, then changing to 50 Bd)for Navy Broadcasts and maybe other military branches. If you attempt to copy RDL on 18.1 be careful: the French Station HWU on 18.3 may interfere. With a ferrite rod antenna HWU is nulled out (hopefully!). Never mind, if your receiver doesn't cover 18.1. Often enough other frequencies are in parallel, e.g. 12832 or 19257.5. Patience is required!

Some sample messages of RDL:

Listeners delight: many xxx msgs on RDL. What are they meant for? They seem to use a certain set of codewords, some of them show up again after years and on different nets. Example: "ESUP", you'll find it back into the 90ies. XXX is like snooker: thrilling to watch, but I have no idea about the rules.

I never copied RDL having contact with an individual call sign or using the usual CIS preamble.

RDL seems to be of great importance, understanding its habits would bring us ahead considerably.

Logs and info supplied by Fritz, Jim, Sergey, Maciej and John.

- Sample messages:

• 188 25 2 0108 188 = ZVT 857 = PPPPP ZIHoF ... TaACU PWPWP = 209 K
• 759 50 1 2252 759 = ZUT 117 = PPPPP JaEAa ... uTLSG PaPRY = 617 RPT AL K
• 677 29 3 0048 677 = 936 = ohoNC MMMMM UBWBS ... MKhVZ PEPWY = 475 RPT AL K
• LEV1 de F5MQ ZUP ZUZ ZUP ZUZ K. AS. NW FOR QRJ? K
• PNPT PNPT PNPT DE ZM1E ZM1E QTC 737 62 8 1738 737 = 867 = 44327 68943 .....
• TSTW de DCAL ZXO ZUO ZFK ZUO ZUL ZFN QRR3 K. OK K. R K.

- Unid

This unid station is possibly also a CIS military station (see also last month's unid VTI8).

"No trace of VTI8 bcsts at 55-05 and 25-35 minutes each hour today (5 April)" says Attu. "However, at 07-17 and 37-47 minutes each hour, callsign SFO3 was active on 3699 kHz."

Polish military

Voice stations | Morse stations | Various modes
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