Hundred fortieth edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: May 2009)

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Military stations

Russian, CIS, Ukrainian military SSB & CW stations (including M32)

We start this section with an e-mail from Trond. He writes

"For some times I have been monitoring what is believed to be hydro meteological observations from Russian naval vessels to units of the Hydrographic service of the Russian Navy GSVMF. All these observations are forwarded via one of the Naval HQ's. It is understood that there are a branch / department of GSVMF at each Naval HQ.

• Question 1:
  Has anyone ever observed a direct transmission from a Russian navy ship to one of the hydrometeo recipients RJE73, RJH45 or others?? Or has one of the hydrometeo recipents ever been observed with traffic to others ??
• Question 2:
  Has anyone ever observed a retransmission from any of the naval HQ's to the meteo recipients of the ship observations ?

If not, one could possibly assume that either the data is sent via land line and/or that the recipient is part of the HQ, I guess. Most of these messages are observed with only two recipients like; "for RJE73 RJH45" - could be the "local" HQ branch of GSVMF, as well as the GSVMF central office??

It is understood that the data sent from the ship is either routine / regular measurements with first 5fg number telegram prefixes like "jjxx / kkxx". Or more special messages containing the date and a 3 digit code like "21t91" in the log below. Both type of messages are observed with "sml" priority indicator. Urgent messages could be related to pollution, oil spill, sudden geological sub sea events, upwelling, sudden increase in wave height etc. Routine messages are believed to be mostly related to measurements of salinity and temperature profiles, i.e. "Bathythermal" measurements. (very important data for a submarine commander who need to hide his sub below a halocline or thermocline blanket".

The format for these QTC's do not follow the international standard for bathy messages (The Russians do encrypt all their traffic anyway :-) but some of the data seems clear like the "jjxx/kkxx/date+3fg code" and the last 5 figure number before the date/group count figure. This number is most likely the instrumentation type identifier, seems like the most common number here is 88ttt (88000).

What I find hard to believe is that the routine segment of these measurements are performed by patrolling naval warships on regular duty. A salinity sounding here and a salinity sounding there would not be very useful! Do the Naval HQ's operate special scientific vessels? Are they maybe performed by coastal defence forces on regular patrols ? Today RMCW has called RCV every 3rd hour with "sml" observations, indicating that maybe also these "priority" messages are taken on a regular basis. Anyone who could tell some more on how these measurements are performed are encouraged to do so, please.

The log:

12464.0 RMCW: unid Russian Naval vessel, 0912, A1A morse RMCW fwd's urgent hydrometeo telegram to unid "Hydrographic service of Russian Navy" GSVMF units (?) RJE73 and RJH45 via RCV Black Sea Fleet HQ; "= sml for rje73 rjh45 = 21t91 99445 ... 88ttt 21t13 = AR rmcw rmcw ok qru" (21/MAY/2009)(TJ)

Looking forward to hear others experience with these transmissions!

Best regards

Trond J.
Hvaler archipelago, SE Norway
59.033N 11.033E JO59MA

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