6 Bases during the Cold War

systems (an exception, of course was the VLF facilities used to communicate withsubmarines, perhaps too large to be placed aboard ships). As it is, however, relativeto what was known about the U.S., there was scant information on how theUSSR utilized the whole of the frequency spectrum for various purposes, how ittried to circumvent countermeasures by redundancy, and so forth.For the most part, Soviet use of overseas communications facilities focusedon the downlinks for the Molniya communications satellites, of which therewere some 40 aloft at a given time.A U.S. government report provided some information (and a map) on thegeneral locations of Soviet tracking ships and, hence, of the locales where theymight have sought port access or at least mooring buoys. Among them, off SableIsland, Nova Scotia; in the western Mediterranean near Gibraltar; the Gulf ofGuinea; off Mozambique and Madagascar; off Honduras, east of the Philippines;and north of New Zealand. Large tracking ships apparently moored at Havanaand/or Santiago while tracking some flights; Trinidad was also mentioned in thiscontext. Some of the other locations provided rationales for periodic access toConakry or Maputo, maybe also to Nicaragua, as well as providing further indicationsof the Soviet need for access somewhere in the South Pacific. (The U.S.government report stated that three large Soviet ships took turns serving in theCaribbean area to extend Soviet deep-space coverage.)The USSR depended considerably less on land-based SIGINT collection stationsthan the U.S., though, it utilized a variety of means; satellites, surface shipsand submarines, aircraft, equipment based in embassies and so on. And again,similar to the situation with respect to space tracking and early warning, one hadto be aware of the sometimes only indirect importance of external access; forinstance, for fueling ships used in lieu of land facilities.The USSR was reported to have had major SIGINT facilities at Lourdes,Cuba; Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam; Ethiopia (two); South Yemen; Syria; andBases during the Cold War 139İ 2007 Robert E. HarkavyAfghanistan. That at Lourdes was reported to be devoted to interpretation ofsatellite communications. There may have been additional ground stations inLibya and Iraq, though the fate of the latter might be questioned since Moscowhad given only modest support to Iraq in its war with Iran, particularly in theearly stages, in part because of the cross-pressures from its relationship withLibya.The Lourdes facility was a large one, operated by some 2000 Soviet personnel;it became a prominent issue in 1979 at the time of the imbroglio in the U.S.over the Soviet “Cuban brigade” amid the SALT II confirmation hearings. Thefacility of 50 buildings housed an antenna field, satellite receiver and so on, andtargeted U.S. civilian and military communications, that is, B-52 communications,Fort Benning and Cape Canaveral, the naval headquarters at Norfolk, etc.According to Richelson, the Lourdes facility, complemented by a similar one inthe USSR, “gave complete coverage of the global beams of all U.S. geosynchronouscommunications satellites.”At Cam Ranh Bay, the Soviet Union had an important facility from which tomonitor both land and ocean-based emissions – there were two HF/DF sites usedto gain locational data on U.S. fleet units in the Pacific. The U.S. bases in thePhilippines were obvious targets.The four sites in Afghanistan aided collection, variously, vis-à-vis China,Pakistan, Iran and the Persian Gulf area. And, of course, these sitesmerely added to the capabilities of hundreds of SIGINT sites located within theUSSR.The Soviet Union had some other land-based intelligence-interception facilitieslocated outside the USSR. In Laos, there was an air-surveillance radar, obviouslydirected against China. According to the IISS, there was a Sovietmonitoring station (elsewhere identified as a radar site) in Sao Tome andPrincipe. In Cuba, along with the Lourdes facility, there were also air-defensesurveillance radars, the Tall King system, apparently operated by Soviet personnel.In East Germany, there were HF-finding antennas used in connection withjamming operations, in Poland, a SIGINT station and HF direction-finder atSinajscie, and at Bierdzany a receiver site for a Soviet OTH radar transmitterlocated at Kiev. Throughout Eastern Europe, there were large numbers of airsurveillanceradars equivalent to the NATO NADGE system – in Hungary, forinstance, some 130 sites manned by Soviet personnel were reported.Page 47