Tag Archives: Cold War

Tearing down an Elephant Cage

This past week, I posted a couple of articles about Wullenweber antennas (a.k.a. “Elephant Cages”). Many thanks to Andrea Borgnino who shares this article by Joseph Trevithick
via Medium.com:

The U.S. Air Force Is Tearing Down a Giant Spy Antenna: ’Elephant cages’ are a dying breed

The U.S. Air Force has started tearing down a massive antenna in Japan. Once used to scan airwaves around the world, these systems have become obsolete as countries change how they communicate.

On Oct. 15, workers began removing the antenna—designated AN/FLR-9—at Misawa air base in Japan. The demolition has been on the flying branch’s agenda for more than a year now.

“Technology and fiscal constraints have driven Misawa Security Operations Center to seek new ways of doing business,” Col. Joseph Winters told Air Force reporters. The antenna—which is almost 1,500 feet wide—should be completely gone by the end of 2015.

Misawa’s system was one of eight AN/FLR-9s the Pentagon built in the United States, Europe and the Pacific during the 1960s. The site actually has three concentric rings of smaller antennae, hence the popular “elephant cage” nickname.

Continue reading on Medium.com…

Mike recalls visiting the original Wullenweber test site

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In response to our post Uncovering Wullenweber’s “Elephant Cages,” Mike comments:

Sometime back around 2005-2009, I was doing maintenance on a NOAA climate station near Bondville, IL, and noticed several tall utility poles in the distance. As I figured they looked suspiciously like an antenna array, I asked the site caretaker (it was University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana farm) what they were. He happily took me to see what was left of the original Wullenweber test site, built under contract for the US government for testing by Dr. Hayden. All that remained then was several utility poles, and some transmission line sticking out of the ground.

I’ve also seen the Navy’s array at Imperial Beach, CA (near San Diego), down the highway from the SEAL base, and it’s very impressive. It’s clearly visible from the highway, and though I’ve read it was supposed to come down years ago, its still standing. Makes me wonder if it’s still in use.

Another interesting site I’ve seen is outside of Barrow, Alaska. Near remnants of the DEW Line is a joint USAF/FAA radar station, with a single white domed antenna. I don’t remember exactly, but pretty close to it is what looks to me like a “mini” Elephant Cage. From what I recall, it was a single ring of fairly short towers, surrounding a small central building. When I asked about the facility, I was only told it belonged to an “unnamed agency.”

The first 2 are clearly visible from the following link, while the Barrow site doesn’t stand out enough to be obvious in the Google images.

Click on the “markers” button in the lower right to jump to all the sites: http://tinyurl.com/k5jhxuv

Many thanks, Mike!

Uncovering Wullenweber’s “Elephant Cages”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Bill Patalon, for sharing this article via Gizmodo:

In the early days of electronic espionage, the US intelligence community didn’t have the benefit of all-seeing spy satellites—it had to intercept and interpret high-frequency radio waves transmitted by the Soviet Union. To do so, the Americans relied on a network of mysterious structures whose real purpose was kept highly classified throughout the Cold War.

Nicknamed “Elephant Cages” by outside observers, these structures were actually high-frequency antenna arrays, part of the US military’s AN/FLR-9 “Iron Horse” system. These arrays, commonly known as “Wullenweber” antennas—and named after German WWII scientist, Dr. Hans Rindfleisch was Wullenwever—are a type of Circularly Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA). They can be used for a variety of purposes from intelligence gathering and identifying high-value targets to navigation and search and rescue operations.

Each elephant cage consisted of an inner ring of antennas tuned for high frequency waves surrounded by one or more outer rings tuned for lower frequencies. These antennas would listen for HF radio waves bouncing off the ionosphere (which is what also allows HF radios to communicate beyond the horizon) and triangulate the precise location of the signal’s source.

Click here to continue reading at Gizmodo…

If you’d like to read more about “Elephant Cages” check out the following links:

Coldwar Radio: When the VOA was an offshore broadcaster

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Photo courtesy of former Courier crewman David M. Newell. Source: US Coast Guard

(Source: VOA News)

In 1952, amidst the Cold War, a 338-foot Coast Guard Cutter was transformed into the mobile broadcasting base of the Voice of America. Its mission for more than a decade: send information beyond the Iron Curtain to counter Soviet propaganda in more than a dozen native languages. Daniela Schrier reports from an exhibit honoring the veterans and broadcasters who served aboard the ship in the waters off of Rhodes, Greece.

Click here to watch the video if the embedded player above is not visible.

“Radio Moscow and the Western Hemisphere”–more Cold War recordings

A nostalgic Cold War shortwave audio montage

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Kudos to Mike Barraclough for bringing this video/audio to my attention. According to Mike, this audio montage was featured in an edition of Communications World in October 2000. It’s an amazing mixture of Cold War era audio recorded entirely on the shortwave spectrum. Enjoy via embedded video below, or click here to view directly on YouTube.

(Source: Paul Dougherty)

Cold War Shortwave was created in 1989 using off-air recordings made while I was traveling in Europe circa 1985. This was a time when propaganda was harsh, before the Gorbachev inspired thaw. The collage was done with Soundwave from Impulse, my first experience with non-linear, random access editing.