Battle in the Ionosphere (English Translation)

A. Babakin

BATTLE IN THE IONOSPHERE

A Journalistic Investigation

of the tragedy and triumph

of the domestic over-the-horizon

radar

combat system

TSEIKGAUZ 2008

UDC 629 BBK 39.42 B 89

The publisher "Tseikgauz" and the author of the book express gratitude to ZAO "National Radio Engineering Bureau" and personally to Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Viktor Vladimirovich Prikhod'ko, Candidate of Technical Sciences Alexander Frantsevich Kuzminsky, and Andrey Stepanovich Kharin for the assistance provided in the publication of this edition.

A. Babakin

B 89 Battle in the Ionosphere. A Journalistic Investigation of the Tragedy and Triumph of the Domestic Over-the-Horizon Radar Combat System — Moscow: OOO "Tseikgauz" Publishing House, 2008. — 384 pp.

After World War II, the famous Englishman Winston Churchill said that radar had become one of mankind's greatest achievements of the twentieth century. The discovery by Soviet scientist Nikolai Kabanov of the effect of scattering of short radio waves reflected by the ionosphere off the Earth's surface, made in 1947, made it possible to substantially expand the boundaries of radar application. He was the first in the world to demonstrate the potential possibility of conducting over-the-horizon radar (OTHR), which would allow detection of targets at ranges of up to several thousand kilometers. However, for many years the realization of Kabanov's scientific discovery remained an unsolved technical problem. The first to dare attempt its solution in the early 1960s were Soviet scientists Efim Shtyren, Vasily Shamshin, Efir Shustov, and other designers. The creation of an actual combat over-the-horizon radar system capable of detecting launches of ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons from the territory of the United States was achieved only in the 1970s by a collective of scientists under the leadership of chief designer Franz Alexandrovich Kuzminsky. However, due to intrigues within the Ministry of Radio Industry, he was unjustly removed from work. He was unable to complete development of the OTHR combat system. In the early 1990s, the developers and customers from the USSR-RF Ministry of Defense were subjected to unfounded attacks in the Soviet and then Russian press. They were accused of voluntarism and squandering of enormous budget funds. Military journalist, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Babakin, as early as 1991 in one of his publications refuted these accusations. A "veteran of military operations," laureate of the Moscow Union of Journalists Prize, Colonel of the Reserve Alexander Babakin conducted an eighteen-year investigation into the tragedy and triumph of the domestic over-the-horizon radar system. In the documentary investigative book, answers are provided to many questions concerning the confrontation between the USSR-RF and the United States in the field of creating missile-attack warning systems.

ISBN 978-5-9771-0091-5