A curated archive of Cold War-era defense technology
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Chernobyl-2 DUGA

From the Soviet north, the ticking sound of long range radar.

ABANDONED
Compiled by: Robin Monks
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Abandoned
Close view of a phased array antenna of the DUGA over-the-horrizon radar.
Fig. 1 - Phased array, a close-up shot, circa 1998. Photo by Egor Egorov.

There is something admittedly eerie about the history and the story of the Duga radar. On its own, it would have been an amazing technological sentinel in the Soviet Union. Built as an Over-the-Horizon radar, it was conceived as an early warning radar to view missile launches, and it chirped a 10MW signal that could be heard worldwide.

On its own, it would be a marvel worth study; but its location gave it additional mystique due to its association with the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Chernobyl disaster. Located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, visitors who go to tour the site are also shown the nearby DUGA array, giving it a prominence of imagery and cultural knowledge not enjoyed by any other Soviet defense system.

The first experimental system, and later a prototype Duga array at the same site were built in Mykolaiv in Ukraine. Satellite imagery of the transmitter site shows the remaining buildings were removed between 2006 and 20091 , and the receiver site’s buildings removed between 2011 and 2012 2 .

The Duga array housed at Chernobyl-2 was significantly upgraded with more advanced technology and was completed in 1986. The upgraded over-the-horizon radar was scheduled for state trials in November 1986; however, the disaster at the neighboring Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant stopped those plans. After the disaster, the newly installed technology was found to have been spared contamination and was moved to Komsomolsk. 3

Changelog

January 19, 2026 - Added additional details about the removal of buildings at the site of the prototype Duga experimental and prototype arrays.

  1. The last view of remaining buildings at the transmitter site on Google Earth. ↩
  2. The last view of remaining buildings at the receiver site on Google Earth. ↩
  3. Mikhail A. Pervov, Системы ракетно-космической обороны России создавались так [How Russia’s Missile-Space Defense Systems Were Created] (Moscow: AviaRus-XXI, 2004), section “История двух узлов ЗГРЛС.” available online (archive) accessed October 22, 2025. Side-by-side Russian-English machine translation. ↩