SPACE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM DESCRIBED

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: UFO SPECIAL COLLECTION
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005517532
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: June 24, 2015
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2011
• Case Number: F-2010-00651
• Publication Date: October 10, 1990

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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Status: [STAT]
Document Date: 10 Oct 90 Category: [CAT]
Report Type: JPRS Report Report Date:
Report Number: JPRS-USP-90-005 UDC Number:
Author(s): Lieutenant Colonel A. Dokuchayev, KRASNAYA ZVEZDA
correspondent: "A Bridle for the Nuclear `Racers, ' or
What the Space Monitoring System Represents"]
Headline: Space Surveillance System Described
Source Line: 91UH0040A Moscow KRASNAYA ZVEZDA in Russian 10 Oct 90
First Edition p 2
Subslug: [Article by Lieutenant Colonel A. Dokuchayev, KRASNAYA
ZVEZDA correspondent: "A Bridle for the Nuclear `Racers,'
or What the Space Monitoring System Represents"]
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
1. [Article by Lieutenant Colonel A. Dokuchayev, KRASNAYA ZVEZDA
correspondent: "A Bridle for the Nuclear `Racers,' or What the Space
Monitoring System Represents"]
2. [Text] We are completing an article on strategic deterrence
systems that are at the disposal of the USSR Ar- med Forces. ee
KRASNAYA ZVEZDA of 27 September and 5 October.) Today's material is
about the outer space monitoring system (SKKP).
3. Colonel V. Nikolskiy pointed to an enormous bay with displays and
multicolored screens--the command post of the space monitoring
system. He says look and study.
4. "From here we see practically the entire moving cosmos," he
explained.
5. I familiarize myself with what yesterday was an inaccessible and
top secret facility. Dozens of questions crop up. First: Why do we
need this very modern and expensive all-seeing eye?
6. Colonel G. Kovsh, chief of the department who was keeping up the
conversation, answers one question after another: "Do you know how
many objects there are in outer space? More than 7,000 have been
counted, active and inactive satellites.... We are talking about
those that are placed in orbit. All told there are more than 20,000
flying objects--outer space is cluttered. Out there a very ordinary
needle is capable of piercing a spacecraft and causing trouble. But
the problem is not in the number-- not all space apparatuses are
harmless...."
1
Ila
Approve for Release
UNCLASSIFIED Q~ 2O I C)
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7. He showed a short chronicle of recent reports from abroad.
8. 1116 July. Pakistan launched its first Earth satellite vehicle,
weighing 50 kilograms, from Chinese territory. According to the
announcement of the prime minister, this is an important event on
the road to the technological modernization of Pakistan.'
9. Ill August. A missile whose electronic components were undergoing
testing in the air for the `Star Vars' program vent off course and
was destroyed on a command from Earth. The destruction command came
from the White Sands test range (state of New Mexico).
10. 114 August. A Delta-2 rocket was launched from the space center
on Cape Canaveral. Its main objective--to put a Navstar system
satellite into orbit--pursuant to a Pentagon program...."
11. "Different, very different satellites are being put into orbit,
and they simply are real dragons. Once outer space becomes more
dangerous, then we must know everything," says Viktor Nikolskiy,
" or almost everything about each apparatus and object. These tasks
surfaced as early as the beginning of the 1960's, and they were
prompted by the placement of satellites into orbit that had a
military purpose."
12. Like every new program, the system for monitoring outer space
was born as they say with birth pangs. The original provision of
space object tracking was accomplished through information obtained
by optical systems of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Air
Defense Troops, with the use of plotting boards and individual
programs.... But with the passage of time this became inadequate.
Powerful radars of the missile attack warning and the antimissile
defense systems were linked up in the tracking of objects. The
streams of information were transformed into a real river that was
full-flowing and rapid. The question arose as to the speedy and
effective processing of information. And so in 1970 a space tracking
center began to be created. N. Buslenko, G. Ryabov, and their
colleagues performeda great service in this.
13. A kind of personal file is kept on each high-flying
"traveler"--it contains the satellite's coordinates, its
capabilities, and its "behavior". A catalog is constructed from
this kind of personal data. When the task arises to take a closer
look at one or another space wanderer--for example, the U.S.
reconnaissance satellite Ferret-D--the catalog helps find its
location area quickly, and only then do the tracking complexes
"tell " where.it is located and give its characteristics. With what
kind of accuracy? They explained it to me. Imagine that two soccer
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balls are flying at a distance of 10 centimeters from each other. We
will say that there are two balls in orbit, and not one. But this is
a figurative comparison. There are also examples of specific work
that attest to the professionalism of the collective.
14. September 1983. A South Korean Boeing-747 aircraft violated the
state border of the USSR, intruded into our country, and was shot
down by a Soviet fighter. People died, a tragedy occurred. The world
had to be told who was responsible. The Soviet side presented
evidence that the intrusion into our airspace was intentional.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence was that presented by the space
tracking center. The flight of the Boeing-747 was very carefully
synchronized with the flight of a Ferret-D reconnaissance satellite.
The space spy appeared over Chukotsk at 1845 on 1 September, and for
a period of approximately 12 minutes it flew to the east of Kamchatka
and the Kuril Islands, monitoring Soviet electronic systems which
were working in the normal mode. In the next orbit, the Ferret-D
appeared over Kamchatka at exactly the moment of the intrusion of the
encroaching aircraft, fixing the activity of our communications and
electronic systems which were changing the intensity of their work.
In the end, it was established that the third orbit coincided with
absolute accuracy with the following third stage of the Boeing-747
over Sakhalin. The data presented to the public showed: Such an exact
coincidence of the flight of the reconnaissance aircraft and the spy
satellite cannot be explained away as accidental.
15. Mistakes must not be made in such cases. A tremendous
responsibility is placed on equipment, and most of all on people. Who
are they, the "controllers" of outer space?
16. The operations duty officer is Colonel V. Minayev. He is 49
years of age, has completed a military school and a military academy,
and is married and has children. He is from the Kharkov area.
Lieutenant Colonel Ya. Tsymbalistyy, a member of the team, also comes
from the Ukraine. "I also have a connection with the Ukraine," says
Major N. Davydov. "I graduated from a military school there."
17. A lot can be told about each of them. Take Yaroslav
Tsymbalistyy. He has been here since the beginning. He assembled the
electronic apparatus of the automated control system--specialists
from the manufacturing plant were amazed: Where did such knowledge
come from, and such skill?--he studied it, and now he is operating
it. He can say with complete justification: "my center."
18. "Competence is the main thing that characterizes the officers
of the center. Other specialists `do not survive here,"' said
Colonel V. Nikolskiy. He talked with pride about the fact that this
year alone 20 medalists came here from military schools. "Very high
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knowledge and solid skills are the main requirement for holding
conversations with outer space. An aspiring person next to wonderful
equipment cannot help but grow...."
19. Incidentally, this is understood very well in the higher
educational institutions and in the scientific research institutes,
and they eagerly invite officers who have worked well in the tracking
center. They have more than one research work to their credit.
Officers Yu. Gorobchuk, V. Zyubin, and M. Chernov recently defended
their candidate dissertations.
20. "Is it difficult to be an officer in the SKKP? " I could not
refrain from asking Minayev this banal question.
21. "Speaking for myself, it is difficult," he answered. "Today,
the situation here is more or less quiet, but it is not always this
way. For example, one of our tasks is to track space objects in the
descent sector--we get precise information on the point of impact,
and we issue information about this. And what are the satellites like
now? There are those with nuclear equipment. When can they be
expected? Where will the fragments fall...? "
22. Vladimir Minayev and his colleagues had occasion to worry some
in the spring. It all started on the 8 March holiday. Four new
fragments appeared in space. The analysis
and-eta--proce ss ng groug----
reported: These are parts of a satellite that was put into orbit by
the American spacecraft "Atlantis." It would seem it was nothing to
worry about, but the object was not a simple one, and it was launched
in the interests of the Pentagon--for visual and electronic
intelligence, and its weight was 17 tons. Apparently the Americans
blew it up because of defects. A precise answer had to be given:
Where will the parts fall? Will they burn up completely in the
atmosphere. The specialists did not err in their calculations. The
first fragment burned up in the thick layers of the atmosphere on 19
March 1,500 kilometers to the north of Midway Island in the Pacific
Ocean. They explained that the rest of the fragments do not represent
a danger. Of course, their attention did not slacken until all of
the fragments. "died."
23. "There is also work with the manned spacecraft," explains
Colonel Kovsh. "But we get involved only in an emergency situation.
If an orbital station or a spacecraft is being guided, and close
communication is being maintained with them, then here as the saying
goes our job is on the sideline. But if a malfunction should occur,
and the Mission Control Center `loses' its envoys, then it cannot do
without us.... "
24. Grigoriy Kovsh showed TASS information appended to a file.
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"Several corrections in trajectory movement were made during the
two-day automatic flight of the Soyuz T-13, as a result of which the
spacecraft approached the Salyut-7 station at the prescribed
distance. Further closing was executed by the crew manually with the
use of a range determination apparatus and the onboard computer
system." It was not reported then that Vladimir Dzhanibekov and
Viktor Savinykh executed the docking with the silent station that was
"lost" by Mission Control Center, and that they found it only with
the data that was issued from here, from the space tracking center.
25. ...Of course the collective does not live only with celestial
distances. Here as in any garrison weddings are celebrated,
apartments which are not in surplus are awaited impatiently, there is
gossip about the shortage of commodities, there are holidays, and it
is a blessing that the military facility is situated in a refreshing
coniferous forest. But nevertheless, the main thing that determines
everyone's mood is outer space, and more precisely monitoring it.
When I tried to distract officers from discussions about work and to
talk about everyday living matters, it did not always work out and
they only steered away from the subject. They spoke with bitterness
about the fact that frequently specialists from the space department
took credit for the tracking center's work, and that they were being
taken advantage of because of their secrecy. You see, no one else can
spot falling fragments and pinpoint the coordinates of silent
satellites....
26. Here in the tracking center they understand that the process of
disarmament that has been started will not affect them--the outer
space monitoring system will be needed even when there are no armies.
The main concern is not to fall behind in the rapid exploration of
outer space in order to secure their fellow citizens from various
accidents. Indeed, the military danger from outer space has not been
removed. On the days that I was in the tracking center, the Pentagon
carried out a regular experiment in launching a powerful energy
device within the framework of the "Star Wars" program. It appears
that these warriors are assured this complex work for a long time. We
will not shy away from giving credit to them for their unobtrusive
work--so important and necessary in behalf of our security and
peace--which for many years has been guarded by a curtain of secrecy.