It doesn't run for free. It has power lines that someone pays the bills for the power usage. No doubt Russia has an FCC equivalent that all radio broadcasters must be licensed with. If it isn't officially licensed, then the government is allowing it, meaning the government is ultimately running it.
The most obvious explanation is it is part of a military strategy to facilitate an insurgency should Russia be invaded.
Basilcy the station broadcasts nonsense on regular intervals so that at any time in the future it can be used by remnants of the Russian military to broadcast coded information without giving away the fact that they started communicating. It also broadcasts a solid tone and heartbeat so they can reduce the likelihood of somone else using the channel and so they can tell if the station is de
The Soviet (and later Russian) nuclear dead-man mechanism is reasonably well know to the public by now (well such things are hard to verify of course). It includes a lot of sensors designed to detect nuclear detonations on Russian ground, specialized hardened communications lines and hardened bunker(s) that is always active. If sensors detect detonations _and_ the normal chain of command can't be reached the personnel at the bunker(s) is given authority to decide if a nuclear attack have occurred and if retaliation is needed. They then can activate the system which uses misc. ways to communicate a launch signal to missile silos, it is claimed one way is sending commands to specialized missiles to launch which in turn fly over Russian territory broadcasting launch code(s) to silos below.
While the system described may be bogus it seems reasonable and also more foolproof than trying to make a system based on ordinary radio broadcasts. Jamming a radio transmitter is trivial compared to jamming multiple optical fibers buried underground.
Follow the money (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't run for free. It has power lines that someone pays the bills for the power usage. No doubt Russia has an FCC equivalent that all radio broadcasters must be licensed with. If it isn't officially licensed, then the government is allowing it, meaning the government is ultimately running it.
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
The most obvious explanation is it is part of a military strategy to facilitate an insurgency should Russia be invaded.
Basilcy the station broadcasts nonsense on regular intervals so that at any time in the future it can be used by remnants of the Russian military to broadcast coded information without giving away the fact that they started communicating. It also broadcasts a solid tone and heartbeat so they can reduce the likelihood of somone else using the channel and so they can tell if the station is de
Re:Follow the money (Score:2)
The Soviet (and later Russian) nuclear dead-man mechanism is reasonably well know to the public by now (well such things are hard to verify of course). It includes a lot of sensors designed to detect nuclear detonations on Russian ground, specialized hardened communications lines and hardened bunker(s) that is always active. If sensors detect detonations _and_ the normal chain of command can't be reached the personnel at the bunker(s) is given authority to decide if a nuclear attack have occurred and if retaliation is needed. They then can activate the system which uses misc. ways to communicate a launch signal to missile silos, it is claimed one way is sending commands to specialized missiles to launch which in turn fly over Russian territory broadcasting launch code(s) to silos below.
While the system described may be bogus it seems reasonable and also more foolproof than trying to make a system based on ordinary radio broadcasts. Jamming a radio transmitter is trivial compared to jamming multiple optical fibers buried underground.