Short audio clip of the Russian “Woodpecker” from the late 1970s.
With the beginning of the current Russia-Ukraine war, rumors have been set forth that the Russian Woodpecker has been reactivated. The Russian Woodpecker ceased operation in 1989 (which began on July 4, 1976) and was replaced by satellite monitoring. The Distant Early Warning line (DEW) antenna system was located near Chernobyl. Before the days of Google Earth and such, the Russian government had the gall to label the antenna array on their maps as being a Boy Scout camp. Being inactive for thirty years, entropy alone would have rendered this site unusable. However in its day, the old style helicopter blade thumping sound was produced by a 10 Megawatt (ERP) transmitter spanning 40 kHz with a repetition frequency of 10 Hz. Reference the Silent Key Liberty Netter, W8MPB. Click on the photograph thumbnail to see how the Americans and Canadians collaborated to construct an equivalent device as far back as 1959.
To combat this interference, stand alone electronic boxes were sold to conquer what a narrow pulse noise blanker could not accomplish. Eventually Amateur Radios became equipped with a secondary noise blanker to partially combat the Russian menace. The Woodpecker’s cost was 43.16 billion dollars in 2021 currency. The antenna structure is 490 feet and half a mile in length.
