{"id":6851,"date":"2013-05-01T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/?p=6851"},"modified":"2026-01-07T08:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T12:12:13","slug":"suppression-of-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/2013\/05\/suppression-of-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Suppression of ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I found this video called <em>Empire of Noise<\/em> about broadcast radio jamming. It seems to be about ten years old and is a post-cold War documentary about the jamming of radio signals by the USSR, Warsaw Pact counties, and China.&nbsp; It is an interesting look into the extent and expense that governments will go to suppress counter thoughts and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The video is quite long, and there are stretches of jamming noise that can be annoying, but perhaps that is the point.&nbsp; It is worth the time if interested in history and radio broadcasting.&nbsp; You know what they say about history; those that do not understand history are destined to repeat it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nXV4nTfGHuI\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few of the highlights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The former Soviet Union had the most extensive jamming network of anyone on Earth.&nbsp; There were groundwave jamming centers in eighty-one Soviet cities which consisted of approximately 10-15 transmitters each in the 5 KW covering the medium and shortwave frequencies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Each groundwave jamming station consisted of a transmitter site and a receiver\/control site.&nbsp; The receiver site possessed lists of frequencies to monitor, when objectionable material was heard, the jamming transmitters were turned on.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There was a skywave jamming network consisting of 13 jamming stations with 10 or more 100-200 KW transmitters in each.&nbsp; There were some transmitters in the 1,000 KW power range.&nbsp; These were located in Krasnodar, Lvov, Nikolaev, Yerevan, Alma-Ata, Grigoriopol, Sovieck, Novosibrisk, Tashkent, Khanbarovsk, Servdlosk and Moscow (some of these names may have changed).&nbsp; These operated in a similar fashion to the groundwave jammers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After the sign-off of government stations, Soviet jammers sent a blanketing signal on the IF frequency (most likely 455 KHz) of receivers to effectively block them from receiving any station while USSR government stations were off the air.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Baltic states had 11 jamming stations with approximately 140 transmitters<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ukraine had approximately 300 Jamming transmitters.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Warsaw Pact countries had extensive medium-frequency jamming networks.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is estimated it takes about 20 times the transmitted power to jam any one signal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The entire jamming network was hugely expensive to equip and operate, costing several tens of millions of dollars per year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is interesting that the US position in all of this was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers.&nbsp;&nbsp; Jamming of radio broadcasts is condemned as the denial of the right of persons to be fully informed concerning news, opinions and ideas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Sounds perfectly reasonable.\u00a0 The free exchange of ideas and information over the internet is something that should be guarded carefully and should not be restricted or censored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this video called Empire of Noise about broadcast radio jamming. It seems to be about ten years old and is a post-cold War documentary about the jamming of radio signals by the USSR, Warsaw Pact counties, and China.&nbsp; It is an interesting look into the extent and expense that governments will go to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/2013\/05\/suppression-of-ideas\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Suppression of ideas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[87,231,302,50],"class_list":["post-6851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-am","tag-hf","tag-history","tag-shortwave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6851"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13967,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851\/revisions\/13967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}