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Posted: 4/14/2016 7:16:30 PM EDT
I read Blind Man's Bluff not too long ago and it got me thinking: did the Soviets run similar operations against us? Did they tap undersea cables? Attempt to salvage sunken US ships? Land special operations forces on US territory?
I vaguely remember reading something about people finding evidence of Soviet troops in Alaska, but I don't know if that was true or not. |
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You must have missed the part of BMB where they discuss after the fall of the wall the Ruskies admitted that the crews of their subs were officers doing many roles and unmotivated and untrained conscripts.
Not to mention the many lost Russian subs they'll never admit. Great book though. |
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The natives on Little Diomede find Russian dry cell batteries and other discarded military gear sometimes?
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They didn't need to infiltrate to the scale we did, because there were so many collaborators in the US, who would give them info and do their bidding.
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I recall some writer for Guns and Ammo or Soldier of Fortune finding 5.45 cases in Alaska at a time when it wasn't available commercially.
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They didn't need to infiltrate to the scale we did, because there were so many collaborators in the US, who would give them info and do their bidding. View Quote Plenty of traitors/spies gave Sov intel agencies all they could handle over the years. Walker is the most famous, but Fuchs should be ranked highly as well. Our job intel was a lot harder, given the closed nature of Sov society and gov/Mil. I doubt we'll ever know the whole story. Pure guess is that is was probably fairly even,maybe a little in out favor, given how things turned out. |
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Quoted: I read Blind Man's Bluff not too long ago and it got me thinking: did the Soviets run similar operations against us? Did they tap undersea cables? Attempt to salvage sunken US ships? Land special operations forces on US territory? I vaguely remember reading something about people finding evidence of Soviet troops in Alaska, but I don't know if that was true or not. View Quote Yeah I've read the book too. From what I can recall from other sources, I think the Soviets tried to salvage a sunken ship??? But essentially their equipment couldn't get it done so nothing happen...?? I would be most interested in reading about their human intel programs and operations here in the states, but I don't think that has ever been released and for good reason (for them anyway). |
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There were Soviet "illegals" trained in sabotage and assasination in the US. They would have attacked power grids,blown bridges,poisoned municipal water supplies. They had weapons and explosives cached and even toxins in place.
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I posted before on a similar thread that I am just about certail that the reporter Jack Anderson wrote back in the early 1980s that soviet GRU agents had weapons caches in the upper midwest (like minnesote) near the canadian border, with nuclear demolition charges to boot.
If they wanted a limted war or just to upset things, that would have been better than launching a few ICBMs to do something like taking out a dam or major business or industrial facility, and prevented a massive retaliation like bombers or missiles would. |
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I posted before on a similar thread that I am just about certail that the reporter Jack Anderson wrote back in the early 1980s that soviet GRU agents had weapons caches in the upper midwest (like minnesote) near the canadian border, with nuclear demolition charges to boot. If they wanted a limted war or just to upset things, that would have been better than launching a few ICBMs to do something like taking out a dam or major business or industrial facility, and prevented a massive retaliation like bombers or missiles would. View Quote They were trained and equipped at attack dams,power stations,gas and oil pipelines. It is best presumed that there was a quid pro quo in the 90s that the US and Russia cooperated to remove caches as of course they would eventually be found and were booby trapped. One was discovered in Switzerland and did explode. |
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Do you have a link discussing that? This stuff is fascinating to me.
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There were Soviet "illegals" trained in sabotage and assasination in the US. They would have attacked power grids,blown bridges,poisoned municipal water supplies. They had weapons and explosives cached and even toxins in place. View Quote I always wondered what happened to them after the wall fell. I'm sure many went back but I doubt all could resist not just continuing on with the lives they were leading in relative western comfort. |
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I figured the Soviets did operations on US Soil. Easily done with their Human Intel gathering. As for military operations.... maybe Spec-Ops in Civvie Attire conducting recon on certain locations.
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Soviet AGI's operated off our naval bases nearly continuously throughout the '70's-'80's just in international waters.
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I remember reading about a rental car being abandoned on a major US bridge, parked across all lanes of traffic creating a massive traffic jam, sometime in the early 2000s. IIRC the vehicle was rented to somebody using a false identity. Apparently somehow that identity was traced back to a Russian Intel/spec ops agent who had family that was also involved in Russian politics.
Nobody knew why or what the purpose of blocking that bridge was but it can be speculated. Apparently the driver whipped the car sideways and blocked traffic and casually exited the car and jumped into another vehicle and left. |
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I've heard about an Alaskan Eskimo Scout that stumbled onto a Spetznatz unit doing LRS.
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I recall some writer for Guns and Ammo or Soldier of Fortune finding 5.45 cases in Alaska at a time when it wasn't available commercially. Yep, I remember that article too! Anyone have scans of that article? |
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Do you have a link discussing that? This stuff is fascinating to me. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes http://fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1999_h/has299010_0.htm Mr. Mitrokhin also transcribed the finding aids to three radio caches in Belgium. I won't go through the details. That is described in my written evidence. In the Austrian, Swiss, and Belgian examples, the fact that the authorities had learned the location of the caches from the Mitrokhin archive had not been revealed until the publication last month of our book, The Sword and the Shield. There is no doubt that similar caches exist in the United States. The United States, ''the main adversary,'' to quote KGB jargon, was, of course, an enormously more important target for KGB sabotage operations than Austria, Switzerland, or Belgium. Though Mr. Mitrokhin didn't transcribe the detailed finding aids to any of the KGB arms caches in the United States, his notes make clear that these caches were an integral part of sabotage operations against U.S. targets. KGB files revealed, for example, that in 1966, KGB sabotage and intelligence groups, DRG's, to quote their acronym, largely composed of Sandinista guerrillas, were established on the Mexican-U.S. border with support bases in the area of Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Ensenada. The Sandinista leader, Carlos Fonseca Amador, code named Hydrologist, his KGB code name, was a trusted KGB agent. His file was noted by Mitrokhin. Among the chief sabotage targets across the U.S.-Mexican border were military bases, missile sites, radar installations, and the oil pipeline code named START, which ran from El Paso in Texas to Costa Mesa in California. Three sites on the California coast were selected for DRG landings, together with large capacity caches in which to support mines, explosives, detonators, other sabotage material. A support group code named Saturn was tasked with using the movements of migrant workers to conceal the transfer of agents and the munitions across the borders. And further details of that are given in my written testimony. Canada in the north, like Mexico in the south, was intended as a base for cross-border operations by DRGs against the main adversary. In 1967 a number of frontier crossings were reconnoitered, among them areas near the Lake of the Woods and the International Falls in Minnesota and in the regions of the Glacier National Park in Montana. According to a KGB file, and it may well be right, one of its targets in Montana, the Flathead Dam, I quote, ''generated the largest power supply system in the world,'' end quotes, which is why it was a major KGB target. It identified a point, code named Doris, on the South Fork River about three kilometers below the dam where a DRG could bring down a series of pylons on a steep mountain slope that would take a lengthy period to repair. The KGB also planned a probably simultaneous operation in which DRG commandos would descend on the Hungry Horse Dam at night, take control of it for a few hours, sabotage its sluices. Two large caches, code named Park and Kemi, were sighted in northwestern Montana, almost certainly for use by the saboteurs. Other arms caches in the northern United States include two in Minnesota code named Aquarium 1 and Aquarium 2. I want to emphasize in our book Vasili Mitrokhin and I did not seek to sensationalize these caches. On the contrary, we avoided giving even the approximate locations of any of them for reasons of public safety. Any or all of them may now be in dangerous condition. But on the basis of inside information apparently from somebody in the United States with access to Mitrokhin's material, ''Nightline'' has correctly identified the location of one of them as Minnesota sites, as in the Brainerd region. What's near Brainerd? |
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Do you have a link discussing that? This stuff is fascinating to me. http://fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1999_h/has299010_0.htm Mr. Mitrokhin also transcribed the finding aids to three radio caches in Belgium. I won't go through the details. That is described in my written evidence. In the Austrian, Swiss, and Belgian examples, the fact that the authorities had learned the location of the caches from the Mitrokhin archive had not been revealed until the publication last month of our book, The Sword and the Shield. There is no doubt that similar caches exist in the United States. The United States, ''the main adversary,'' to quote KGB jargon, was, of course, an enormously more important target for KGB sabotage operations than Austria, Switzerland, or Belgium. Though Mr. Mitrokhin didn't transcribe the detailed finding aids to any of the KGB arms caches in the United States, his notes make clear that these caches were an integral part of sabotage operations against U.S. targets. KGB files revealed, for example, that in 1966, KGB sabotage and intelligence groups, DRG's, to quote their acronym, largely composed of Sandinista guerrillas, were established on the Mexican-U.S. border with support bases in the area of Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Ensenada. The Sandinista leader, Carlos Fonseca Amador, code named Hydrologist, his KGB code name, was a trusted KGB agent. His file was noted by Mitrokhin. Among the chief sabotage targets across the U.S.-Mexican border were military bases, missile sites, radar installations, and the oil pipeline code named START, which ran from El Paso in Texas to Costa Mesa in California. Three sites on the California coast were selected for DRG landings, together with large capacity caches in which to support mines, explosives, detonators, other sabotage material. A support group code named Saturn was tasked with using the movements of migrant workers to conceal the transfer of agents and the munitions across the borders. And further details of that are given in my written testimony. Canada in the north, like Mexico in the south, was intended as a base for cross-border operations by DRGs against the main adversary. In 1967 a number of frontier crossings were reconnoitered, among them areas near the Lake of the Woods and the International Falls in Minnesota and in the regions of the Glacier National Park in Montana. According to a KGB file, and it may well be right, one of its targets in Montana, the Flathead Dam, I quote, ''generated the largest power supply system in the world,'' end quotes, which is why it was a major KGB target. It identified a point, code named Doris, on the South Fork River about three kilometers below the dam where a DRG could bring down a series of pylons on a steep mountain slope that would take a lengthy period to repair. The KGB also planned a probably simultaneous operation in which DRG commandos would descend on the Hungry Horse Dam at night, take control of it for a few hours, sabotage its sluices. Two large caches, code named Park and Kemi, were sighted in northwestern Montana, almost certainly for use by the saboteurs. Other arms caches in the northern United States include two in Minnesota code named Aquarium 1 and Aquarium 2. I want to emphasize in our book Vasili Mitrokhin and I did not seek to sensationalize these caches. On the contrary, we avoided giving even the approximate locations of any of them for reasons of public safety. Any or all of them may now be in dangerous condition. But on the basis of inside information apparently from somebody in the United States with access to Mitrokhin's material, ''Nightline'' has correctly identified the location of one of them as Minnesota sites, as in the Brainerd region. What's near Brainerd? Camp Ripley. |
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Do you have a link discussing that? This stuff is fascinating to me. http://fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1999_h/has299010_0.htm Mr. Mitrokhin also transcribed the finding aids to three radio caches in Belgium. I won't go through the details. That is described in my written evidence. In the Austrian, Swiss, and Belgian examples, the fact that the authorities had learned the location of the caches from the Mitrokhin archive had not been revealed until the publication last month of our book, The Sword and the Shield. There is no doubt that similar caches exist in the United States. The United States, ''the main adversary,'' to quote KGB jargon, was, of course, an enormously more important target for KGB sabotage operations than Austria, Switzerland, or Belgium. Though Mr. Mitrokhin didn't transcribe the detailed finding aids to any of the KGB arms caches in the United States, his notes make clear that these caches were an integral part of sabotage operations against U.S. targets. KGB files revealed, for example, that in 1966, KGB sabotage and intelligence groups, DRG's, to quote their acronym, largely composed of Sandinista guerrillas, were established on the Mexican-U.S. border with support bases in the area of Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Ensenada. The Sandinista leader, Carlos Fonseca Amador, code named Hydrologist, his KGB code name, was a trusted KGB agent. His file was noted by Mitrokhin. Among the chief sabotage targets across the U.S.-Mexican border were military bases, missile sites, radar installations, and the oil pipeline code named START, which ran from El Paso in Texas to Costa Mesa in California. Three sites on the California coast were selected for DRG landings, together with large capacity caches in which to support mines, explosives, detonators, other sabotage material. A support group code named Saturn was tasked with using the movements of migrant workers to conceal the transfer of agents and the munitions across the borders. And further details of that are given in my written testimony. Canada in the north, like Mexico in the south, was intended as a base for cross-border operations by DRGs against the main adversary. In 1967 a number of frontier crossings were reconnoitered, among them areas near the Lake of the Woods and the International Falls in Minnesota and in the regions of the Glacier National Park in Montana. According to a KGB file, and it may well be right, one of its targets in Montana, the Flathead Dam, I quote, ''generated the largest power supply system in the world,'' end quotes, which is why it was a major KGB target. It identified a point, code named Doris, on the South Fork River about three kilometers below the dam where a DRG could bring down a series of pylons on a steep mountain slope that would take a lengthy period to repair. The KGB also planned a probably simultaneous operation in which DRG commandos would descend on the Hungry Horse Dam at night, take control of it for a few hours, sabotage its sluices. Two large caches, code named Park and Kemi, were sighted in northwestern Montana, almost certainly for use by the saboteurs. Other arms caches in the northern United States include two in Minnesota code named Aquarium 1 and Aquarium 2. I want to emphasize in our book Vasili Mitrokhin and I did not seek to sensationalize these caches. On the contrary, we avoided giving even the approximate locations of any of them for reasons of public safety. Any or all of them may now be in dangerous condition. But on the basis of inside information apparently from somebody in the United States with access to Mitrokhin's material, ''Nightline'' has correctly identified the location of one of them as Minnesota sites, as in the Brainerd region. What's near Brainerd? Camp Ripley. Gross. |
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh.
Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. |
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. View Quote Have you posted this on ARF before? |
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I always wondered what happened to them after the wall fell. I'm sure many went back but I doubt all could resist not just continuing on with the lives they were leading in relative western comfort. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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There were Soviet "illegals" trained in sabotage and assasination in the US. They would have attacked power grids,blown bridges,poisoned municipal water supplies. They had weapons and explosives cached and even toxins in place. I always wondered what happened to them after the wall fell. I'm sure many went back but I doubt all could resist not just continuing on with the lives they were leading in relative western comfort. |
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. View Quote That's fascinating. Any other sources for stories about 5.45 cases found in Alaska? |
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Not regular Soviet Army, but there is some evidence that the KGB was operating within CONUS, complete with equipment caches near high value targets:
Popular mechanics article |
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I read Blind Man's Bluff not too long ago and it got me thinking: did the Soviets run similar operations against us? Did they tap undersea cables? Attempt to salvage sunken US ships? Land special operations forces on US territory? I vaguely remember reading something about people finding evidence of Soviet troops in Alaska, but I don't know if that was true or not. View Quote Well it's kind of hard to overlook the legions of their intelligence people crawling all over Europe and North America, especially their funding and support of political groups. That's doing more damage still than their military probably ever would. |
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They didn't need to infiltrate to the scale we did, because there were so many collaborators in the US, who would give them info and do their bidding. View Quote Partly that, and partly the US being a free and open society. We had spying to find out things there that here would have been broadcast on the evening news. |
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. Have you posted this on ARF before? Yeah, I think I have. At the time, I was a very junior Sergeant in a line unit at Fort Lewis, and I saw this out at a friend's place when his "crazy uncle from Alaska" brought out his stuff to show off. I couldn't get him to give me one of the cases, but I know what I saw, and measured it and sketched the headstamps. My notes and measurements were consistent with real Soviet 5.45 ammo, headstamp dates from the late 1970s. I tried getting some attention drawn to it, but nobody was interested that I could talk to--And, the old guy was sketchy as hell about it all, too. He was afraid the CIA was going to come for him... |
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Well it's kind of hard to overlook the legions of their intelligence people crawling all over Europe and North America, especially their funding and support of political groups. That's doing more damage still than their military probably ever would. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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I read Blind Man's Bluff not too long ago and it got me thinking: did the Soviets run similar operations against us? Did they tap undersea cables? Attempt to salvage sunken US ships? Land special operations forces on US territory? I vaguely remember reading something about people finding evidence of Soviet troops in Alaska, but I don't know if that was true or not. Well it's kind of hard to overlook the legions of their intelligence people crawling all over Europe and North America, especially their funding and support of political groups. That's doing more damage still than their military probably ever would. That's change you can believe in. |
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They definitely took an interest in Nike missile bases in NY.
I have some family stories, but I don't think anything made it to print. |
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That's fascinating. Any other sources for stories about 5.45 cases found in Alaska? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. That's fascinating. Any other sources for stories about 5.45 cases found in Alaska? Not that I've ever heard of, from that time frame. If the story about how he found them was true, then it would have been sometime around '83-'84ish, when he found them on a beach after hearing "people firing funny-sounding guns on full auto...". The old guy was a Vietnam-era combat vet, so he knew what weapons sounded like on automatic. The story was that he'd been in one inlet, heard full-auto fire, and went to see what the hell was going on. When he got to where he thought it was fired, he found the cases on the beach. They looked "funny", so he picked them up to show someone. When he reported it to the Alaska State Patrol, they pretty much blew him off. When he pulled them out for me, we'd been talking guns, and he was like "Maybe you know what these funny cases are that I found a few years ago...". I still don't know what to make of that shit, to be honest. It was a couple of years past the timeframe it happened, and I'm still sort of "WTF? Why would the Soviets be on a beach, firing weapons on full auto, in bumfuck Alaska? And, wouldn't the Soviet Navy have been more likely to have 7.62X39 AKM rifles, at that time, anyway? And, shouldn't the GRU have been using weapons that would have been deniable, not unique front-line 5.45mm that was still damn near a state secret at the time?". Doesn't make a damn bit of sense, but that was what I saw, and what I was told about how he'd found 'em. |
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About 15-20 years ago I attended a school with a bunch of the Alaska National Guard Scout guys that recounted a bunch of crazy incidents that took place back in during the 80's. They all seemed legit to me.
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Yeah, I think I have. At the time, I was a very junior Sergeant in a line unit at Fort Lewis, and I saw this out at a friend's place when his "crazy uncle from Alaska" brought out his stuff to show off. I couldn't get him to give me one of the cases, but I know what I saw, and measured it and sketched the headstamps. My notes and measurements were consistent with real Soviet 5.45 ammo, headstamp dates from the late 1970s. I tried getting some attention drawn to it, but nobody was interested that I could talk to--And, the old guy was sketchy as hell about it all, too. He was afraid the CIA was going to come for him... View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. Have you posted this on ARF before? Yeah, I think I have. At the time, I was a very junior Sergeant in a line unit at Fort Lewis, and I saw this out at a friend's place when his "crazy uncle from Alaska" brought out his stuff to show off. I couldn't get him to give me one of the cases, but I know what I saw, and measured it and sketched the headstamps. My notes and measurements were consistent with real Soviet 5.45 ammo, headstamp dates from the late 1970s. I tried getting some attention drawn to it, but nobody was interested that I could talk to--And, the old guy was sketchy as hell about it all, too. He was afraid the CIA was going to come for him... |
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Not that I've ever heard of, from that time frame. If the story about how he found them was true, then it would have been sometime around '83-'84ish, when he found them on a beach after hearing "people firing funny-sounding guns on full auto...". The old guy was a Vietnam-era combat vet, so he knew what weapons sounded like on automatic. The story was that he'd been in one inlet, heard full-auto fire, and went to see what the hell was going on. When he got to where he thought it was fired, he found the cases on the beach. They looked "funny", so he picked them up to show someone. When he reported it to the Alaska State Patrol, they pretty much blew him off. When he pulled them out for me, we'd been talking guns, and he was like "Maybe you know what these funny cases are that I found a few years ago...". I still don't know what to make of that shit, to be honest. It was a couple of years past the timeframe it happened, and I'm still sort of "WTF? Why would the Soviets be on a beach, firing weapons on full auto, in bumfuck Alaska? And, wouldn't the Soviet Navy have been more likely to have 7.62X39 AKM rifles, at that time, anyway? And, shouldn't the GRU have been using weapons that would have been deniable, not unique front-line 5.45mm that was still damn near a state secret at the time?". Doesn't make a damn bit of sense, but that was what I saw, and what I was told about how he'd found 'em. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. That's fascinating. Any other sources for stories about 5.45 cases found in Alaska? Not that I've ever heard of, from that time frame. If the story about how he found them was true, then it would have been sometime around '83-'84ish, when he found them on a beach after hearing "people firing funny-sounding guns on full auto...". The old guy was a Vietnam-era combat vet, so he knew what weapons sounded like on automatic. The story was that he'd been in one inlet, heard full-auto fire, and went to see what the hell was going on. When he got to where he thought it was fired, he found the cases on the beach. They looked "funny", so he picked them up to show someone. When he reported it to the Alaska State Patrol, they pretty much blew him off. When he pulled them out for me, we'd been talking guns, and he was like "Maybe you know what these funny cases are that I found a few years ago...". I still don't know what to make of that shit, to be honest. It was a couple of years past the timeframe it happened, and I'm still sort of "WTF? Why would the Soviets be on a beach, firing weapons on full auto, in bumfuck Alaska? And, wouldn't the Soviet Navy have been more likely to have 7.62X39 AKM rifles, at that time, anyway? And, shouldn't the GRU have been using weapons that would have been deniable, not unique front-line 5.45mm that was still damn near a state secret at the time?". Doesn't make a damn bit of sense, but that was what I saw, and what I was told about how he'd found 'em. A friend of mine once told me a story about coming across 5.45 brass in Grenada. That would have had to have been in the winter of '83. |
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You must have missed the part of BMB where they discuss after the fall of the wall the Ruskies admitted that the crews of their subs were officers doing many roles and unmotivated and untrained conscripts. Not to mention the many lost Russian subs they'll never admit. Great book though. View Quote The greatest weakness of the Soviet Navy, beyond a doubt. All technical knowledge was found in the Officers and Michmen (Warrant Officers). Many of their enlisted conscripts could not even speak Russian - which makes for a very difficult situation. |
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NATO collaborators tended to be low level. Soviet/Warsaw Pact collaborators tended to be Colonels or above. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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They didn't need to infiltrate to the scale we did, because there were so many collaborators in the US, who would give them info and do their bidding. NATO collaborators tended to be low level. Soviet/Warsaw Pact collaborators tended to be Colonels or above. But because we put so much trust in those low-level people, the damage was equally severe. |
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FWIW, the first 5.45X39 cases I ever saw were in the hands of an Alaskan who said he found them on a remote beach, sometime in the early 1980s. This was at a point in time when the AK-74 was something being desperately sought by the folks at Soldier of Fortune, and when nobody at any of the military technical intelligence units had even seen the ammo or the rifle in the flesh. Take that for what it's worth--I think they were up there, doing God knows what. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but there it is. I know I saw those cases, and it was waaaaaaaaaay before the era of cheap 5.45mm surplus coming in. Hell, back then? You couldn't even find 7.62X39 very easily, and it was only available from Interarms for the Maadi or the Valmet imports they brought in. Seeing Soviet fired cases was... Bizarre. Funny thing was, when I brought up the issue with the Military Intelligence types, and the SF Group there at Fort Lewis, I got two stories: One, "You must be mistaken...", and two, "Oh, yeah, we already know alllllll about that...". I still am not too sure what the official story was supposed to be. View Quote So, what were they shooting at? It seems to me as though you start to attract attention when you get all bangie-bangie. |
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Soviet AGI's operated off our naval bases nearly continuously throughout the '70's-'80's just in international waters. View Quote Hell, they steamed along with our battlegroups. We assigned our AGI a station in the screen once just to keep them out of the way. They kept station better than the Spanish Navy did, and broke maneuvering signals faster and flawlessly. |
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