Romanian SAM missile, history

My concern, (which probably stems from being a member of the military for over 21 years ) is when people start to give actual grid references / map coordinates to where the items are located.

Military property tends to be covered by certain regulations that do not pertain to ordinary property, hence the profusion of no cameras / no picture signs displayed around them.

Kevin in Deva.

The locations in discussion are almost all visible in Google Earth. I suspect a spy sattelite can locate them without problem and the foreign military intelligence interested in them already did a long time ago.

Well thatis true for almost all world SAM sites
There is aforum where you can find that...

In the age of Internet and especially Google Earth, those signs are at least ridiculous! There is little to do nowadays to keep a military objective in secret -except the subterranean facilities - in some cases...

Kevin from Deva!

Some remarks about yours I would like to add and for forummembers to consider.
Intelligence is sometimes stated to be made up of probably 90% of open sources!?And so were/are the facts about the items in this thread as I do believe.
But moreover, which serious organisation would trust any numbers just put in a forum, without checking it, just for the blue eyes?
What makes you or them think or believe that these references are actual, i.e. real and accurate? Just for that?

As you inform us about being a member of the military, what is your specialty for over 21 years?

As you are in Deva, interestingly you might be informed there were or are a number of SAM sites near or around Deva, have you found them all? By open source? GE?

Jeroen

Who says they don't have to check? This very thing contradicts what you said two lines before,

This forum IS an open source and nobody could stop "agenturili" to verify the numbers, coordinates etc.!
See also:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=530&st=30

What I found a bit strange were the on-the-ground directions on how to get to some of those sites. A satellite can pinpoint them but we also have to consider that countries with satellites are not our only potential enemies.

take care

Kevin from Deva!

Some remarks about yours I would like to add and for forummembers to consider.
Intelligence is sometimes stated to be made up of probably 90% of open sources!?And so were/are the facts about the items in this thread as I do believe.
But moreover, which serious organisation would trust any numbers just put in a forum, without checking it, just for the blue eyes?
What makes you or them think or believe that these references are actual, i.e. real and accurate? Just for that?

As you inform us about being a member of the military, what is your specialty for over 21 years?

As you are in Deva, interestingly you might be informed there were or are a number of SAM sites near or around Deva, have you found them all? By open source? GE?

Jeroen

I find that I do not understand what you are trying to say in your post.

1. I was in the Irish Military for over 21 years, and served in the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in South Lebanon.

My work speciality is no concern of yours.

We, (as in the Irish Defence Forces) never allowed unauthorized picture taking inside or outside of our military locations.

2. I do not go around Deva looking for military installations.

3. Most Romanian Military installations I have passed by on the public street have prominent ""No Camera / picture signs" posted.

4. Just because a military installation can be seen on Google it does not mean you have right to go there and make pictures.

5. Most countries in the world, have laws with regard Internal security, and what you can and can not do with regards military data, including locations and the work / equipment contained therein.

You think somebody is posting references for fun

Kevin in Deva.

Well, this happens in every army - remember the 2007 scandal with the two idiots that photographed an US Army base in Iraq? The one that ended with the demise of M. R. Ungureanu (then, Minister of Foreign Affairs, now chief of SIE)?
But my guess is that you don't have to intentionally search "military installations", but you could just see them - especially you, which were a professional!

This post has been edited by MMM on April 23, 2009 07:04 pm

Jihadists Sharing Maps of Strategic Facilities Worldwide

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131077

Kevin from Deva!

As you are in Deva, interestingly you might be informed there were or are a number of SAM sites near or around Deva, have you found them all? By open source? GE?

Jeroen

I find that I do not understand what you are trying to say in your post.

1. I was in the Irish Military for over 21 years, and served in the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in South Lebanon.

My work speciality is no concern of yours.

We, (as in the Irish Defence Forces) never allowed unauthorized picture taking inside or outside of our military locations.

2. I do not go around Deva looking for military installations.

3. Most Romanian Military installations I have passed by on the public street have prominent ""No Camera / picture signs" posted.

4. Just because a military installation can be seen on Google it does not mean you have right to go there and make pictures.

5. Most countries in the world, have laws with regard Internal security, and what you can and can not do with regards military data, including locations and the work / equipment contained therein.

You think somebody is posting references for fun

Kevin in Deva.

Dear Kevin in Deva

First of all let me express that I highly respect your 21 years of military service, both with national IDF and abroad with UNIFIL in "the Leb".
Let us pay tribute to all 17 Irish comrades that were killed in action there 1978-2001. Not to forget the 28 dying in accidents and Private Kevin Joyce still missing!
(As we Dutch yesterday commemorated our fallen comrades at National day of "Dodenherdenking", our end of WW2)

About (New) Connaught Ranger(s), the Devils own, I learned it laid down its colors in 1922, and as such was not a national Irish military unit,was it... am I right?


But refering to your posting

1. I do highly esteem your call for awareness about security, OPSEC or any variation on that theme...
You and your comrades never allowed unauthorized picture taking...
Apart from that being somewhat of a tautology, most countries do so.
Unfortunately there is always a difference between the rule and actual action, and hard lessons are to be learned. Soldiers sometimes pay the higest price for that.
When I look at www.unifiel.ie or www.militaryfotos.net I find a lot of pictures, I doubt all were officialy authorized!? Not only equipement, data and so on but inside/outside locations like Camp Shamrock, Camp Tara, Camp Ida.
So do Irish military really never allow that, neither do they take pictures themselves?

2. About going around I do not advise anybody to do that, least you.
But this thread factually is about SAM missile (units), and as you live in Deva interestingly it happened Romania operated/operates a number there!?
Just by GE one could find a probable site north of Lesnic. Another is/was near Orastie, but I did not find it on GE so wildly guess it was handed over, demilitarized, given for some civil companyfor industrial use some time ago?
Would you mind looking for a former military installation to inform us or is that also of limit?

3/4/5. Yes many signs in many countries say so. But my point here is that things have changed a bit since the Irish 89th battalion left Libanon in 2001, and certainly since the time I was doing service with an Armoured brigade in Germany opposing lots of other Red army youngsters at the other side of the Iron curtain.
First of all in 2001 Keyhole corporation started selling its mapping/satelite picture program, which Google obtained in 2004 and give it for free as GE in june 2005!
Also November 7th, 2004 (or possible earlier) Hezbollah even started flying UAVs (HESA Ababil, Mersed1/Mheger4/Mohajer4) over Southern Lebanon, and Israel.
Other compagnies also offer satelite imaginery for commercial use for years now.
USA was still denying running a certain installation at Nellis (test facility, Area 51), when Russian imaginery by KVR1000, or US Ikonos and SPIN2 proved otherwise.
Israeli DF troops in Libanon were using mobile telephones giving away either positions other usefull information...
Have not seen any signs yet that it is forbidden to go on a public road near a location with your handheld gps, people buy for walking on moor and in forest or mountains these days, plotting or putting a marker here or there.
Or that it is forbidden to put Circea in your TomTom car navigation kit as the desired adress of destination!?
My point is, yes, it may be so that any governement, may it be Romanian or Irish, might not be all that happy about these new technologies, but what to do against it in our modern global world? Somehow Netherlands succeeded to scramble/censor most if not all of their facilities on GE, but by that, just showing the way to others.
So yes we could put up signs everywhere, while every mobile telephone or DSi game has a photo function, and (spy) cams journalists or detectives use get smaller and smaller, but will that really halt any bad guys? It will stop the locals rather won`t it? But should it stop us European democratic citizens being interested in military history and to freely discuss matters on internetforum by fear someone else might use anything against us?

Yes Imperialist I do agree with you.
Our potential enemies might be other guys like the one`s who planted that road-side bomb where two Irish soldiers passed by January 8th 2008 in Lebanon, despite Hezbollah agreeing on a renewed 2006 reinforced UNIFIL-mandate.

Have any threats been identified or materialized following Romania`s participation in international missions like Iraq or Afghanistan or the undisclosure of the alleged interrogation facilty at Kogalniceanu? No suicide pilots over Bucuresti or Romanian Arabs/musllims heading out to training camps in Afrika or the middle or far east?

Potential our real enemies like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the brain behind 11 September who March 7th, 2003 landed at Szymany military base in northeast Poland aboard torture taxi gulfstream N379P, to be transported for interrogation to the nearby High Value Detainees facility at the nearby Polish Special agents training base at Stare Kiejkuty. Excellent research was done by Polish journalists like Mariusz Kowalewski and others. Did some Romanian journalist identify any such facilities in Romania, is it hot in the news, or "everything quiet at the southeastern front", as varying on Marquez excellent booktitle? I doubt weather Romanian government worries about people knowing the location of a Lockheed radar which radome any tourist driving to the beach/coast could see along the road. More headache will probably cause this (former) HVD-facility the European committe and parliament may not like all that much, and the government may not be keen to confirm it did exist....
Making photos there like in al-Graib may have caused some real trouble...
Did that fac have no photography signs I wonder?

Hallo Jeroen.

During the negotiations for the partition of Ireland in 1922 certain British Military Regiments,with "Irish" connections were to be disbanded in the partition.

Amongst them: The Connaught Rangers, The South Irish Horse, The Dublin Fusiliers, The Munster Fusiliers.

The traditional recruiting ground of the Connaught Rangers was the West coast of Ireland the land of my father, but, not of my Mother she was English, and I myself was born in Nottingham, where I lived for the first 10 years of my life, and consider myself to be of Anglo-Irish extraction.

Thank you for your tributes to those Irishmen who fell in The Service of Peace, serving in the United Nations, three died from my Battalion ( the 46th Irish Battalion) in 1980, one died from wounds, the other two taken prisoner and then stood against a wall and machine-gunned to death, cold, calculated, murder, plain and simple.

With regards U.N.I.F.I.L. and Lebanon as we (Irish Battalion) were on a U.N. Mission in a foreign country and carrying no secret technology, we were not required to post "No Photography" signs anywhere, but I do know the local Lebanese Units South Lebanese Army / Christian Militia, Palestine Liberation Organisation, A.M.A.L. or Hezbollah were to keen to have their people or locations documented, especially if it could be picked up and used by the Israelis Intelligence Services to plan an attack against them.

As for locations near Deva, Orastie, or wherever else in the area, all I would have to do, if I was so inclined would be to ask my dear wife, who worked as a communications specialist with the Air-force in the area about such matters, but, I have found that asking such questions, even amongst my wife's former comrades raises eyebrows, after all the communist regime is gone, but, old habits and suspicions die hard.

And, in all reality, would I ask for information with regards locations that might still be militarily active, and have no idea what the information might be used for?

I don't think so.

I am not particularly concerned with how or what technology is out there, or how it is used or misused, or who has lead what in the field of G.P.S., U.A.V.'s etc..etc.. I do not have any G.P. gizmo's in my car, nor do I feel the need for them,but just because somebody is doing something does not make it right, or mean I should help somebody else to stick there nose in, I never subscribed to "the people have a right to know theory"

I am living in Romania, and I respect the laws of the country, I might not like all the laws of the country, or any country, but, that goes with the territory.

So I will decline your offer to become a James Bond.

Kevin in Deva.