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"Cartwheel" Tower, Fort Reno, Washington, DC, 2020.
All the now-declassified pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49576247768
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Photography
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Captured with the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR Digaron-S lens (@ f/6,3), Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Phase One XT camera (1/25 sec exposure).
This unassuming cylindrical tower, at first glance perhaps a grain silo or water tower, was part of a secret "continuity of government" microwave communications network. Built in the early 1960's, a network of similar towers located around the capital region linked the White House with critical sites such as Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather.
The upper white section of the tower is actually a plexiglass radome, concealing various microwave and UHF radio antennas.
CARTWHEEL and its cousins were decommissioned around 1990. Most of the towers, mainly atop mountains in remote areas, were demolished or left to rot. However, CARTWHEEL and CORKSCREW (on a mountain near the Appalachian trail in central Maryland) have been maintained in good condition, now repurposed by the FAA.
Despite CARTWHEEL being located in the middle of a residential neighborhood in a busy city and staffed by military personnel, officials went to great lengths to conceal the true purpose of these towers. They hid in plain sight, appearing to be silos or water towers (they even used civilian water trucks to send crews to some of the towers).
It was only after the cold war ended that the details of the network were declassified.
Obsolete secret infrastructure like CARTWHEEL tower, only revealed decades later, intrigues me not just for its scale and design, but also for the obvious question it gives rise to. If this stuff effectively managed to stay unnoticed for decades, what newer secrets are hiding under our noses today?
@mattblaze@federate.social I used to live in a small town called Griesheim in Germany and would regularly drive past an abandoned US airbase. The gate was still manned and I'd occasionally see people in cars getting checked there. Thought it was a bit weird, but that was it.
A couple of years later the Snowden revelations came out and it turns out it housed the infamous underground Dagger Complex (there were radomes too, but I never really gave it much thought).
@mattblaze@federate.social I love this question :)
@mattblaze@federate.social did we get to see any declassified former Soviet documents that showed whether they knew about it or not?
@standev@mastodon.online dunno
@mattblaze@federate.social If you're ever in Scotland you might want to visit the Secret Government Bunker attraction in Fife, just over the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. It's a former ROTOR nuke-hardened air force control centre turned continuity of government HQ, and it's run as a cold war museum. Up top, it's disguised as farm buildings. Underground? Three levels of accommodation for a couple of hundred military and civil servants in event of nuclear war.
@cstross@wandering.shop I remember something like that just outside London, now a privately operated museum. Looks like a suburban house from the street.
@mattblaze@federate.social @cstross@wandering.shop
Yeah. Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker.
It's great, but strange. The owners have a very weird and dark sense of humour. It's also very,... British eccentric, I think is the best way to describe it.
The audio tour is definitely worth it.
@b3cft@infosec.exchange yeah, that’s what I was thinking of
@cstross@wandering.shop @mattblaze@federate.social I can second this. It’s only a few miles from where I grew up up. Never knew it was there until years later when I found out a friend’s dad (who worked at the Uni) was on the list of people supposed to head there in the event of nuclear tits up.
@cstross@wandering.shop @mattblaze@federate.social My spouse says we're going to visit the moment Scotland leaves the UK and rejoins the EU. Whether I like it or not. She can park me in a pub with wifi somewhere.