englishrussia.com/

" Before the satelite communication was implemented Russian military bases located at the low-populated places such as shores of Arctic Ocean or frozen Siberian forests had to communicate somehow. It was practically impossible to connect them with wire because required too much effort, and was not secure at all - just a small cut off of the line would cause days of searching for it at -40 weather.

So Russian army has implemented the network of stations that fired their messages to ionosphere then the message was reflected from it and returned to the Earth surface - right to another station. By connecting those stations in relay chain they could communicate through all 10000 mile wide Russian land instantly."



www.ips.gov.au/IPSHosted/...irochk.html - THE RUSSIAN HIGH-LATITUDE IONOSONDE NETWORK : ITS HISTORY, CURRENT STATUS AND PERSPECTIVES.