a curious 8N1 async 188-110A transmission (MoD RK)

Interesting recording of a Kazakh-Mil transmission sent to me by my friend cryptomaster. The transmission was heard on 10213.0 KHz / USB at 0656 UTC and dates back to March 2021: not as recent but still interesting given the nature of the sent message and the used HF waveform: ie, MIL 188-110.

 

the message
After decoding, the bit stream has a clear 10-bit period due to use of the 8N1 asynchronous frame: eight data bits, no parity, and one stop bit (figure 1)

Fig. 1

Two annotations can be made after removing the start and stop bit columns:

1) The data block is preceded and closed by a repetitive pattern which is part of the binary sequence generated by the polynomial x^9+x^8+x+1, probably for synchronization purposes (figure 2)

Fig. 2

2) The data consists of a compressed file, more precisely of a "zipped" file, as understood by the presence of the characteristic ZIP header 50 4B 03 04 (0x04034b50 stored in little-endian byte order):

Fig. 3

The quality of the signal is quite good and therefore it allows to go back to the source file by saving the 8-bit file with the extension .zip and then proceed to its decompression using the common unzip app. A decoding tool shall also be needed for recovering "scrambled" text into Cyrillic alphabet, google translate will do the rest (basically, it's a sample of the communications status report).

the used HF waveform
As said, the transfer is performed by a 188-110A Serial modem running at 150 bps. One might wonder why a CIS member country uses a NATO/US standard such as MIL-STD 188-110 for domestic communications. Well, some considerations need to be made.
In May 1994, Kazakhstan joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program, which entailed political consultations and joint military operations, and agreed an Individual Partnership Action Plans - IPAP (1) with NATO. Other than take part in NATO's REGEX exercises, since 2006 Kazakhstan has hosted the Steppe Eagle international tactical military exercise annually in cooperation with NATO and regional partner, the exercise was last held in June 2019 (2). Therefore, from what has been said their communications are likely to be based on these standards. And just not waveforms.
I extracted a frame (at time 3:37) from a youtube video, published by the Military Engineering Institute of Radio Electronics and Communications of the Ministry of Defense of the RK [1], where the use of a "Western-made" HF transceiver is clearly visible (figure 4):
 

Fig. 4

Well, I did some image search and found that the used device is the Tadiran HF-6000 produced by the Israeli Elbit System (figure 5):

Fig. 5

Further research confirms Kazakhstan's interest in military radio equipment manufactured by Elbit [2].

A final consideration must be made regarding the way used for the transfer of the message, or at least for this message. In addition to the 8N1 framing, it's to notice the lack of a datalink protocol, ie the message is sent "as is" and not as an attachment to an email message (for example). This "direct" way of transferring files is easier to encounter in less sophisticated waveforms such as FSK.

https://disk.yandex.com/d/milANJHyYytBVg

(1) Individual Partnership Action Plans (IPAP) are plans developed between NATO and different countries which outline the objectives and the communication framework for dialogue and cooperation between both parties.

(2) Steppe Eagle exercises have been canceled for political reasons or due to unease on the part of Kazakhstan regarding the United States.Of course, there’s a more obvious reason that the Steppe Eagle exercises have not been held since the summer of 2019: the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/.../steppe-eagle-exercise-will-no-longer-fly/

[1] https://www.alem-edu.kz/en/university/voenno-inzhenernyj-institut-radioele/
[2] https://en.tengrinews.kz/military/kazakhstan-bought-israeli-technologies-for-producing-7718/