The special-purpose research facilities equipped with powerful HF transmitters are used successfully for plasma experiments and local modification of the ionosphere. In this work, we are using the results of a complex space-ground experiment to show that exposure of the subauroral region to HF emission can not only cause local changes in the ionosphere, but can also trigger processes in the magnetosphere-ionosphere system that result in intensive substorm activity (precipitations of high-energy particles, aurorae, significant variations in the ionospheric parameters and, as a consequence, in radio propagation conditions).