London, November 30 ------ In early November, drone video surfaced online appearing to show a targeted strike blowing up three antennas on the roof of an apartment block. The Ukrainian drone commander who posted it claimed to have destroyed a Russian Pole-21 electronic warfare system on the eastern front near Donetsk. Ukraine is already racing to catch up with Russia when it comes to electronic warfare.
This attack also shows how Kyiv is rushing to destroy Moscow’s technology on the battlefield – a sign of how important it may be for the future of the war. Electronic warfare, or EW, involves weapons or tactics using the electromagnetic spectrum. It is being employed by both militaries in this conflict, predominantly through electronic jammers that throw off GPS guided targeting systems, causing rockets to miss their targets. After almost six months of Ukraine’s slow and grinding counteroffensive, it’s clear Russia has not just built up physical defenses but formidable electronic ones, and Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are having to adapt quickly.
Pavlo Petrychenko, the drone commander with Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade, which carried out the early November strike, says successfully destroying these systems is critical if Ukraine is to liberate more territory. The video he posted on social media is one of a growing number of Ukrainian military and media reports of successful strikes against Pole-21 systems alone, since the summer. “At the beginning of the conflict, they used electronic warfare to interfere with our communication, our walkie-talkies, radiocommunications, telephones, drones,” he told CNN on a video call from near Avdiivka on the eastern front, the current site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war. “But when we started to receive foreign equipment, they started to use these systems to suppress our weapons. Since (the both US-provided) HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) and Excalibur 155 (an extended range artillery projectile) are guided by satellites, electronic warfare is actively used by (Russia) as one element of the defense against us,” Petrychenko said.
Precision-guided missiles and guided multiple launch rocket systems such as HIMARS – are by their nature more vulnerable to electronic warfare than unguided weapons because they rely on GPS to hit their targets. Unguided weapons, common in the Soviet-era stockpiles of both Russia and Ukraine, pre-2022, do not. The Pole-21 system, designed to jam GPS signals to protect Russian assets from incoming drones or missiles, is just one feature of Moscow’s growing electronic arsenal. Jamming, as well as “spoofing” GPS a technique which effectively tricks an enemy drone or missile into thinking it’s somewhere else which also disrupts radar, radio and even cell communications, are all part of the Kremlin’s playbook.
In September, state news agency TASS reported that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting that production of key types of military equipment, including EW, had doubled in the first eight months of the year. Experts and Ukrainian officials also say Russia has now fully integrated electronic warfare with its troops. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny wrote in a recent essay that Russia is now mass producing what he calls “trench electronic warfare.” “The tactical level of the Russian troops is saturated with (this equipment)” and despite equipment losses Moscow still maintains “significant electronic warfare superiority,” Zaluzhny added.
Zaluzhny also singled out American-made Excalibur shells, noting they have had their capability significantly decreased, since the targeting system (using GPS) is very sensitive to the influence of enemy electronic warfare. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz said that, while the impact of Russian jamming has been observed in certain United States-provided systems, including HIMARS rocket launchers, it has not rendered these systems ineffective. Dietz said the department has taken steps to reduce those vulnerabilities, undertaking substantial efforts to re-engineer and update these systems.” He added that updates are “being implemented as swiftly as possible to counteract the effects of EW jamming.
Source: cnn.com
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