From "The Analyst":
THE ELECTRONIC WARFARE WAR RAGES ON
The Russians have always been good at this aspect of warfare. So have the Americans. However, actually applying that knowledge in to practical and deliverable systems hasn’t been an American western priority for far too long.
American aircraft and naval forces tend to be fairly adept if not leaders in their field. However suppressing enemy EW and dealing with it in the battlefield has been lacking for years.
It’s not an arena of warfare that Russia has ignored, indeed they have always seen it as central to battlefield success. The war in Ukraine has come to emphasise how good they are at it - and despite their many failings, they remain exceptionally good at it.
Ukraine has had to learn on the fly. War has forced them to enter into steep learning curve that to say the least, has been precipitously near vertical.
On the front lines they have faced the loss of tens of thousands of drones, a figure that still runs at 10,000 per month. Russia is far too good at jamming and spoofing GPS signals and each time Ukraine finds a way around them it’s often a matter of hours, no more than days before the Russians have found a way around that.
The Ukrainians have developed their own abilities, including soon to be deployed helmet kits that act as frequency and signal data collectors.
These helmet mounted compact aerials will not act as jammers. They’re there so that constant real time data on every single transmission and signal is captured, sent to central data processing in real time, and used to update battlefield commanders on the every drone in the air and where it’s going and who it belongs to - friend and foe alike. It’s the first system of its kind set to be deployed over the next 18 months.
One of Russia’s biggest threats has been the successful suppression of GPS, to the point where it’s now understood that from a military perspective it’s largely obsolete on the battlefield of the future, though for now it will have to do.
It has forced a situation where the next iteration of Ukrainian drones are to be equipped with INS systems instead of GPS as their main location system. Inertial navigation can be remarkably effective. Submarines use it and then use GPS to verify their location when they have the opportunity. Drones will now begin using micro-INS to work out where they are and how to return to base, rather than lose signal and be lost for good.
To save time and losses - and to get past the signal jamming which means reconnaissance intel can’t be transmitted in flight and is lost, INS equipped drones are now being sent out to reconnoitre with SD cards, record what they see and fly back with it. It’s less instant but it’s better than having nothing at all. It works well against fixed positions.
Another Russian threat that’s been increasingly effective is jamming digital radio signals on the front - it’s becoming so complex an issue that radios have to be retuned and frequency hopped a dozen times a day. Companies like Motorola have systems that can combat up to 7 auto-switched frequencies but more than that isn’t commercially available. New systems have to be developed.
The Russians have also learned to understand the technology around Starlink and how to suppress that. They found that trying to jam it or affect it at the strategic level doesn’t work and is too quickly prevented, largely because so many satellites are involved. So what they now do is blanket the signals at battlefield level and jam those. There is currently no answer to this problem, except for removing the source of the jamming, which is easier said than done.
Ukraine is constantly learning and adapting, its ability to fight Russian EW is growing daily, but the Russians had a huge lead, they have not stopped adapting and it’s one of their biggest success stories.
The Russian problem is however, a decreasing systems base as EW units are highly prized targets, and can’t easily hide. Lack of new trained technicians with experience, and the cost and time involved in making large scale systems.
https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/30035