The Russians are trying to mislead the high-precision Western weapons that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have at their disposal, and for this they use electronic warfare equipment. The enemy creates some kind of invisible defense that can throw both drones and “smart” weapons.
How electronic warfare revolutionized the battlefield and how the Ukrainian Armed Forces can penetrate the electronic shield of the Russian Federation — told Facti this year.
What kind of electronic warfare do the invaders use
The enemy regularly harasses the Ukrainian military on the electronic warfare front. For example, the Pole-2 electronic jamming system is capable of confusing HIMARS, throwing Excalibur precision projectiles off course and influencing drones. In fact, because of it, a drone flying up to enemy positions becomes like a foreigner who finds himself in a foreign city without a navigator.
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— The Russian Federation, unfortunately, is the leader in electronic warfare in the world. I once tried to count, after 60 types of electronic warfare I was already lost. They have a variety of them, for a variety of tasks, — says military specialist in the field of radio technology Sergei Beskrestnov.
Enemy electronic warfare can operate at three levels: tactical — at a distance of up to 50 km, operational-tactical — up to 500 km and strategic — more than half a thousand km.
— They drew conclusions during the war in Georgia in 2008. After this war, they invested quite well in the development of just such radio-electronic systems, primarily electronic suppression complexes, — says Defense Express portal expert Anton Mikhnenko.
The Russians very actively used these systems during the occupation of the Kiev region.
How can the APU penetrate the electronic shield of the Russian Federation
However, when the war turned into front-line confrontation in the East and South, enemy electronic warfare turned out to be very vulnerable.
— Any such complex that is located close to the front line, 5-7 km away, will be instantly identified by our scouts and destroyed. It is on tracks, clumsy, and difficult to hide. And when the Russians realized this, it turned out that their technology was ineffective. We made our bet on mobility. That is, our main Ukrainian electronic warfare complex Bukovel is assembled on the basis of pickup trucks. We have a second complex based on a pickup truck. The guys arrived, immediately turned around, installed antennas, worked, — says Beskrestnov.
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Consequently, the Russians also began to reformat their electronic warfare. When the Ukrainian Defense Forces captured kamikaze drones, the occupiers found opposition — compact electronic warfare systems, which were called “trench”. For example, complex Swift.
— Some complexes are quite tricky. That is, they monitor the radio-electronic space around, notice a drone that is approaching, but do not trigger, and when it falls directly into the range of electronic warfare systems, that is, signals for suppression, they turn on automatically and choke this drone — so that it cannot be used, — says Mikhnenko.
And the Russians themselves began to make such drones. And now, the Ukrainian military admits, enemy FPV drones — this is the biggest headache for our infantry.
But if the occupiers, in order to protect themselves from FPV drones, focused their own defense industry on increasing the production volumes of compact electronic warfare, then in Ukraine there were some difficulties with this.
Now the development and implementation of modern Ukrainian electronic warfare systems — one of the biggest priorities. Private companies have actively entered this race.
So, at the Kruk test site, Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance officers are learning how to operate and counter drones. For example, the so-called trench electronic warfare, to which the manufacturer gave the eloquent nickname “horned”, overlaps the frequencies of most flying FPV drones and they simply do not reach to the position and miss the intended target.
According to the head of the Kvertus company Yaroslav Filimonov, ideally such “horned” must be on every Ukrainian tank and in every trench. However, the developers went even further and invented tactical EW backpacks.
— There is a category of people who go on landings, assaults, evacuation, these are all targets for the enemy, so in two weeks we got a backpack. There is already a group that can go on a mission and complete it, — adds Filimonov.
But the company's flagship development anti-drone gun blocks 6 different communication channels, with its help you can carry out video and photo control. The new product is also effective against FPV drones.
But there are many electronic warfare systems at the front — this is also not very good. After all, jammers do not work in one direction — where enemy drones cannot fly, neither can our own.
But what can be effective in this case? The answer was recently proposed by the Ministry of Digital Development. Program drones so that they destroy enemy electronic warfare even in the presence of radio interference. Experts call it a machine vision system.
— The operator just needs to lift the drone up, fly to the target, select a target square, and the drone will take it further on its own. That is, even if the connection is lost, even if the electronic warfare dome is working, even if there is a target in motion, machine vision will still bring it, — says Bezkrestnov.
Ukrainian fighters are constantly changing their approach to electronic warfare, where the main emphasis is not on quantity, but on accuracy and manufacturability. At the same time, the enemy is trying to intercept the methods of our Defense Forces. But in this race, although the enemy prevails in numbers, he still lags behind qualitatively.
