{"id":12224,"date":"2023-11-29T13:55:56","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T13:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/29\/ukraine-makes-new-push-to-defeat-russias-electronic-warfare\/"},"modified":"2023-11-29T13:55:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T13:55:56","slug":"ukraine-makes-new-push-to-defeat-russias-electronic-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/29\/ukraine-makes-new-push-to-defeat-russias-electronic-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine makes new push to defeat Russia\u2019s electronic warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 <\/strong>to have destroyed a Russian Pole-21 electronic warfare system on the eastern front near Donetsk. <\/p>\n

Ukraine is already racing to catch up with Russia when it comes to electronic warfare. <\/p>\n

This attack also shows how Kyiv is rushing to destroy Moscow\u2019s technology on the battlefield \u2013 a sign of how important it may be for the future of the war. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

After almost six months of Ukraine\u2019s slow and grinding counteroffensive, it\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

Pavlo Petrychenko, the drone commander with Ukraine\u2019s 59th Motorized Brigade, which carried out the early November strike, <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut when we started to receive foreign equipment, they started to use these systems to suppress our weapons. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince (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,\u201d Petrychenko said. <\/p>\n

A chink in Ukraine\u2019s NATO-provided armor<\/h2>\n

And that\u2019s the problem for Ukraine. Russian jammers have turned the technological advantage of Ukraine\u2019s Western-provided arsenal of \u201csmart\u201d \u2013 guided \u2013 weapons into a vulnerability. <\/p>\n

Precision-guided missiles and guided multiple launch rocket systems \u2013 such as HIMARS \u2013 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. <\/p>\n

The Pole-21 system, designed to jam GPS signals to protect Russian assets from incoming drones or missiles, is just one feature of Moscow\u2019s growing electronic arsenal. <\/p>\n

Jamming, as well as \u201cspoofing\u201d GPS \u2013 a technique which effectively tricks an enemy drone or missile into thinking it\u2019s somewhere else \u2013 which also disrupts radar, radio and even cell communications, are all part of the Kremlin\u2019s playbook. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Experts and Ukrainian officials also say Russia has now fully integrated electronic warfare with its troops. <\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny wrote in a recent essay that Russia is now mass producing what he calls \u201ctrench electronic warfare.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe tactical level of the Russian troops is saturated with (this equipment)\u201d and despite equipment losses Moscow still maintains \u201csignificant electronic warfare superiority,\u201d Zaluzhny added. <\/p>\n

Zaluzhny also singled out American-made Excalibur shells, noting they \u201chave had their capability significantly decreased, since the targeting system (using GPS) is very sensitive to the influence of enemy electronic warfare.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz said that, \u201cwhile the impact of Russian jamming has been observed\u201d in certain United States-provided systems, including HIMARS rocket launchers, \u201cit has not rendered these systems ineffective.\u201d <\/p>\n

Dietz said the department has taken steps to reduce those vulnerabilities, undertaking \u201csubstantial efforts to re-engineer and update these systems.\u201d He added that updates are \u201cbeing implemented as swiftly as possible to counteract the effects of EW jamming.\u201d <\/p>\n

From drone army to electronic army<\/h2>\n

Ukraine said it has been able to increase domestic drone production a hundredfold this year \u2013 something that has transformed the battlefield. <\/p>\n

The man behind this, Ukraine\u2019s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, now hopes to repeat that success with electronic warfare \u2013 not least because drones are so often the victims of EW. <\/p>\n

This involves not just integrating electronic warfare as a layer of protection on the battlefield, but doing it smartly. <\/p>\n

Fedorov warns against \u201coversaturating\u201d the battlefield, but instead supports designing EW systems that can be controlled remotely, so they target only enemy equipment. <\/p>\n

Otherwise, there\u2019s a real risk that electronic warfare systems can work against you, downing your own drones, Fedorov added. <\/p>\n

A November 2022 report from the British think tank Royal United Services Institute suggested that what it calls \u201celectronic fratricide\u201d \u2013 accidentally targeting one\u2019s own forces \u2013 was such a big problem on the Russian side in the early days of the war that they had to scale back EW efforts to avoid sabotaging their own battlefield communications. <\/p>\n

The most important task for now though, Fedorov says, is for Ukraine to acquire the technology to program its drones to target enemy electronic warfare equipment on a large scale. <\/p>\n

That would be a game-changer for drone operators like Petrychenko, who admits they are in a game of cat-and-mouse, hunting Russian equipment. <\/p>\n

Right now, the best hope they have is that videos, like the one of his early November drone strike, go viral, Petrychenko said. With so many Ukrainian troops on social media, any viral footage like this would act like a handbook, helping them identify Russian antennas on the battlefield. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear this is changing the game beyond Ukraine. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think what you\u2019re seeing play out in Ukraine is very much a glimpse into what modern warfare looks like today,\u201d said Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former principal deputy under secretary for defense at the Pentagon. It\u2019s a future where \u201celectronic warfare capabilities, tactics are integrated into conventional force operations,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n

Dietz, the Pentagon spokesman, said the US is \u201cactively evaluating and adapting its strategies\u201d in electronic warfare, and sees it as a \u201cfundamental aspect of contemporary and future military engagements.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fedorov said Ukraine is investing directly in electronic warfare, but also following in the footsteps of his drone program by incentivizing domestic production. <\/p>\n

And he is open about the fact that Ukraine needs the help of its Western allies, both in terms of equipment and expertise. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe West has all the technology we need. The question possibly is how to use it, and it is an important question. We need to think about the next technological stage in the war.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}