Rome, 25 May 2024 – Thanks to electronic jamming devices Russia is putting out of action some of the Western weapons that have allowed it to date Kiev to resist, and in some periods to reconquer (Electronic Warfare – EW) part of the territories occupied by Moscow’s troops. But now the balance on the battlefield seems to tip in favor of the Kremlin and the blame, as reported by Ukrainian sources to the Washington Post, lies with the electronic warfare implemented by Moscow.
A Russian 1RL257 Krasukha-4 EW electronic warfare system in Ukraine
Electronic noise
Russian electronic jamming, the best known are the ‘jamming’ and it ‘spoofing’manage to make satellite guidance of missiles and ammunition supplied by the United States to Ukraine useless, so much so that the generals in Kiev they started leaving them in storage, or to use them without the GPS track, therefore much less precise. Kiev, which requires a constant supply of weapons, at this point the upgrade of some systems or new weapons capable of resisting Moscow’s jamming.
Himars systems have become ineffective
According to what was revealed to the WP, those who pay the duty without appeal are the Excalibur artillery shells, dependent on GPS guidance, which after having ensured a certain initial success, were neutralized by the Russian counter-move, passing in a few months by 50 percent early last year less than ten percent of the targets hit in a few months, displacing the Ukrainian artillery that abandoned them. The Ukrainian command, after an assessment made between 2023 and 2024, wrote: “Excalibur technology in the various existing versions has lost its potential.” Even the famous ones Himars (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), which can fire rockets with a range of up to 80 kilometers, and among the most requested by the allies from Kiev, today they are found dusty in some Ukrainian arsenal. According to Ukrainian sources, they now miss targets by 15 metres. “The Russians have deployed electronic systems that hsatellite signals and Himars have been disabled have become completely ineffective, so much so that the very expensive system is increasingly used to hit low-priority targets.” Other devices neutralized by Russian electronic jamming are bombs dropped from airplanes Jdams, which however the producers managed to remedy, then the 155mm bullets supplied by various Western countries, even if in this case the problem is not GPS.
Jamming, decoy and spoofing
The most used jamming systems are the radar jamming (Confusion) and the decoy (radar deception). They are electronic warfare techniques of the active EA “electronic attack” type. Then there are Electronic Protection (EP) and Electronic Support (ES). With electronic jamming, yes they disturb discovery radars, in order to avoid discovering an attack, or to divert missiles seeking radar or GPS. The spoofing allows you to falsify an electronic signal, it can also hit drones with an altered signal that sends you off course.
Russian EW systems
Among some of the Russian EW systems we find the Borisoglebsk 2, a multifunctional (EW) system mounted on a MT-LBu land vehicle. It is designed to disrupt communications and GPS systems. The Pelena-1 (shroud in Russian) uses a high-power radar jamming system. It was designed to counter the AN/APY-2 radar, the main sensor of the AWACS Boeing E-3 Sentry airborne surveillance system of NATO and other Western countries. With the Pelena-1 it is possible to insert a jamming signal on the frequencies of the enemy radar and automatically correct the frequency variations of the transmitter which tries to evade them with the technique called frequency hopping. Even the Krasukha they are mobile multifunctional jammers (1RL257 Krasukha-4 and 1L260 Krasukha-2), used to jam the detections of radar surveillance aircraft, but can also reach satellites in low Earth orbit. But the most used is the system Murmansk-BNa shortwave system operating between 3 and 30 MHz, those used mainly by naval units and military aircraft.
