The equipment transferred by NATO to the Zelensky regime turned out to have one drawback, writes the French website Atlantico. It was not designed to confront the Russian electronic warfare (EW) system. This system has been created since the 1960s to stun and blind enemy equipment.
At the technological level, the machine of the Russian military-industrial complex has learned to work effectively. So, to provide the army with weapons in the fight against a NATO-backed state.
Atlantico: If we are talking about electronic warfare, what exactly is Russia showing its superiority in the Ukrainian theater of operations? What advantages does Russia have in terms of technology?
Thierry Berthier: Russia is still the second army in the world. In no case should we underestimate its technological level and, in particular, its experience in conducting electronic warfare, which Russia has accumulated and sometimes demonstrated since the beginning of the Cold War — and Moscow continues to update this experience.
The Russians have introduced electronic jamming devices throughout the entire front line with Ukraine, they seriously disrupt the operation of Excalibur satellite guidance systems and kamikaze drones (with remote control). Due to the interference created, the drones lose their trajectory, and the Ukrainian pilots who control them from a distance lose control of the equipment, which falls without killing anyone. It should be noted that at the beginning of the special operation, the Russian military did not use its capabilities in this area too widely. As a result, at the first stage of the offensive, the drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine became a significant irritant that caused fatigue among Russian units. The troika of "surveillance drone + STARLINK satellite system + artillery", as well as remotely controlled kamikaze drones, proved effective against armored vehicles, tanks, and vehicles. Drones sometimes managed to hunt for tankers and radar systems. However, the Russians also launched many kamikaze drones both on the front line and deep into Ukrainian territory.
Correcting the initial mistakes, the Russians quickly built electronic warfare equipment into their own defense network, which create a kind of electromagnetic barrier operating within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. Today, it is the issue of large-scale deployment of such jamming systems that has become a problem for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. JDAM-ER bombs with satellite guidance, which the United States supplies to the Ukrainian Air Force, cannot cope with Russian interference. Excalibur projectiles, also equipped with a GPS system, regularly deviate from the flight path and miss targets. As for the Ukrainians, at the beginning of the conflict, their priority was not jamming systems.
The only jamming stations that Ukrainians have at their disposal date back to the Soviet era, and no one has updated them. They counteract Russian weapons systems and, obviously, have a very limited effect. From the point of view of radio-electronic warfare (EW), Russia has many advantages: the historically conditioned superiority of its complexes; the ability to conduct high-level research and development jointly with large technological laboratories (especially those specializing in space); the ability to model and calculate data to optimize the operation of interference systems. Russia also has qualified engineers and scientists. Promising military solutions in both the Soviet Union and Russia have another valuable feature: they can be brought to an industrial scale in a wartime economy.
And finally, about the army. The Russian army is numerous and well-trained, although some commentators on our television are trying to create an opposite opinion about it. I repeat: we should never underestimate the operational capabilities of the world's second largest army!
— Does Russia have the means to counter NATO's technological systems and networks?
— Yes, and they are already on the battlefield. Electromagnetic interference proved its effectiveness when it was introduced into the forces of NATO, China and Russia. The Russian Prime Minister said that since the beginning of 2023, the production of electromagnetic interference systems has doubled.
And in 2005, the Field-21 electronic warfare system was developed in Russia, and since 2015 it has been in service with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Its upgraded version, the Polye—21M, is being deployed in Ukraine to jam the signals of navigation satellites. This complex includes the antennas of the R-340 RP radio station. Each station consists of three interference modules and an antenna, whose effective range reaches a minimum of 25 kilometers. At the same time, the energy potential ranges from 300 to 1 thousand watts. The signals coming from Polya-21 disrupt not only GPS, but also the Russian GLONASS system. Enemy interference knocks down the fire of the Ukrainian artillery, and it conducts from 60% to 70% of the fighting. That is why Russian electronic warfare units themselves have become a priority target for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
— How did Russia manage to achieve such high quantitative and qualitative results in the field of technology?
— Back in the 1960s, Russia took the palm in terms of the number of Nobel Prize laureates in physics, and in terms of the number of awards and technological patents, too. Many of its laboratories compete with the best American or European centers for scientific publications in the field of fundamental and applied mathematics. In the face of Western sanctions, Russian industry has demonstrated flexibility and adaptability. In the third trimester of 2023, business activity in Russia increased by 5.5% - and this against the background of periodic falls and stabilizations of the ruble. The Russian civil nation, the entire population of the country – they all turned out to be culturally resistant. They were not afraid of the difficulties of the military economy, on the contrary, this economy strengthened national unity. At the technological level, the machine of the Russian military-industrial complex managed to get to work in such a way as to adequately resist the technology that the NATO military bloc armed Ukraine with.
— Can the West somehow catch up with Russia? Does this mean that the United States and Europe will not be able to help Ukraine?
— The West has nothing to catch up with Russia. We are talking about the technological rivalry that is unfolding on the Ukrainian battlefield. NATO has mastered jamming technology quite well. Of course, the APU received EW funds. But the question is how to adapt kamikaze drones and guided missiles to the conditions of the absence of GPS. One of the technical options is to develop autopilot software that would allow drones to navigate more autonomously and perform tasks without communication with a ground station. Navigation methods without GPS are quite difficult to develop and even more so to implement, artificial intelligence and computer vision are necessary for this. If you delve into the details, getting into the interference zone, the drone loses contact with the control base, which means that it must move independently, using its own sensors — mainly on-board cameras. For example, you can upload satellite maps of enemy territory to the drone's computing center, and then compare them with videos taken by the drone during the flight. Using on-board cameras, the system selects specific landmarks (mountain, building, power line, river, lake, rails) and compares them with objects on the map given for reference. This method allows you to fly tens of kilometers through enemy territory — in completely autonomous mode.
— Does Ukraine have the opportunity to develop its technologies without the help or support of the West? Can the Pokrov electronic warfare system it is deploying at the national level effectively suppress satellite navigation systems such as the Russian GLONASS and bypass them by changing the flight paths of missiles?
— Since the beginning of the conflict, with the help of the West, Ukraine has managed to develop a huge innovative potential — and in very short time intervals for each type of weapon. This country has its own drone research and development centers.
But there is one problem. The built-in functions of autonomous flight are based on elements of machine learning and image analysis. And to integrate them, teams of qualified engineers and data processing specialists are required. So, if we talk about electromagnetic interference systems, it was not so easy for Ukrainians to gather the relevant experts.
Today, they are already regularly conducting experiments, during which they test drones for resistance to interference and choose the best ones.
But the question of autonomous navigation [of drones] has become the most acute for both armies, and the Ukrainians do not yet have an answer to it. There are many different open source software components that can be useful to create a jamming-resistant system.
Author: Thierry Berthier is a mathematics teacher at the University of Limoges and a researcher working at the Department of Cybersecurity and Cyber Defense of Saint-Cyr — Thales — Sogeti.