Military officials say that Ukraine’s counter-offensive campaign is hampered in part by Russia’s ability to jam drones.
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces in the south, said that although Russian troops had suffered heavy losses, it was clear that Ukraine’s counter-attack progress was slowing down.
According to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Inhat, one reason for the slow response of Ukraine is that Russia has a significant advantage in electronic warfare.
“Unfortunately, Russia is far ahead of us in this regard. You don’t have to shoot down the drone with a missile or an anti-aircraft gun. You can simply force it to land, intercept it with electronic warfare,” Inhat said on Ukrainian television.
“Russia now has powerful systems that can interfere with the work of our defense forces. They have enough of these systems. Ukraine has made progress in electronic warfare, but we started late, we should have developed (in this area) earlier,” added Mr. Inhat.
The RUSI Institute (UK) recently published a report, saying that Russian electronic warfare (EW) weapons seem to be causing significant damage to Ukraine’s UAVs without using any bullets.
According to RUSI statistics, in the past time, Russia’s EW systems have been relatively stable, and are said to have intercepted 10,000 enemy UAVs per month, equivalent to 333 times per day.
Similar to the arrangement of the air defense battlefield with short, medium, and long-range complexes that cover each other, Russia also allocates EW complexes with a similar mechanism, ensuring that they can cover every 10km along the front.
An earlier report by the military website Eurasian Times said that Russia proved to be dominant over Ukraine in the field of electronic warfare when it was able to intercept UAVs, communications equipment, and satellite navigation signals. Ukraine also possesses a number of EW complexes, but the ability to cover the front lines and power is not equal to Russia.
According to experts, Russian EW systems have made Ukraine’s TB2 attack UAV significantly reduce its combat effectiveness in the context that this drone has caused a lot of damage to Russia before.
Electronic warfare weapons are often referred to as “invisible assassins” because they are military weapons that use electromagnetic energy to attack or disrupt an opponent’s activities. It can disable any electrical device and can be executed from the ground, in the air, on land, at sea, and in space without the use of explosives, or direct attacks.
In Ukraine, Russia is allowed to use EW complexes such as Krasukha-2, Krasukha-4, RB-341V LEER-3, R-330Zh Zhitel, Murmansk-BN, and Moskva-1. They can interfere with radar, radio, and communications satellite navigation signals at different frequencies. Russia also seems to use the 14Ts227 Tobol complex, which is capable of interrupting the synchronization of the Starlink satellite internet system with terminals on the ground.
RUSI lists the Shipovnik-Aero complex, which they say has helped Russia intercept a series of Ukrainian UAVs, by disrupting communications with people or weapons control stations. On the other hand, RUSI said, Russia seems to be disrupting the enemy’s military communications capabilities with EW complexes, typically Torn-MDM jammers.
