The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict has been defining and redrafting the contours of modern warfare. It has established unmanned systems (aerial and ground) at the center of warfare. Russia and NATO are racing to acquire better technologies to improve their unmanned system and detect and counter unmanned systems. Russia is gaining ground at an unexpected rate and has forced western experts to accept superiority of Russian system in some domain. One such domain is of Electronic Warfare (EW) which plays key role in countering Ukrainian drones. Recently published reports in western strategic media sites have accepted the superiority of Russian EW and role they are playing in their success in battle field.

In a report of War On The Rocks, written by a former Slovak military officer, who volunteered for Kiev, says, “Enemy electronic warfare downed a full 31 percent of our sorties.” Adding further on the limitations of the first-person-view (FPV) drones, he said, “when jammers were available and switched on, first-person view operations became effectively impossible.”

Russia is a pioneer in EW system and considers them as strategic system, much before rest of the world realized their strategic significance. In recent India- Pakistan conflict, Russian S-400 and Indo-Russian BrahMos demonstrated the significance of long-range interception and long-range target acquisition to achieve strategic objectives.

On August 20, in a report Defense News, US media house, while discussing why NATO’s reliance on drone is not working, said, “Rather than exploiting Russia’s weaknesses, a drone-centric NATO could be playing to Russia’s strengths.”

Discussing success of Russian EW, the report said, “In most cases, only a small fraction of the huge volumes of drones launched by Ukrainian forces reach their targets, and a still smaller proportion achieve decisive damage when they do.”

The report finds that if NATO pursues UAS as the weapon of choice, Russia will find it “significantly easier to mitigate UAS lethality.” This sums up the success of Russian EW System.

Like the layered air defence system based around S-400, Russia has created a wall of electronic countermeasures through its EW systems, which is the reason why Russian has been able to breach Ukrainian defences and gain contested territories.

Russian EW System

Although Russia has fielded large number of EW system in the battle field three system which have played key role are Khibiny, Vitebsk and Krasukha are being discussed below.

It is Russian electronic counter measure system designed to be installed on wing tips of fighter jets. According to Rostec, the receiver of the system captures signals from enemy radars, processes and sends out a distorted signals to spoof enemy anti air defence systems. In case of an airborne surface-to-air missile locked at the aircraft, Khibiny spoofs the missile to a false electronic position, otherwise delays detection or cause range finding difficulties for anti-air system.  Currently, Khibiny is mounted on various Russian jets including Su-34, Su-35 etc.

Vitebsk

Designed to protect rotary and fixed wing aircraft from shoulder fired heat seeking missiles, the Vitebsk has played key role in ensuring survival of Russian military choppers like Mi-8 in highly contested zones.  It can be mounted on any type of aircraft, including transport and commercial passenger jets. Besides helicopters, the ground attack Su-25SM jets are equipped with this.

With the primary purpose to prevent a missile launch, the system prevents radars from cueing on the aircraft.  In case of incoming infra-red seeking missile, the system use laser to jam the income missile seeker system. Armed with sensors like radar warning, laser warning and missile sensor, and two kinds of countermeasure systems, SAP active radio-interference system for radar jamming and LSOEP for laser optical electronic jamming, Vitebsk is capable of defending threats within 1000 m radius. The export version is known as the President-S.

Krasukha

 

One may call, Krasukha as the back bone of Russian anti-UAV capability. The wheeled-truck mounted EW system is equipped with radar system with a range of few hundred kilometers which can detect low flying drones and radar-guided missile systems and jamming station control vehicle. It can be used against radar systems, communication and data systems. The system is capable of jamming and burning out electronics systems of all kinds of drones and radar and satellite guided missiles. It provides a protective electronic umbrella to Russian forces. While Karushka -2 uses S-band, the latest Karushka-4 complements it with its Ku and X band radar. Karushka-4 is reported to be capable of affecting even LEO satellites.