Russian Electronic Warfare in Ukraine 2022-2023

In March 2022, just a month into Russia’s offensive, Ukrainian troops captured an abandoned Krasukha-4, one of Russia’s most sophisticated Electronic Warfare (EW) systems. It is designed primarily to jam airborne or satellite-based fire control radars in the X- and Ku-bands, the type that are used on US reconnaissance platforms, such as the E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. It was a coup of sorts as Ukraine had in its possession a functional Krasukha-4 to study and analyse. It was also symptomatic of Russia’s failure to garner and deploy its EW resources in the early stages of the war. This was all the more surprising as EW has been one of the strengths of the Russian military and had been used effectively during the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Expecting a re-run of the same, it was assumed that the EW would again be used to devastating effect in Ukraine, but most analysts were of the view that Russia seems to have underperformed in this aspect. It was surprising as EW holds a special place in the concept of operations of the Russian Ground Forces. Referred to as radio-electronic warfare (REB), Russia sees it as a means to degrade the combat systems of an opponent to such an extent that any technological superiority will be severely compromised. The EW troops are associated from Motorised Rifle Brigade upwards with a company of EW troops with broad-spectrum capabilities for tactical warfare forming part of the Brigade while each Army Group has its own integral EW battalion. Besides these, Russia has five EW Brigades, one for each of Russia’s four military districts, with two brigades in the Western Military District.

The EW Brigades are designed to provide wide-area protection of critical nodes within a Russian formation. It can be task-organised to support certain operations or carry out tasks against specified complex targets. It has 1 RL257 Krasukha-4 and the 1 L260 Krasukha-2 that are designed to jam the operational systems of Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTAR) and Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) aircraft respectively. Krasukha-2 is used to jam S-band (2.3GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) airborne radars, and Krasukha-4 is effective against X-band and Ku-band airborne radars (8.5GHz to 10.68GHz and 13.4GHz to 14GHz/15.7GHz to 17.7GHz respectively). The latter employs broadband active jamming and is meant to protect command posts, ground-based air defence systems and communication nodes from hostile radar reconnaissance and precision weapons. Krasukha-4 can also be employed with the ship-borne EW system TK-25 that can detect and jam radar signals from air and ship-borne targeting systems, as well as anti-ship missiles.

The other EW systems include the Murmansk-BN system, Pole-21, R-330H Zhitel and the RB-341V Leer-3. Murmansk is a communications, intelligence and jamming system and is used to provide wide-area intelligence and jamming against airborne HF signals. Pole-21 or R-330H Zhitel are used to jam or suppress GPS. This has two effects – it degrades the accuracy of GPS-guided weapons and prevents adversary targeting cells from knowing where they are. RB-341V Leer-3 utilises an Orlan-10 UAV and has a mobile phone tower simulator built into the UAV that is designed to interact with and jam the GSM-900 and GSM-1800 mobile phone networks.

During the initial phase of the offensive, Russia did deploy its EW resources, deploying at least three of its five EW Brigades. Key Russian EW systems deployed in Ukraine were:¹

The use of EW by Russia, seriously impacted Ukraine’s ability to respond, blocking Ukrainian missile defence systems and allowed Russian forces to launch an airborne assault to take Hostomel Airport. A report in Newsweek in March 2022 even went out to claim that Russia was “jamming everything their systems can reach.”²

The initial phase saw Russia facing some problems in exploiting its EW resources effectively. One reason was tactical. The Russian manoeuvre brigades were broken up into smaller Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) of 300 to 800 personnel with a complement of the original manoeuvre brigade’s EW company. Russian columns made up of BTGs were moving along multiple axes into Ukraine as a result of which many Ukrainian forces were interspersed between Russian formations. Each BTG had a complement of EW resources, but their employment was restricted as any jamming of Ukrainian communication networks would have affected Russian networks as well. The Russian EW troops even when spread all over the battle space, had to be restrained and did not resort to large scale jamming. Moreover, the range of drones was restricted by the line of sight radio links and they could not be sent well over the horizon to jam Ukrainian networks in depth.

Another factor was the built-up areas around Kiev which had a well-laid out civilian cell phone transmission network, mixed with military communications. The Russians could not isolate the military networks and transmitters. The use of Single-Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) further complicated the situation for the Russians. By the end of the first week of the offensive, Russian ground forces were unable to effectively communicate as the same EW capabilities that had effectively degraded Ukrainian SAM systems were now causing serious electronic fratricide problems. Russia was, thus, forced to scale back its EW operations.

Reasons for Initial Failure

One of the likely reasons for under performance of Russian EW capability is speculated to be paucity of EW resources with Russia in terms of equipment, personnel and expertise to support such a large operation.³ The other reasons include the use of low cost Chinese-made components that left the Russian equipment vulnerable to Ukrainian jamming. But the main reason for failure was poor planning, lack of coordination between EW and ground troops and the complacency on the part of Russian commanders.⁴

The Turnaround

The turnaround for Russian EW troops came after the collapse of the Kyiv axes when the offensive got bogged down as it was then that the EW resources could be deployed extensively and used to an optimum. Russian forces could now re-organise and concentrate against Ukrainian positions in Donbas and in the Southeast in the surrounded city of Mariupol allowing for far better coordination of electronic warfare assets with ground operations. Russia set up EW complexes with up to ten complexes per 20km of frontage. Collectively, these complexes effectively disrupted navigation along the front and conducted direction finding to direct artillery and electronic attack against Ukrainian aircraft and UAVs.

Krasukha-4, which was too powerful and unwieldy to be useful during the assault on Kyiv, made a re-appearance. It was used by the EW brigades to jam the radars on Ukrainian drones such as the Bayraktar TB2 and to interfere with their communication links thereby prevent Ukrainian forces from locating Russian artillery emplacements. In Southern and Eastern Ukraine, the shorter-range VHF-UHF electronic attack systems such as the R-330Zh Zhitel were effective in disabling the Ukrainian drones. In spite of the use of SINCGARS by Ukraine, Russian EW troops have had some success in jamming attacking Ukrainian communications using R-934B VHF and SPR-2 VHF/UHF jammer. As a result, the impact of Russian EW was “pretty severe.”⁵

To suppress the Ukrainian air defences, Russians coordinated the use of Orlan-10 UAVs to force Ukrainian SAM systems to open up and then suppress them through an EW attack followed by artillery and missile strikes. This forced Ukraine to move back its medium and short range SAM systems to reduce loss rates, opening up the skies for the Russian Air Force and gave it a significant degree of freedom to operate at medium and high altitudes in the vicinity of the frontlines.⁶ This was not all. Russian EW complexes were jamming Ukraine Air Force’s air-to-ground and air-to-air communications, as also suppressing the navigation equipment. This was a turnaround for Russian EW troops in the true sense. However, the biggest impact was on Ukraine’s drone operations with the Russian EW by now effectively suppressing Ukraine’s drone by electronic attacks, blunting one of Kyiv’s biggest advantages in the early months of the war.

Of the drones used by Ukraine, around 90 percent were destroyed. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter remained around three flights and of a fixed-wing UAV was around six flights. The most common reason for failure of a drone mission was the disruption of a drone through EW, the dazzling of its sensors or the denial of its navigational systems from determining the accurate location of a target. In other instances, the Russians successfully struck the ground control stations of the UAV. One of the areas most affected by this was the Ukrainian artillery that was now left blind without the ‘eyes in the sky’ and was now much less accurate.⁷ With Ukraine’s artillery batteries forced to fire blind at times, the ammunition expenditure was going up, putting strain on the logistics.

Ukraine Fights Back

Russia may have the upper hand in EW, but Ukraine has also been fighting back with equipment supplied by the West, including SDR-based technologies. This includes counter-drone systems containing SDR transceivers provided by the United States that has downed hundreds of Russian drones by jamming their GPS signals and even by damaging their electronics with high-power microwave beams. The Russian tactical radio communications are being jammed by using United States-supplied EW systems. Communication jamming is made easier by the fact that Russia does not have a system like Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System and relies on cell phones or unencrypted radios to a large extent. The large size of Russian EW systems and their high-power transmission that allows for jamming over a huge area are being exploited by Ukraine to counter them by using US electronic support systems to intercept and locate them. Once they have been located, use is made of rockets, artillery and drone to destroy them.

The details of Russian EW equipment destroyed, or captured are tabulated below:⁸

Observations

The war in Ukraine has shown that fundamentals still matter, even in case of EW. Training and planning are as important as the equipment held by any army. The Russian EW units equipped with the best and latest equipment, could not influence the course of operations because the commanders in the field had not planned it well. The grouping of EW assets was not given due thought as a result of which the forward EW units were forced to use short-range systems. This was problematic on two counts. First, it limited the Russians’ capabilities to carry out deep EW attacks and second, it caused EW fratricide as it interfered with Russian communications.

The EW units with forward formations had to stay on the move, reducing the utility of their larger and more effective EW systems. Another restricting factor was the limited stocks of long-range missiles with Russia as it could not exploit all the information provided by its long range systems such as the Moskva-4. Even when deployed, these systems became the target of Ukrainian EW systems who found it easier to locate them and take them out. Logistics problems added to the challenges for Russia as components or replacement parts for damaged or unserviceable Russian Army EW systems were held up for long, leaving the equipment unserviceable when needed. Training, as mentioned earlier, was found to be inadequate at times for the Russians to fully exploit their EW resources.

Ukraine, on the other hand, had learnt the lessons from the 2014 invasion and was able to counter some of EW attacks by relying on SINCGARS and Starlinks network. But this was not enough as Russia seems to have the upper hand in the battle of the (electronic) waves for now.

What Next?

The war is far from over and the coming weeks, nay months, may see EW take on a greater role especially for Russia as it up scales its military operations. One of the newer systems fielded by Russia is the sound-thermal reconnaissance system “Penicillin” used for surveillance of artillery, anti-aircraft and tactical missile firing positions. It combines seismic detectors, thermal imaging and acoustic sensors. After its successful use in locating and countering the HIMARS MLRS, Russia plans to increase the number of Penicillin systems in Ukriane.⁹

This is not the only new development as a report quoting Russian state-owned defence enterprise, Rostec, mentions the development of a new generation EW system of which mass production is likely to commence in a “couple of months.”¹⁰ Other developments include the development of a new drone with an onboard Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) generator capable of disabling drones and drone swarms. The reports added that the drone was equipped with conventional and Infra-Red (IR) cameras with solar panels located on its folding wings. A preliminary analysis suggests that while such a system can potentially exist, at least as a concept, it is not yet clear if it can be scaled up for tactical use.¹¹

Conclusion

EW is a pivotal albeit invisible part of modern warfare as armies use the electromagnetic spectrum to carry out reconnaissance, surveillance, communicate, coordinate, command and control. They use EW to control the spectrum, protecting their own sensors and communications while denying access to the electromagnetic spectrum by enemy troops. EW has always been an important aspect of Russian military operations and experts have long believed that Russia has the most experienced and best-equipped EW units in the world. The continued use of EW, successfully for a large part, coupled with fielding of new systems only reinforces the view that it will remain central to the conduct of Russian military operations. It is, therefore, not surprising to note that it has also been one of the few successes Russia has had during its offensive in Ukraine.

But there have been some setbacks too. Rather than playing a key role in spearheading the offensive, EW became effective and influential only when the war ended up becoming a slugfest between the two sides, with both employing tactics of attrition warfare more reminiscent of World War I. The use of EW by Russia during the ongoing war, offers some important lessons. While the importance of EW cannot be underplayed and a coordinated well-planned use of EW is essential for optimum results, it is equally true to remember that mere control over the electro-magnetic spectrum through EW in itself does not ensure victory.

Endnotes