According to an article published on the website of the U.S. "Defense News" (Defense News), the Pentagon found that the advanced U.S.-made weapons used by the Ukrainian army on the front line are being severely challenged by the Russian army's electronic warfare, including the M928 Excalibur "Excalibur" "Excalibur" guided artillery shells, GLSDB "land-launched small-diameter bombs" and ATACMS "Army Tactical Missiles" and many other U.S.-made precision-guided munitions The combat effectiveness has been seriously weakened. The report pointed out that at the beginning of the M928 Excalibur "Excalibur" guided artillery shells put into the battlefield in Ukraine, the hit rate was as high as 70%, but only 6 weeks later, due to the effective interference measures taken by the Russian army, the hit rate plummeted to 6%, which is equivalent to a sharp drop of 91%, and the use effect is greatly reduced.
The "War Zone" column on the website "The Drive" reported that the combat effectiveness of precision strike munitions guided by GPS satellites, including GLSDB land-launched small-diameter bombs, M31 satellite-guided rockets, and JDAM-ER extended-range jointly guided attack weapons, continued to decline in combat effectiveness in the face of the Russian army's electronic countermeasures. In March 2024, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps' Falcon-900LX aircraft was on its way to Orzysz, Poland, when it approached the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad when the GPS navigation signal on board was jammed for about 30 minutes, forcing the crew to navigate by other means.
In the field of electronic warfare, from the USSR to Russia, there has always been a stereotype of "stupid, big, black, and coarse". In the domestic military fan group, there is no shortage of jokes such as "Tube Dafa", "Inverted Card Artifact", "Super Large Oven" and so on. However, judging from the overall situation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, although there is indeed a gap with the world's advanced level today, the performance of Russian-made electronic warfare weapons is still remarkable.
How does the Russian army jam satellite positioning signals?
At present, the communication signals of the four global navigation satellite systems that have been built are all located in the L-band. Among them, the center frequencies of the GPS system of the United States are 1176.45 MHz, 1227.60 MHz and 1575.42 MHz, the center frequencies of the Russian ГЛОНАСС system are 1227.60 MHz, 1381.05 MHz and 1575.42 HMz, and the center frequencies of the ESA Galileo system are 1176.45 MHz, 1207.14 MHz, 1278.75MHz and 1575.42MHz, and the center frequencies of the Beidou system on the mainland are 1561.098MHz, 1207.14MHz and 1268.52MHz.
In the positioning signals transmitted by the GPS global positioning system, the low-precision C/A code is for civilian use, the high-precision code P code is used by specific authorized users, and the encrypted Y code on the basis of P code is for military use. The signal of each satellite of the GPS system is spread through the PRN code with a width of 2.046MHz to distinguish it from other signals and enhance the anti-interference ability. The signals of the Starlink "Starlink" system, which is often responsible for battlefield communication tasks, are mainly located in the Ku-band (12~18GHz) and Ka-band (27~40GHz), and there are also some channels in the V-band (50~75GHz) and E-band (71~86GHz).
The output power of the solar sail panels of the current GPS IIF satellite is 1900W, and the power is reduced by the aging of the material with the extension of use. Considering the influence of the geomagnetic background and the terrain mask, deliberately increasing the power of satellite-to-ground communication will not bring much gain. Therefore, the antenna transmission power of GPS navigation satellite is not high, at about 27W, the signal strength transmitted to the ground is only about -160BW, and the conversion success rate is equivalent to about <Object: word/embeddings/oleObject1.bin>W. In response, the Soviet/Russian Union followed a very simple and crude response - creating jamming signals that were more than 30dB higher than the enemy's communication signal strength to block them - and this suppression of jamming methods proved to be effective in actual combat.
In addition to the use of blocking suppression interference, another way is spoofing interference. Specifically, it can be divided into jamming satellites by simulating uplink signals and spoofing ground terminals by building false signal networks. On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, the main electronic warfare systems for satellite communications are Красуха-4С "Krasukha-4S", Р-340РП Поле-21 "Magnetic Field-21", Тирада-2С "Tirada-2S", Палантин-К "Shawl-K", Р-330Ж Житель "Resident" and other models, of which both use the principle of suppressive jamming and the principle of deceptive jamming.
The 1РЛ257 Красуха-4С system is aimed at X-band (8~12GHz) and Ku-band (12~18GHz) low-orbit satellite communications and radar imaging, ground radar, airborne radar and missile-borne guidance radar signals, and works on the principle of blocking jamming through broad-spectrum noise. The radius of action on satellite communication signals is 150~300km, and the radius of action on radar signals is 10~40km.
The Р-340РП Поле-21 "Magnetic Field-21" electronic warfare system works in the L-band (1~2GHz), using the same blocking jamming principle as Красуха-4С, with a peak power of 0.3~2kW, specifically for satellite communication signals represented by GPS, with an effective radius of about 25km.
The Тирада-2С "Tirata-2S" electronic warfare system operates at UHF (300~3000MHz) UHF and SHF UHF (3~30GHz), which is mainly used for interference with satellite relay communication links, as well as interference with shortwave, ultrashortwave, cellular and trunked radio communications. The working principle of the system is that after detecting the signal of the enemy's satellite-to-ground communication, it generates a directional jamming signal, implements targeted jamming on the enemy's satellite, or generates a false signal to carry out deception jamming. The effective radius of the system for satellite-to-ground communication is 30~40km.
The Палантин-К "Shawl-K" system, which is used for electronic reconnaissance and jamming, works in the short-wave (SW) and ultra-short-wave (VHF) frequency bands, covers 3~300MHz frequency, and has an effective radius of more than 20km. The whole system is loaded by 22 Камаз-7950 off-road trucks, including electronic reconnaissance equipment, jamming systems, command posts and other units, which support large-spacing distributed deployment.
The Р-330Ж Житель "resident" system is primarily intended for jamming satellite-to-ground communications, taking into account ultra-short-wave, short-wave and cellular and cluster communications. The basic combat unit of the system consists of 1 automatic radio jamming station and 1 set of radio reconnaissance antennas. The jamming station is integrated on the chassis of the Урал-43203 or Камаз-43114 off-road truck, and the reconnaissance antenna is mounted on the trailer. Each base unit can operate both independently and in a multi-station network, coupled with the Р-330КМА automated electronic warfare command system. Its spectrum monitoring range is 100~2000MHz frequency band, and the target is targeted for interference through spectrum analysis, focusing on GPS global satellite positioning system, Motorola "Iridium" satellite communication system, Intelsat maritime satellite, etc. The effective radius of action is 20~30km.
How to evaluate the Russian army's satellite-to-ground communication confrontation?
There is no doubt that in the current Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, in the field of communication confrontation, the Russian army has the upper hand. But at the same time, the electronic warfare system of the Russian army itself has inevitably suffered losses in battle. Because the high-power electronic warfare system itself is a source of strong radiation, it is inevitable that the position will be exposed on the battlefield. The tactical electronic warfare system, on the other hand, must be deployed at the front because of the limitation of the operating distance, so it is very easy to be attacked by the enemy's anti-radiation attack.
In fact, in the second half of the article published in Defense News, it was announced that the US Army has allocated huge sums of money for sophisticated electronic warfare equipment and anti-jamming equipment, including the signing of a $318 million GPS military encryption M-code agreement with BAE Systems, and the purchase of a new generation of man-portable battlefield positioning and navigation systems from TRX Systems. In addition, the U.S. Army requested the development of a new jammer that could be mounted on the M1126 Stryker wheeled armored vehicle family or carried by individual soldiers.
According to a column in the "War Zone" section of the "Power" website, the U.S. Air Force is procuring additional seekers designed to enable JDAM-ER aerial bombs to combat GPS jamming. The addition of a new seeker will give the JDAM-ER bomb the ability to lock onto GPS jammers, effectively turning the weapon most affected by this electronic jamming into a tool against it, similar to the AGM-88 HARM "Hamm" anti-radiation missile.
The aforementioned Красуха-4С "Krasukha-4S", Тирада-2С "Tirada-2S" and Р-330Ж Житель "Resident" have already suffered battle losses. Admittedly, electronic warfare systems are high-value targets, but tactical electronic warfare itself is as expendable as tanks and artillery. Even if there is a certain amount of loss, as long as the set objectives are completed, such as successfully covering the maneuver and assembly of one's own forces in front of the enemy, and successfully ensuring the preparation of artillery fire before the attack is launched, it is a successful application.
Of course, since it is already a consumable that can be lost, tactical electronic warfare equipment needs to be developed in the direction of miniaturization and portability. There is no need to deliberately pursue excessive performance, but to keep costs low and easy to produce, and facilitate mass distribution and deployment. After all, as the target satellite communication terminal, the WIFI signal of a single device can only cover a radius of several hundred meters at most, and it also needs to be operated through multi-station networking. Therefore, for the attacker, the effectiveness of a single high-performance device is significantly higher than that of multiple simplified devices.
Compared with the combat losses, the main problems in the development and development of the Russian electronic warfare system are the relatively backward design principle, the serious organizational and management problems in the research and development system, and the transition of false standard performance of design manufacturers. These problems not only seriously limit the further improvement of the electronic level of the Russian army, but even in the current battlefield environment, the performance of active and research equipment cannot cover all the needs of front-line troops.
For example, the large-range countermeasure system represented by the Красуха-4С "Krasukha-4S" and the Р-340РП Поле-21 "Magnetic Field-21" adopts the blocking jamming principle, although the GPS signal is blocked, but the own ГЛОНАСС signal is also gone, because the military code of both is based on the central frequency of 1277.60MHz. If there is a stronger signal processing capability, switching to the transponder type of deception jamming can not only destroy the enemy's communications without affecting your own communications, but also reduce the density of forward deployment and minimize your own losses.
Another example is high-power blocking interference, although simple and effective, but it is not suitable for the situation used. Taking the equipment on fighter planes as an example, if the power supply is constrained and the practice of stacking power is continued, the effective scope and coverage bandwidth will be seriously weakened. With ships, the problem is even greater. When deployed on the ground, it can still evade enemy detection through multi-station networking and time-sharing start-up. On ships, the source of interference is on the protection target, and if the radio frequency protection is not done well, even if it evades satellite guidance, it will attract anti-radiation strikes. This is also one of the reasons why the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet have frequently suffered heavy losses under the attacks of unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Navy.
Another example, in terms of electromagnetic compatibility design, the Russian army's electronic warfare equipment is still continuing the overall architecture of "special aircraft for special use", and the system is too complex according to the design of special models. As a result, there are too many pieces of equipment, high manufacturing costs, time-consuming and labor-intensive, and inability to sink into a system. At present, the international mainstream is integrated RF design, which adopts the division of models according to the spectrum, which greatly reduces the type and number of equipment, so that the relevant equipment can be popularized to a lower level.
In general, judging from the practice of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, in terms of electronic warfare, Russia still inherits the advantages of the Soviet era in systems engineering, but it seems to be more than willing and insufficient in the face of the iteration of new technologies. Although on the overall level, the Russian army not only recovered the decline in the early stage of the war, but also gradually expanded the scope of advantages, but once again paid a lot of unnecessary costs.
What can we learn from this?
Judging from the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war, in the future high-tech war environment, the importance of information confrontation can be said to have risen to the top position. The premise of "being able to fight" is to "be able to see", "distinguish clearly", "be able to keep an eye on", "call quickly", and "pass accurately". Therefore, it is imperative to strengthen information assurance and confrontation capabilities.
Just this year, our army reorganized the strategic support unit, which was established less than nine years ago, and established a new information support unit, thus creating a brand-new strategic branch of the armed forces. It can be seen that in terms of top-level design, our army's judgment is to take precautions. Under the top-level design, there are three main lines: combat organization, training, and equipment.
In terms of combat organization, the field of information confrontation has long been extended to the six dimensions of sea, land, air, space, electricity, and network, and all of them are indispensable. As a matter of fact, since the military reform in 2015, the gap between us and the powerful enemy has been greatly shortened in the traditional four major fields of sea, land, air, and space, and we have even surpassed them in some fields. In the emerging electromagnetic and cyber fields, we are basically competing on the same starting line as strong opponents.
In terms of daily training, we are relatively at ease. In terms of actual combat training, we have always adhered to the principle of being lenient in anticipation of the enemy and strict in our own affairs, and have our eyes on the future all-out military struggle against a strong enemy. On the contrary, the biggest problem of a strong enemy is the inertia brought about by long-term low-level actual combat, which has led to a long-term lack of training to deal with high-intensity all-out warfare. At a time when the number of troops is seriously insufficient and old equipment continues to be replaced, it is necessary to continue to maintain global deployment, which in turn further exacerbates the dilemma of insufficient training of a strong enemy. Therefore, daily training and combat readiness are our advantageous ranges.
In the field of equipment, we can remain cautiously optimistic, but we must also face up to the gap with a strong enemy. The most obvious example is in space equipment. In this field, the influence of historical reserves and inheritance is far greater than anything else. In the face of the new qualitative combat forces represented by Starship and Starlink, it is difficult to bridge the gap between us and a strong enemy in the short term. And this gap will even continue to widen for a long time to come. If we can't achieve disruptive innovation and continue to catch up on the original track, we will be in an extremely dangerous situation. This requires us to seek new tracks, such as emerging fields represented by quantum communication.