It could have accuracy like a rocket but cheaper

Saturday, May 27th, 2023

A Ukrainian “shopping” on behalf of his government at the SOFWeek special operations conference in Tampa explains what they need:

Q: So you’re basically serving as a front person to bring Ukraine weapons and other systems that you need?

A: Yes. You’re right. So I’m trying to find something which is quite interesting. Then we help U.S. companies to organize some demo because if you bring something new, the first question from our military guy is like ‘okay, I like it. But bring it here in Ukraine and I will test it.’ Why is this necessary? Because you know, in Ukraine now it’s a very hard electronic warfare situation. Russians are great at jamming GPS, radio signal, everything. So sometimes you have no LTE [long-term evolution or broadband communications network], no GPS, no radio communication systems, or nothing.

And this is why the equipment — if you’re talking for example, about drones — needs to be tested in the real battlefield where it goes to the bottom line and we have some place where we could switch off, switch on some Russian electronic warfare equipment which we have in our hands and test it but we could not make it outside of Ukraine. So that’s why we asked all producers to bring such equipment to Ukraine make some tests and then we could send this equipment back. It’s up to the producer.

Q: What kind of equipment are the Russians using to jam your equipment?

A: They have a lot and to be honest, they study very well. So they have an understanding of the waveform of radio waves and some other characteristics of this. I’m not a very big specialist on electronic warfare, but I know how it generally works. So they teach from time to time which signals they need to jam because you could jam everything but it’s just for low distance. If you want to jam something special you need to be very accurate with this frequency rate, this waveform and everything.

So for example, they know for sure the Harris [radio) waveform and it's very dangerous for us because if they could identify the Harris waveform, Harris radio stations, and arrays - if they know the location, they could immediately hit this place.

Q: Because not only can they jam but they can detect it, and then they can hit the spot. And they know that.

A: For example, if we're talking about drone operators, yes. So if you will define where is the base station located, you could hit the operator.

Q: Is there a big problem of Ukrainian drone operators being attacked because the Russians have picked up their frequencies?

A: I have no statistics, but understand how this works. It's why I think it's happened. Because now we use a lot of drones and it's some information which was in some open sources, the average time for DJI Mavic on the battlefield, it's like three to five days. So what this means is we lose a lot of drones and we need to replace it... It's now not like something unusual, we use it and we lose it and we need to be all the time replacing different types of drones. Of course, if the drone is better and flies higher and it's more protected from jamming, its lifetime could be longer but you never know.

If you want to ask questions about what we need...

Q: Yes

A: So we need a lot of different types of drones because we now operate with FPV [First Person Video] drones, with Mavic drones and also with all other type of drones for ISR [information, surveillance, reconnaissance] for sometimes for some civilians, [trying to understand] where’s the enemy located? And not just in an optic way, but in radio way because we could also scan some frequency and understand where this enemy is located.

So we need different types of drones and also we need a lot of kamikaze drones because drones [are cheaper to operate than rockets] which we don’t have. We use kamikaze drone to penetrate some special objects, like for example, an S-300 [air defense] complex etc. etc. So for this reason we use such kamikaze drones because the price of this equipment that would be destroyed, compared to the price of drones, it’s less than if you use the rockets. Rockets are quite expensive. Send a kamikaze drone? It could have accuracy like a rocket but cheaper.

Their other need is optical systems:

Let’s say this is why I’m interested in some different optics systems — thermal vision, binoculars, some type of lighter munitions, electronic warfare systems, some for civilians for when we try to find where the enemy is in an electronic way, let’s say…

Comments

  1. Bob Sykes says:

    The continual escalation of NATO’s participation in the Russo-Ukrainian War can only end in an all-out nuclear exchange covering both all of Europe and all of North America.

    So, last week we had an attack on a Russian warship that was guarding the gas pipeline from Turkey to Hungary. Undoubtedly this was approved by Washington if not actually conducted by Washington. It is ultimately yet another attack on two of our NATO allies, after the attack on Germany. These attacks are intended to discipline those allies who stray from American policy.

    From June 12 to 23 we will have yet another escalation, a really big one. NATO will conduct Air Defense 23, which will involve some 220 war planes, 100 American, and 10,000 troops. Part of the exercise will be practicing nuclear strikes on Russia. And the cherry on the sundae is that the practice runs will be all along the Russian border.

    We have in Washington today one of the most wantonly reckless regimes in world history. We are approaching Hitler and Operation Barbarossa and Tojo and Pearl Harbor. One can only pray that the Russian leadership continues to stay calm.

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