Die Ukrainer haben einen Weg gefunden die Zielfindung der Gleitbomben zu stören, die Russen benötigen jetzt 8 bis 16 Bomben um ein Ziel zuverlässig zu treffen. Das heißt wo vorher 1 SU-34 gereicht hat müssen jetzt 4 aufsteigen um das selbe Ergebnis zu erzielen.
The satellite-guided KAB or UMPK glide bombs, each traveling 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings, were a “miracle weapon” for the Russians, the Ukrainian Deep State analysis group noted at the time. And the Ukrainians had “practically no countermeasures.”
That has changed. Now the Ukrainians not only have countermeasures—some of these countermeasures appear to be extremely effective.
“Previously, the enemy used glide bombs with high accuracy to attack objects in the territory of regional centers such as Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia,” a manufacturer, whose 10-person Night Watch team in Ukraine develops electronic warfare systems, told Forbes.
Night Watch’s new Lima jammer is partly responsible for the recent degradation of Russian glide bombing, the manufacturer claimed.
Lima isn’t a traditional jammer that simply blasts radio noise toward the enemy. “We use digital interference,” the manufacturer explained. It’s “a combination of jamming, spoofing and information cyber attack on the navigation receiver.”
“After the deployment of the E.W. system, the accuracy of the bombings first decreased and then, realizing the ineffectiveness of this method of destruction and the impossibility of achieving the goal, the enemy stopped shelling regional centers altogether,” the manufacturer said.
Last year, Russian forces settled into a comfortable routine. In addition to striking cities, glide bombs also rained down on Ukraine’s front-line defenses. Russian infantry would then attack the battered Ukrainian troops—and overwhelm them.
The bomb-first assault tactic helped the Russians capture the fortress city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine and then advance 25 miles along the same axis toward the next fortress city, Pokrovsk.
As the Russians closed on Pokrovsk, something changed. As Russian forces stalled outside the city last month, it was evident that “the golden era of the divine UMPK turned out to be short-lived,” Fighterbomber, the unofficial Telegram channel of the Russian air force, noted in a missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.
According to the manufacturer, the Lima jammer was a factor in the decline in glide bombings in certain areas. Other jammers developed by different companies may be responsible for the reduction in Russian UMPK raids in other parts of Ukraine including Pokrovsk.
Blind Bomb
Today Russian glide bombs struggle to communicate with the GLONASS satellite constellation, Russia’s less sophisticated and less expansive answer to the United States’ own GPS satellite constellation. Without a steady connection for course correction, the glide bombs tend to stray and harmlessly explode on some fields.
The jamming has even resulted in the Russians bombing themselves. “There were cases when glide bombs did not reach the territory of Ukraine and fell on the territory of Russia or on temporarily occupied territories,” the manufacturer said.
“All high-value targets are guaranteed to be covered by [electronic warfare],” Fighterbomber claimed. It might take eight or even 16 glide bombs to reliably hit one target, the channel added. And while the glide bombs are inexpensive for a precision munition—each costing around $25,000—the Sukhoi jets that lob them two or four at a time aren’t cheap.
Launching four jets to maybe hit one target is risky and inefficient for an air force that has just a thousand or so modern jets, and has already lost 120 of them in action in Ukraine.
The intensive Ukrainian jamming has also grounded many of Russia’s drones. Night Watch’s earliest efforts focused on forcing down Shahed attack drones that routinely strike Ukrainian cities.
Radio jamming has effectively accomplished what the Ukrainian air force largely failed to accomplish with its expensive, vulnerable S-300, Patriot and SAMP/T surface-to-air missile batteries, which can hit Russian jets from scores of miles away but were always too few in number to fully protect the front line and safeguard Ukrainian cities.
The Russians jam, too, of course—but Russian jamming doesn’t have the impact that Ukrainian jamming does. Many Russian jammers are badly made and ineffective. Likewise, Russian industry hasn’t yet been able to develop a countermeasure against Ukrainian countermeasures against Russian munitions. A countercountermeasure.
Russian forces tried switching satellite-guided munitions to new frequencies while also adding antennae—sometimes even tripling the number of antennae, to 12 instead of the usual four.
But Ukrainian forces recovered hardware from some modified drones. Night Watch studied the wreckage and then tweaked the Lima jammer and the plan for deploying the jammer, the manufacturer said. “A new type of antenna was studied, a mathematical analysis was conducted and a new calculation of the location of E.W. systems on the terrain was carried out.”
As effective as it seems to be, Lima isn’t covering the entire front line—to say nothing of blanketing all of Ukraine. That would require many more systems. If the Ukrainian government decides to deploy the jammers more widely, Night Watch could build 300 of the systems a month, the manufacturer said.
But the rising fortunes of one E.W. firm isn’t what’s important to the intended victims of Russian bombardment. What matters—to thousands of Ukrainian troops as well as millions of civilians—is that they’re no longer defenseless against Russian glide bombs.
As more jammers such as Lima roll out, more of Ukraine is protected by a powerful electronic shield.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2 ... -know-how/
