“Jamming”: How electronic warfare disrupts Ukrainian battlefields

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – The Ukrainian soldier cursed and tore off his headphones.

At first his monitor went blurry, the landscape of broken trees and shell craters barely visible, before vanishing completely.

The Russians had done it blocked signal from his drone as it flew outside the city of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine.

“Some days everything is fine, other days the equipment breaks, the drones are fragile and there is interference,” said the soldier, who called himself DJ and spoke from his underground position a few kilometers from the front line.

For a time, the Ukrainians enjoyed a honeymoon period with their self-detonating drones which they used as homemade missiles.

The weapons seemed to effective alternative to artillery shells to attack Russian forces.

Now, the bad days are starting to outnumber the good ones:

THE electronic countermeasures They have become one of the Russian military’s most formidable weapons after years of honing their capabilities.

Electronic warfare remains a hidden hand in much of the war, and much like Ukraine’s disadvantage in terms of troop numbers and ammunition supplies, Ukraine also suffers in this area compared to Russia.

Russia has more jamming equipment capable of dominating Ukrainian signals by transmitting on the same frequencies at a higher power.

It also shows a better appearance coordination between its units.

With Western military aid looking far from certain and artillery ammunition running low, pressure on Ukraine’s unmanned aerial capability has only increased, leaving Ukrainian forces in an increasingly perilous position.

This is revealed in interviews with Ukrainian soldiers, commanders and military analysts disturbance capacity Russian military forces are exhausting the limited supplies of drones available in Ukraine and threatening to sideline a key component of Ukraine’s arsenal as the Kremlin churns out its own drone fleet.

Ukrainian troops describe a back-and-forth dance in which one side makes technological changes (such as using different frequencies or jamming devices for drones) and then the other side catches up within weeks or months, undermining any short-lived advantage.

“There is a constant arms race,” said Babay, a sergeant in charge of a drone platoon on Ukraine’s eastern front, who, like DJ and others interviewed for this article, was using his call sign, as It’s military protocol.

“We are improving our technology to counter these new realities on the battlefield, and before long, the Russians will have to invent something new be able to defend themselves of our attacks.”

Small, cheap drones have been a staple of conflict in Ukraine since 2014, when Russia-backed separatists attacked the country’s east.

But in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the use of unmanned vehicles on the battlefield skyrocketed.

In 2023, Ukraine took advantage of drone warfare by taking sides large quantities of drones compact racing cars known as FPV, for first-person view.

“FPVs play a vital role for us as these toys are essentially mobile artillery that makes up for the lack of artillery ammunition,” said Dyadya, a drone operator with the 63rd Mechanized Brigade. “We work at the same distance as a mortar, but our accuracy is much greater.”

The strength of artillery often comes from its inaccuracy.

Covering large areas with high explosives and fragmentation, it can quickly disrupt battlefield operations by maiming troops and destroying vehicles.

It’s a tactic almost impossible to replicate with one or two drones.

As Ukrainian artillery ammunition dwindled last fall and through the winter, FPVs, used as guided projectiles, proved effective in suppressing and harassing Russian trenches and vehicles.

Valuable artillery ammunition was reserved to repel Russian ground attacks.

But the Russian military has since improved its jamming capabilities and also exploits bad weather, advancing through fog and rain when drones have difficulty flying.

“Both sides quickly became aware of their adversary’s key FPV developments and tactics,” said Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military drones at the Center for Naval Analysis, a Virginia-based research organization.

“And now these technologies are maturing very rapidly for both sides.”

Tactics

Earlier this month, DJ’s small team, part of a national guard unit known as the Bureviy Brigade, set up their own drone outpost in the ruins of a farm near the front line outside Kreminna.

They have implemented the essential elements needed to transmit video and transmit commands from the pilot to the affordable Chinese-made FPV quadcopter:

antennas, frequency relay, Starlink satellite Internet and a laptop.

On the first two missions, DJ’s monitor showed the Ukrainian steppe below as his drone catapulted across the desert at more than 60 miles per hour, loaded with about 3 pounds of high explosive and intended to destroy Russian vehicles.

But the signal was soon lost, blocked by the Russians.

The third mission, targeting a grenade launcher in a Russian trench, was partially successful: The $500 drone exploded in a tree above the trench, but got stuck just a dozen meters away before exploding.

While powerful, the Russian military’s jamming capabilities are unevenly deployed along more than 600 miles of front line, and its armored vehicles are often easy targets because they generally have no jamming systems installed, Ukrainian soldiers said.

Ukraine’s approach to drones and electronic warfare has been funded and supplied in part by several groups outside the military, including the country’s notorious IT sector.

Each drone unit on the battlefield serves as a sort of test laboratory for new technologies, acquisitions and combat missions.

Russia’s approach has been much more top-down, with strong military oversight.

This has made the country’s drone fleet more predictable, with less variation in tactics and types.

But it also allowed the Russian military to jam Ukrainian drones on the battlefield without having to jam its own by coordinating flight paths and jammers.

“There is nothing like this on the Ukrainian side,” said a drone operator flying to Ukraine.

The lack of a broader command structure capable of coordinating drone units along the front line often causes confusion among Ukrainian troops.

Drone operators can sometimes lose connection with their aircraft and end up searching through the camera of another drone.

FPV drones fly on an analog frequency, and since many are purchased in stores, they come out of the box set to the same frequency.

Ukrainian drone units often need soldiers coding expertsn to change the frequency of a drone’s software.

Dev, a Ukrainian drone technician, ranked this problem second in importance after Russian jamming capabilities.

“There are many FPV groups operating on the front lines. The front is saturated with FPV groups and there are no more frequency channels,” she said.

Last month, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky created the Forces of unmanned systemsa new part of the armed forces which, among other things, should improve the interaction of FPV units with each other.

But Russia’s ability to mass-produce its drones on an industrial scale is also a pressing question.

Ukrainian troops have said they are often forced to search for their own drones, despite the government’s promise to produce thousands of them.

Chef, commander of a drone company in eastern Ukraine, said his unit flies between 20 and 30 FPV missions a day, depending on the supply of drones, which comes almost entirely from volunteer donations.

The government has just provided its unit.

In July they received a handful, and again in December.

“We publish as many as we produce,” he said. But “FPV cannot be used to win this war.”

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