Some US weapons blocked by Russian jamming in Ukraine

Some U.S.-made precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proven ineffective on the battlefield, with their accuracy significantly reduced by Russian jamming efforts, according to Ukrainian commanders and a Ukrainian military research project.

The projectiles performed well when first introduced onto the battlefield, but lost effectiveness as Russian forces adapted their defenses, according to two confidential Ukrainian reports. The problem prompted the Ukrainian military to stop using the weapons, two artillery commanders said.

The reports, first revealed by The Washington Post, focus on the American-made Excalibur, a 155-millimeter guided artillery shell, and the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB. One of the reports was shown to The New York Times by people familiar with the research. The second report was described but not shown to a reporter. The individuals asked not to be identified because the reports contain classified military information.

Every war is a kind of laboratory for weapons systems, and Ukraine provided a testing ground for weapons that had never before been used against an enemy as sophisticated and high-tech as Russia. The performance of U.S. and Russian weapons, defensive and offensive, is closely monitored by the Pentagon and NATO as well as Russia and China, which has significant implications for future weaponry.

More immediately, Ukrainian commanders say, some of the Western weapons supplied to them have failed, at the cost of lives.

Russia has deployed electronic warfare systems around static targets such as headquarters and command centers that could be targets for Ukrainian precision weapons. The systems generate so much interference that they drown out the GPS signal that guides the Excaliburs targeting software, said Thomas Withington, a research associate at the Royal United Services Institute in London and an expert in electronic warfare.

The data in the reports supports comments made by Ukrainian military officials in recent months, including former army chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, who said some Western projectiles had given Ukraine significant superiority on Russian forces, but only for a short time.

General Zaluzhny cited the Excalibur shell as a prime example of a Western weapon that has lost its effectiveness because its targeting system uses GPS, the global positioning system, which is particularly susceptible to Russian jamming.

Ukrainian officials and military analysts have described similar problems with the Joint Direct Attack Munitions kit called JDAM and rounds used with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, all of which rely two on the GPS.

The GLSDB, a precision munition with a longer range than the Excalibur, produced jointly by Boeing and Swedish company Saab, was also hampered by Russian electronic warfare, according to the second military report.

Ukrainian troops have stopped deploying the GLSDB on the battlefield, according to Andrew Zagorodnyuk, head of the Center for Defense Strategies, a research organization in kyiv.

An official with the U.S. Department of Defense's press operations office, who asked to remain anonymous in line with military protocol, said in an email message that America had provided more than 7,000 155-millimeter missile-guided shells. precision to Ukraine since February 2022: but he added that he could not give more precise information.

We are very aware of the electronic warfare threat posed by Russia in Ukraine and that this threat is constantly evolving, the official wrote.

Accordingly, we are working closely with Ukraine, as well as our defense industry partners, to continually assess these threats and provide rapid solutions, and to help ensure that Ukraine remains effective in a very complex electronic warfare environment. This includes the ability to deliver precision munitions onto the battlefield, the official wrote, using EW to refer to electronic warfare.

Ukraine began the search because of the severity of the targeting failures, but also in the spirit of collaboration as a NATO ally, the people with knowledge of the project said. It was important, one said, for the Ukrainian military to provide feedback to Western partners on how their weapons performed against a sophisticated military power like Russia.

Researchers collected data on the use of nearly 3,000 Excalibur rounds fired from December 2022 to August 2023 by US-supplied M777 howitzers on the front lines in Kherson in the south, Kharkiv in the northeast and in Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.

The report shows that the proportion of confirmed successful strikes fell during the period from January to August 2023, from a high of 55 percent to a low of 7 percent in July and 6 percent in August, the months when Ukraine's summer counteroffensive was at its peak. . At one point, only one in 19 Excalibur rounds was hitting its target, according to one of the people familiar with the report. At this rate, the report calculates, the price of a successful strike has risen to $1.9 million by August 2023, from $300,000 the previous January.

Commanders of Ukrainian artillery units confirmed that Excalibur rounds proved highly accurate in hitting targets when they were first introduced in 2022, but were later effectively neutralized by Russian jamming.

We have some accuracy problems, said the commander of an artillery unit of the 45th brigade operating in the Donetsk region, which uses the call sign Musician, in accordance with Ukrainian military protocol.

The American M777 howitzers used by the Musicians crew were praised for their capabilities when they were first introduced into the Ukrainian theater in 2022. But Musician said his unit stopped using the Excalibur rounds in early 2023 due to of their ineffectiveness.

Instead, he explained, they were firing unguided artillery shells, which are less accurate and require larger quantities of ammunition to take out a target.

Another commander, who for security reasons gave only his first name, Oleh, said he had sometimes received other weapons, including laser-guided projectiles, less affected by the jamming of GPS signals by the Russia.

It is not uncommon for weapon systems to lose effectiveness during intense warfare, as determined adversaries find new ways to counter them.

The most effective countermeasure to combat GPS signal jamming is simply to eliminate the source of the interference, according to military analysts. Ukrainian forces focused on neutralizing Russian fixed radars and other jamming equipment, particularly on the Crimean peninsula, which then allowed them to hit targets such as command posts and depots. supplies located far behind enemy lines, Mr. Withington said.

At closer range, the Russian and Ukrainian armies use mobile electronic jammers to deflect explosive drones, which use GPS to target their targets.

But Russian jamming is not impenetrable, said Michael Bohnert, a RAND engineer specializing in electronic warfare in the U.S. Navy. Countermeasures can include simple techniques, such as changing the time and location from which munitions are launched. Guidance systems that rely on lasers or terrain maps avoid the problem of GPS jamming. Western suppliers have also developed software fixes for certain projectiles to improve resistance.

You can always find a way to get something across, Mr. Bohnert said.

He noted that the Excalibur was designed in the 1990s, when GPS was in its infancy and electronic warfare technology was not as sophisticated as it is today. These older people are fundamentally struggling, he says. Better weapons should have been provided earlier.

Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based research organization, warned that the experience with the Excalibur in Ukraine was an example of how superior weapons systems can be handicapped by a lack of of software adaptability and urged the Ministry of Defense. foster a culture of innovation and agility to be able to adapt quickly.

The life cycle of a radio in Ukraine is only about three months before it needs to be reprogrammed or replaced as the Russians optimize their electronic warfare against it, Mr. Patt wrote in his testimony. The maximum effectiveness of a new weapons system is achieved only about two weeks before countermeasures emerge.

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