Image: Russian EW truck from ru.mil
What’s new: Another reminder that in an age of high tech kinetic weapons, electronic warfare can be very powerful.
Why it’s important:
- Western militaries rely heavily on technology. Tech has long been seen as a way to be more effective militarily and keep costs down by reducing the need for troops.
- Russia has always prided itself on advanced EW capabilities as a way to counter the West’s advantage in high tech.
- GPS jamming and spoofing in Ukraine have greatly reduced the effectiveness of and sometimes nearly neutralized US-provided weapons.
What else to know:
- Russia tried, and may have been successful, using ‘GPS-blackmail’ on the Biden administration.
- In November 2021 as Russia was massing its troops along its border with Ukraine, Russian forces shot down one of their defunct satellites with a ground-based missile. Debris threatened the International Space Station which had Russian cosmonauts as part of its crew.
- Several days later, a presenter on Russian state media said that if NATO got in Russia’s way in Ukraine they would shoot down all 32 GPS satellites and “blind NATO.”
- Subsequently, the Biden administration decided to not send certain types of aid to Ukraine to ‘avoid provoking Russia into an invasion.’
- At a public meeting in December 2021 a member of the National Security Council said that GPS was “…a single point of failure” for America and the administration was very concerned.
- GPS is still a single point of failure for the U.S.
- The U.K. and France are investing in an eLoran terrestrial PNT network to backup and complement GNSS. Germany has conducted studies and is showing interest also.
- This blind spot for NATO is going to cost well over a billion dollars to fix.
NATO’s Billion-Dollar Blind Spot: The Overlooked Russian Electronic Warfare Challenge
