Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
What a novel way to detect artillery
I’m picturing the droid in rogue One
There’s some.
Send some guys to run out screaming “I bet the artillery can’t hit me” with targets on their backs.
What’s as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces?
A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces!
Now they know there’s artillery. Test successful.
Next they’re gonna test for cruise missiles again.
The counter-battery radar doesn’t prevent artillery from working; it makes it dangerous for them. Theoretically the units that took this out could already be destroyed after having had their coordinates calculated and counter-battery fire immediately called down on them.
In practice it was just setting up, having been tracked to its location, and possibly wasn’t working yet. Also the GMLRS rockets fired by HIMARS are not ballistic - they execute a counter-battery-confounding turn. And the salvo is fired quickly after which the vehicle immediately leaves - it can park, get ready and fire a full salvo in under a minute. When the first rocket is detected a couple of minutes later, the launcher will already have driven off and counter-battery coordinates will not be that useful/
To add to that, this war has shown the importance of shoot-and-scoot. Towed artillery with long setup and teardown times are too vulnerable to drones. Might be the end of an era for towed artillery.
The same holds for radar. A radar literally shines a light that anyone looking for it can see. Pinpointing a radar is trivial. Mobile radars can’t stay and detect from a location for very long, without risking an artillery strike. Fast setup and teardown times are crucial, along with a strategy where multiple mobile radars cover for each other, so detection is never offline for long.
For some radar. This is actually the biggest gap between western capabilities and Russian - Russia does not make proper digital AESAs, which are very critical for LPD operation. If you only transmit in scanning pencil beams, it is extremely difficult to locate you.
This was an interesting conversation to follow, but I got lost on the acronyms. Could you expand those please? TIA (thanks in advance)!
Just taking some guesses based on a minute of googling:
digital AESAs
digital active electronically scanned array (AESA)
LPD operation
Low Probability of Detection operations
So normal radar is like a lightbulb. You can tell where it is from any direction. The right kind of AESA is like a laser. You have to more or less be right in the path to detect it, and you have to detect it to locate it.
You can look up what the acronym AESA means without unstanding it.
Take two speakers that are next to each other. If they emit a tone of the same frequency, the sound will “add up” and be louder in some directions, and cancel out to some degree in others.
A phased array radar uses the same concept, but now on electro magnectic waves, instead of sound waves. And with much more than just 2 emitters. By carefully choosing the phase of the signal in each emitter, itnis possible to both choose a single direction that receives the strongest signal, and to tighten the spread around that direction (creating a pencil beam). This is what the dish is for in standard radars.
If these phases can be fully controlled electronically, you can steer where you are looking, and swap between wide and narrow search beams in an instant. However, that is not a trivial thing to produce. So cheaper phased array radars use mechanical systems, or partial electronic steering (example: only horizontal steering).
Speed is the essence of war, and speed has definitely been the deciding factor. That and logistics. Last I read, Russia was still supplying their military with unpalletized, man-portable crates that take teams of men hours to unload, while Ukraine has their goods loaded onto pallets that take a couple guys with forklifts a couple minutes to get off the trucks and to the people who need them.
On the other hand the artillery mounted on trucks seems to be quite effective.
Stuff like the Caesar can park, fire 6 shells and leave in less than 3 minutes.
What? Ukraine is effectively using towed artillery, Russia isn’t really using anything effectively so there’s an argument for them I guess.
Russia has a very long kill chain, sometimes taking hours or days to respond to threats. That might be why towed is still effective for Ukraine.
Unlikely - it’s too cheap to get rid of. It will degrade its effectiveness as it’ll need to deploy, fire very few rounds, then leave, unlike traditionally where a battery might fire loads of rounds before moving off.
Reportedly, the Ukrainian reaction to seeing an RCH 155 demonstration was “we’ll take 100”, those things can shoot while scooting. Alas production is going to take a while, Ukraine will be the first user.
Even if it was fully operational, Western artillery used by Ukraine is more precise with longer range than Russian, so they can target the ruskies with less risk.
It detects artillery, it doesn’t deflect it.
Ironic, he could save others from death, but not himself
Just like rain on your wedding day…
Probably had a great view the whole way in. I’m silly laughing right now thinking about some Russians just watching this missile come in on an old ass CRT monitor.
You see, this is why the westoids always underestimate the glorious Russians. Even when their system is hit, it is still reporting the artillery by sending a smoke sign that is visible for kilometers - we never stood a chance
Lifelock marketing department salivating at this new ad script
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Apparently Russia called for a meeting of the UN Security Council to complain about Ukraine fighting back
LOL no fair when you fight back, it’s violence! /s
They called it terrorism even lol
They called it terrorism even lol
You really double-plopped there.
Coffee can do that to you.
They learned from Israel.
It would be better if Ukraine was regaining territory.
Why? Because they’re defending against massive waves of badly trained unsupported conscripts right now with extremely favorable loss ratios?
Because ultimately, Ukraine cannot support a stalemate forever. Eventually, they’ll lose international support and just won’t be able to replace the troops.
Even a casual history buff would understand Russia is culturally willing to accept losses far beyond what any other modern country(with the exception of China) would ever consider or whose populace would support. Russia has historically thrived in attrition scenarios.
Honestly, their only real hope is for either Putin to die and resulting political shake up to be favorable. Or to start winning decisive victories and force Russia to the table (more unlikely).
It’s not a stalemate, though. Russia is suffering way more attrition than Ukraine. That said yes things would look nicer if western support was more extensive, though then you also have the issue of training capacity on the Ukrainian side. But it’s not like Russia is winning in the current situation, currently Putin is holding out in the hopes of US support collapsing which, in his mind, would mean western support drying up (because something something they’re ruling us or something. KGB minds also run on geopolitical realism). The opposite would happen: That’d prompt the EU to switch the economy into first war gear (which will be plenty), not just because it’s the right thing to do but also because it’ll be the only way to keep the Poles from putting boots on the ground right away.
The problem is, Putin doesn’t care.
Yes, they are suffering way more losses, but they still got plenty of troops to throw against.
The Russians have gone through the conscripts. They’ve gone through the criminals. They’re now on to Ukrainian PoWs and international conscripts.
The Ukrainian force is still Ukrainian.
Not at these loss ratios, it’s legitimately unsustainable even with more mobilisation. And mobilisation is really bad for his domestic stability, so he’ll avoid it if he can.
At the moment there’s not really much anyone can do to change his mind. There’s people who are saying that western long-term contracts would help, but I doubt it: He’d see it as just another propaganda move, thinking the rule of law is a front. It would help with gearing up production, though, especially when it comes to ammunition: No producer is going to build a factory for a low-volume contract, gotta be at least five years worth of production or such.
Not even close, the ratio doesn’t matter. Look at how many Stalin lost in WW2, Putin absolutely seems willing to accept that level of losses…
That was a defensive war (modulo Molotov-Ribbentrop etc. point being the war was largely on USSR soil), also, maybe more importantly, vastly different demographics: Back then losing half of your military age population was an option, nowadays it means that there’s not enough people to earn pensions for the elderly.
Wrong again. Russia is already facing demographic collapse together with a massive brain drain from the younger generations. Putin has convinced people like yourself that he is strong, but as was true of the USSR immediately before its fall, he is in fact very weak and increasingly desperate. His regime is brittle and only becoming more so as he continues to suck the life out of the country. When he does finally lose power, it’s going to happen very fast, almost overnight, and the Ukrainians will rout the Russian military in a bloodbath of unfortunate though understandable vengeance.
I don’t think the Chinese government would accept that loss ratio of han people
The US may lose interest but Europe won’t. This is their backyard and WW2 is still in living memory and physical evidence across the continent. It’s not some abstract idea like it is for us North Americans. It’s still very present and it’s recognized that Putin cannot and will not be allowed to win, regardless of what the Americans decide to do. Germany, France or the UK alone could easily fund the war if they had to. Together they will ensure that there can be no win for Putin. I am constantly surprised that this is not more widely known.
One step at a time. It’ll take time for the blyats to figure out this shit isn’t worth it.
Preferably all the way to Moscow.
I don’t know, I rather favor self determination, which is why I stand with Ukraine.
I’m pretty sure that the territories on the edges of Ukraine is exactly where the US wants them, to continue being a black hole for Russian personnel.
Well it was very successful in detecting artillery
Artillery attractant
What’s the status of the artillery detecting radar?
Well, sir, it’s a good news/bad news thing…
Clever russians, detecting artillery fire by the explosions on their equipment!
Mission Accomplished!
“We have also developed a tomato which can eject itself when an accident is imminent.”
I was a counter battery radar operator. The systems I used 20 years ago had these neat things called electronic counter measures. I guess russia never got the message that it’s not a smart idea to radiate in a zone with anti-radiation missiles.
This wasn’t a seeker missile, it was GPS guided. If the Russian machine had been fully set up then they probably would have blocked it, however Ukraine got to it before they were ready.
That makes it even worse. Why didn’t they set up at night and throw up some camo netting? There are ways to lessen the chances your radar is blown up is all I’m saying. The ruzzians are morons exhibit #4,832.
Edit:
This was tucked away at the bottom of the article:
It’s possible the Ukrainians knew where to look for the Yastreb-AV because the truck-mounted phased-array radar emitted a distinctive signal—one Ukrainian intelligence may have had on file.
So they probably did radiate at the wrong time and paid for it.
From the video it seems they were spotted by drones on the way to the deployment site and were under drone surveillance during setup, during which artillery hit.
I have a hard time imagining that the observation drones are that sneaky, so I’d guess it’s another issue of poor battlefield command structure forcing the compromised position
Drones are cheap and thus everywhere in the battlefield. It costs more $$$ to show a drone down then the drone is worth (in general). Modern military is still trying to figure out how to handle all the cheap enemy drones overhead, there is - so far and to my knowledge - no good answer (of course if there was a good answer it would be classified at least until the enemy figures out what you are doing and so I wouldn’t know).
Trained falcons. Not sure how cheap or feasable it would be but they’re being used in certain areas around the world already to take down consumer drones. I know they probably have more hardcore drones in the war but couldn’t hurt to train a falcon to drop some net on a drone or something. Or use other drones to drop nets on drones.
They do have other drones to drop nets on drones but they are more expensive and then we’ll just end up with drones netting the netting drones.
Drones netting the falcons netting the drones netting the drones!
I would suspect most military drones are tiny airplane designs, not the quadcopter design you’re thinking of used by civilians.
Some of the Ukraine ones are for sure quads. I’ve seen some of those kill videos that pop up on here. They’re probably bigger than they look though, hard to tell scale in the sky but I’ve seen the small plane looking ones you’re talking about. They’re cool ngl.
Drones are incredibly sneaky, so long as they’re high up. They’re tiny and basically impossible to detect by radar. Once they get close you can hear them, but keep your distance and they should be stealthy enough - particularly if you’re is in a vehicle with a noisy engine.
This. I have a DJI mini 2, and while that isn’t a combat drone used by anyone’s military, it’s pretty much impossible for me to see it at it’s “maximum” altitude of 122 meters and at that height I can get pretty good real-time video. I’m pretty sure it will exceed that altitude limit if I wanted it to, and there’s no way I could see it or hear it at 200 meters. And it would still get me useful video.
I have to assume that the drones being used by the UA are better than my silly little camera drone.
Drone scouts found it and they called in a fire mission from a HIMARS, since this was considered a HVT. I saw the raw footage of it yesterday - it was pretty neat.
The Russians are actually pretty good at EW and invest a lot of effort into it, but it’s possible that a new, detectable freq pattern got a lot of attention.
e.g. the AFU EW picks up something that is detectable above the noise floor and sends a drone to look – what is this weird radar sig? Drone sees something and they get a strike setup.
Plus we’re only seeing the blow up, it could have been killing M777 and CAESAR crews for days till it ate a HIMARS strike.
On that note, is it even possible to hide jamming equipment? It’s whole purpose is to put out a signal that disrupts another signal to the point it can’t be used. In that opening paragraph, I was thinking “of course a gps guided missile took out a gps jammer, they’d just have to add a different mode that just seeks the loudest signal on gps frequencies”, and similar for the drone jammer. Both cases just need software to be aware that signals can be jammed and to pivot to targeting the jammer if they can’t find the original target.
Nah you don’t hide the jammers, that’s the point. They can already see you, so you make a ton of noise to obfuscate where the real target is and where the jammers are. They either hold fire, or go after the jammers.
You can definitely play tricks with jamming. If you have multiple antennas working together you can create weird, messed up harmonics. E.g. (vastly simplified) you might have 10 jammers, but apparently 100 emitters.
The jammer vs anti jammer war has been hit since around WWII. It was a big thing with the u boats, and even Bletchly park got involved. 70 years of defence spending beyond that, takes it a long way.
That’s a good point, I forgot about interference. Since the frequency is unchanging, multiple antennas could even set up a standing interference pattern that looks like there’s an emitter in an empty lot. That “follow the signal” scheme is pretty easy to defeat.
That’s also one of the simpler ideas. It’s also a bit of a rock paper scissors game. E.g. the counter to my first suggestion is to up the sensitivity of your tracking, and use the extra resolution to pick out the real target(s). That, in turn can be countered with a directional pulse. You either sweep, or target an ultra high powered pulse. The pulse is like a flash bang in a dark cave, the sensors get cooked by it.
The game goes on and on, with many branching methods and counters.
Some early fun on the subject
That was really interesting and an angle of WWII I had no idea even existed, thanks for the link! I’m so used to thinking of radio in terms of sending it out in all directions that I forgot it could be used directionally like that to basically reverse triangulate a 3rd point using two of your own transmitters pointed at that 3rd point. An elegant targeting aid followed by an elegant disruption of it. And then two more of each.
And it’s possible that the battle of the beams was an essential part of winning WWII because maybe Hitler would have been able to take Britain out of the war or even conquer it if they had been able to do targeting more effectively instead of their systems essentially getting used against them to make their targeting even worse than if they had used their eyes and guessed.
Other interesting parts were the Brits using Germany’s targeting system to argue that they had better pilots (you’re against not just the pilot but the whole war machine supporting that pilot, so it seems like kinda a moot point unless you can equalise everything else again), and the poor Luftwaffe pilots not only being directed off target but getting completely lost and some even landing at RAF airports thinking they had made it back to Germany.
There’s just something hilarious about someone going on an attack where they think they have the upper hand but being so outclassed they end up having no idea what’s even going on. They also thought that the Brits had some way of bending radio waves when they were just emitting their own beeps to mess up the interference pattern!
It’s the same kind of funny as the French investing so much in fortifying the Maginot line to prevent another German invasion, which the Germans responded to by going through Belgium… Just like they did the last time they invaded. Though the results of that situation are less funny.
Focusing on the GPS jammer would require some hardware for direction finding; it’s not just software. Still, it’s not a huge design change.
I would have figured they’d already have multiple antennas for reliability, though I suppose that doesn’t imply they are set up to determine direction.
GPS uses time differential to calculate relative distance. It requires a fairly omnidirectional antenna to function. It would have to be a dedicated anti jammer targeting system.
The easier option is to use GPS to get into the general vicinity, then just go inertially guided, or use a camera etc.
Lmao, love to see it
Russia is a joke that just keeps writing itself.
Except after each page a new character is defenetrized
I just saw the clip of the thing getting deployed, then getting blown up real good. It was awesome.
well, don’t keep a thing like to yourself. if you have links, bring enough for everyone!
Ask and you shall receive. One exploding, freshly-minted, counter-battery radar!
This looks way too small to be HIMARS. A guided shell maybe?
ooo! i’ll wait to watch this till i get home!
Russians engineers are hardcore, they really go all out on systems validation.
Seems to be pretty effective at detecting that there’s artillery within range.
Even to the point of being able to detect how precise it can hit.
