RUSSIA’S DAZZLING ARRAY OF ELECTRONIC WARFARE TOYS

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Our partial translation of an article from the Russian msm follows, with a foreword by Vince Dhimos.
 
The Russian site Inosmi posted an into-Russian translation of an article from the Finnish site Ilta-Sanomat. The Finnish author, Jouko Juonala (who turns out to be the Editor-in-Chief), provided some important details about Russian electronic warfare, although he is badly misinformed about the quality of US vs Russian EW. He got it exactly backwards. In his introductory remarks he writes:
 
“Russian technologies and skills of Russian specialists are beginning to approach the western level.” [my emphasis]
 
Since most information available in the West on Russian EW indicates that the US lags seriously behind the Russians, I initially suspected that the Russian translator had misread the Finnish text at this passage, so I searched for the original article in Finnish and found it here.  Using Google translate I was able to determine that this was in fact what Jouko Juonala really meant. I found an email for the site and told him US military experts generally agree that Russian EW is superior to Western EW. I also tweeted this to @JoukoJuonala.
 
Based on this erroneous statement by a Finn, whose country, while not yet a member, is a NATO partner, it seems likely that the US is misleading its NATO partners into thinking that NATO and the US have superior weapons. At any rate, they must be doing a masterful PR job to convince them that Russia can be defeated at all and thereby persuade them to participate in military drills at the Russian border – the height of folly. Apparently the US correctly supposes that its partners and allies would be less likely to cooperate with them and to buy US arms if they found out US weapons are not only more expensive but also less effective than the ones used by the people misrepresented to them as the “enemy.”
 
Be that as it may, let us look at some of the information on Russian EW arms provided by Mr. Juonala. The following translation (by NSS) from the Russian translation posted at Inosmi shows that Russia has a dazzling array of different types of EW systems that can explain the complaints of both the American commanders in Syria, such as Special Operations commander Gen. Raymond Thomas, who, as we have told you previously, calls this country “the most aggressive EW environment on the planet,” and the complaints of the poor Norwegians, Swedes, Laplanders and Latvians who lost their GPS service during the NATO drill Trident Juncture at the Russian border. But before you cry them a river, consider how the Americans would feel if the Russians or Chinese or both conducted such menacing drills in Canada just north of their border.
 
Oh, did I mention this? The Miami Herald reports that Russia is weighing putting a base in Cuba.
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
Electronic warfare systems are multistage and numerous, they can be divided into different groups according to their radius of action and mission. Here are just a few examples.
 
Zhitel
 
In Russian motorized rifle brigades and tank brigades, at least on paper, there is a company that conducts electronic warfare, which includes the R-330Z Zhitel system, designed to interfere with satellite communications. The Zhitel is a mobile station with a range that covers not only GPS signals, but also signals from the European Galileo navigation system and the corresponding Chinese Beidou satellite system.
 
The mission of the Zhitel is to create interference in the operation of communication systems and information systems of aircraft and guided missiles, as well as in a satellite navigation system at a range of 200 kilometres. It can protect the command centres of the division and brigade level from strikes by enemy precision weapons.
 
OSCE observers have reported that the Zhitel system is also used to interfere with unmanned aerial vehicles in eastern Ukraine.
 
Borisoglebsk
 
This is a mobile system similar to the Zhitel that entered mass production in 2011. The equipment is quite varied: it can interfere with radio communications, satellite communications and GPS signals.
 
Leer
 
Russia has developed the Leer system, which is installed on light unmanned aerial vehicles or on an armoured personnel carrier. Its task is to recognize and suppress mobile networks in the GSM band. The complex can also imitate the operation of a cellular base station and send false messages to mobile phones. It is known that the Leer was used to conduct psychological operations in Syria.
 
Krasukha
 
This family of systems is designed to interfere with aircraft radars. They can interfere, for example, with the operation of the NATO Radio Detection and Guidance Complex (AWACS) and distort the radar signals of military aircraft. The latest versions can have an impact, for example, on unmanned aerial vehicles as well.
 
Aircraft
 
A new reconnaissance aircraft of the Russian Air Force, the Tupolev Tu-214, can recognize and analyse the transmission of a wide spectrum of radio signals. Its equipment can be used to create interference.
 
The Ilyushin Il-22PP, Porubshchik, is a plane with a turboprop engine, equipped with new generation electronics. The first Porubshchiki entered service in 2016. The task of the aircraft is to distort the signals of the enemy’s radar both on the ground and in the air, and to interfere with the navigation systems of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).
 
END TRANSLATION