Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, said Russian electronic warfare capabilities used to be inferior compared to their Ukrainian opponents, largely because they could not keep up with their troops on the ground.
But Clark noted that Russia may have learned from its earlier mistakes. Instead of using large bulky radar and electronics jamming equipment that can easily be spotted and destroyed by drone strikes and artillery, Russian forces are now relying on hundreds of smaller and more mobile electronic warfare equipment deployed all along the front line.
"This is a war of technologies," said Col. Ivan Pavlenko, chief of the Ukrainian General Staff's electronic and cyber warfare department. Pavlenko admitted that Russian systems are reducing the efficiency and accuracy of the Western weapons Ukraine has been receiving. This has led to a change of tactics within the Ukrainian forces, who are now focusing on targeting Russian electronic warfare systems.
"Before we strike with a precision-guided munition, we have to provide intelligence," he said. "Is there any suppression in that area? If that area is affected by a jamming signal, we have to find the jammer and destroy it, and only then use this weapon."
While Russian forces aren't able to prevent the launching of JDAMs, their electronic warfare systems are successfully affecting the trajectory of these missiles by drawing out their GPS guidance signals from satellites.
One widely used Russian jamming system, the R-330Zh Zhitel, a truck-mounted electronic warfare system, is able to jam GPS and satellite signals with 100 megahertz to two gigahertz wavebands.
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