Military communications specialist Serhiy Flesh (Beskrestnov) explains why the Ukrainian Armed Forces have a problem with detecting enemy UAVs in the rear.
How radio direction finders work
Various radio direction finders are used to detect UAVs by their radio signals.
- To find a UAV, you need at least two direction finders. One will simply show only the azimuth. That is, at least two direction finders can see the UAV and at the same time give two bearings to the “command center”.
- The direction finders can see UAVs on average at a distance of 35 kilometers (some at 20, some at 40).
- A direction finder is expensive (up to half a million dollars), and a trained crew is even more expensive. A direction finder has a specific antenna that cannot be hidden under a roof slate or placed in dense greenery. Therefore, direction finders are usually placed no closer than 10 km from the front. Otherwise, they will be found from the air by drones and shelled with artillery or attacked with man-portable air defense systems.
- To “control the sky,” you need a lot of direction finders, because one of them covers a circle with a radius of 20 to 40 km.
“It’s becoming clear that even closing the entire frontline is a ‘feat’, and closing the entire country is simply unrealistic. It would require thousands of direction finders and crews,” notes Flesh.
Therefore, after flying through the “control echelons,” UAVs can fly deep into the rear, where they are difficult to detect with military electronic warfare systems. The rear cities and facilities are important, but the front comes first, so all equipment is there, including electronic warfare systems.
By the way, the situation is the same in Russia. The monitoring points are also located in the depths of the frontline, and there are not enough of them physically to cover the vast Russian expanse.
What should be done?
The expert believes that it is necessary:
- Understand that there are problems with fixing reconnaissance UAVs for objective reasons, and realize that this will continue. Of course, we need to develop the electronic warfare infrastructure, but this is a long and expensive process.
- We should not wait for a miracle from someone else, but create and equip UAV monitoring points on our own and with available resources throughout the country. We need to train the staff.
- We need to establish general interaction and inform the military at all levels about enemy UAVs.
The war has changed, and electronic warfare is no longer just about specially trained groups or special forces, it is a much more global issue. The main thing is to prevent the enemy from blowing up training grounds with people or warehouses in the rear, looking for a convenient moment.
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