Seeing russian electronic warfare prove effective on the battlefield in Ukraine, Western media have recently published articles about how the invasion forces of russia managed to undermine the impact of precision-guided weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal, like the Excalibur smart artillery shells or GLSDB bombs.
With that in mind, Defense Express asked Yaroslav Kalinin, CEO of Infozahyst, a Ukrainian company making electronic warfare and signal intelligence equipment, to clarify the current situation and the balance of power in this field. He assures that Ukraine and russia are more or less in a state of parity in terms of EW dominance.
Read more: Ukraine's Strike on russians in Vovchansk Testifies Precision-Guided Bombs Do Can Be Useful
"Not everything that was claimed and demonstrated on the proving grounds proved effective on the battlefield," Kalinin says, referring to extensively advertised electronic warfare systems of the russian army.
"At the same time, we shouldn't underestimate the capabilities of our enemy. There are certain systems that demonstrate their effectiveness. We observe high-speed false targets, we see electronic warfare, the successes in suppressing our [unmanned] reconnaissance aviation, in countering our FPV [drones], et cetera. All this speaks to the real factual capabilities of such an 'invisible segment' as the electronic warfare is."
The head of the EW company says Ukraine manages to keep up the parity in those capabilities with the russians but they would like to get a qualitative advantage:
"We have it more difficult because we are in fact all within the reach of the enemy's strategic weapons. This doesn't let us deploy long-term manufactures or significantly complicates this process. Nonetheless, we have something to be proud of, too, but we cannot talk about it just yet."
Yaroslav Kalinin also commented on the russian battlefield management systems. "They have a few systems of various effectiveness. There's an automated system for controlling air defense and aerial operational awareness. They were refined even before the full-scale invasion and have been working for many days now."
According to him, BMS proved not very effective in real combat though:
"The enemy is now actively working on adjustments and, as far as I know, preparing them to graduate from the prototype stage of development," Kalinin says. He notes that the russians mostly find the problem not in the level of operational readiness of these systems but in their "blood vessels" — communication equipment.
Read more: Western Armies Still Underestimate the Threat of FPV Drones and Small UAVs, Ukrainian EW Manufacturer Says
