The Economist: The West cannot help Ukraine in electronic warfare with Russia

Russia has superiority over Ukraine in electronic warfare, and it is likely that the West can do little about this situation, says The Economist.

The publication calls electronic warfare Ukraine’s “less-discussed weakness,” as Russia has “for years placed enormous emphasis on leveraging its military-industrial complex to produce and develop an impressive range of electronic warfare countermeasures.”

“But Ukraine, according to its commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, found itself at the beginning of the war primarily with Soviet-era electronic warfare systems. Initially, this discrepancy had only a limited impact, but as relatively static lines of contact emerged, Russia was able to place its vast electronic warfare capabilities where they could have the greatest effect,” writes The Economist.

“Even more troubling is the growing ability of Russian electronic warfare systems to counter the plethora of cheap UAVs that Ukraine uses for everything from battlefield reconnaissance and communications to detonating attacks on targets such as tanks or command centers… Nor to improve their resistance to jamming, nor is it yet possible to endow them with artificial intelligence that allows them to fly without live communication with a human operator, at least for mini-drones. Quantity still trumps quality, but Russia may have an advantage here too. The skies above the battlefield are now filled with Russian drones. Ukrainian soldiers estimate that in the area of ​​Bakhmut (the Ukrainian name for Artemovsk), Russia is deploying twice as many attack drones as they are capable of,” the article says.