Ex-Pentagon Electronic Warfare Specialist Highlights Implications of Russia’s EW Advantage

Following a growing number of reports from a range of Western sources highlighting the game changing impacts of advanced Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities in its ongoing effort in Ukraine, EMP Task Force scholar and former U.S. Department of Defence officer David T. Pyne has provided further insight into prevailing evaluations of Russia’s capabilities. "Russia has the most capable electronic warfare systems in the world with the longest range and most powerful GPS and radio frequency jammers of any nation," he stated, adding that he had been impressed by "the speed at which Russian long range jammers have been able to adapt to jamming new U.S. and NATO weapon systems that have been introduced into the conflict." Russian electronic warfare systems "have proven effective at causing 90% of guided missile and drone systems supplied by the U.S. to Ukraine to miss their target, most importantly HIMARS,” he stated, adding that Russian GPS jammers "will likely prove increasingly effective against the recently supplied extended range U.S. ATACMS missiles as well." Pyne elaborated that Russian jamming systems were likely to be "proving increasingly effective against U.S. supplied Ukrainian air defence systems including Patriot and Hawk missiles enabling Russia to increase its air superiority over Ukraine,” stressing that this air superiority was contributing significantly to major Russian advances across several areas of the front. 

Russian Defence Ministry reports have since the disintegration of the Soviet Union consistently highlighted the importance of electronic warfare, which has provided an asymmetric means of countering conventionally superior forces to compensate for the loss of parity with NATO in a wide range of areas. In the Ukrainian theatre, however, electronic warfare superiority is paired with vast conventional superiority over the Ukrainian Armed Forces, fuelling speculation that Russia has conserved many of its top end EW capabilities to prevent them being studied by Ukraine’s Western supporters. Pyne’s assessment follows the release of a publication by the Washington Post, which cited Ukrainian officials to highlight that the United States had completely ceased deliveries of Excalibur guided artillery shells for the past six months after Russian electronic warfare systems had rendered them ineffective. It concluded that against Russian electronic warfare systems “the Excalibur technology in existing versions has lost its potential.”  Regarding the HIMARS system, a senior Ukrainian military official lamented regarding its declining effectiveness that in 2023 “everything ended: the Russians deployed electronic warfare, disabled satellite signals, and HIMARS became completely ineffective.” The Washington Post’s report follows revelations three weeks prior by U.S., British, and Ukrainian sources that HIMARS in particular had become “increasingly less effective” due to Russian electronic warfare capabilities. 

Russian electronic warfare systems have also seriously disrupted Ukrainian forces’ ability to coordinate, collect intelligence and launch drone attacks, most prominently through the disruption of Starlink internet capabilities provided by the Pentagon. Speaking to the New York Times Ukrainian officials, soldiers and electronic warfare specialists reported that this was a major facilitator of recent Russian advances, with a deputy commander from the Ukrainian Army 92nd Assault Brigade’s drone battalion observing: “We’re losing the electronic warfare fight… One day before the attacks, it [Starlink] just shut down. It became super, super slow.” “We needed to be to be fast in communicating,” another drone operator said, lamenting that the loss of Starlink connectivity “made everything more complicated” and “time consuming.” The New York Times concluded that this disruption “could mark a tactical shift in the conflict” due to “Ukraine’s vulnerability and dependence on the service.” This also raised “broader questions about Starlink’s reliability against a technically sophisticated adversary.”