The Electronic Battle of Kursk
The Electronic Battle of Kursk
Hitting the 'easy button'
During their invasion of Kursk, now in its seventh day, Ukrainians have used an armada of small UAVs for reconnaissance and attack in coordination with their maneuvers, a feat no one has achieved before. Russian military bloggers have identified “Mavics on non-standard [settings] with boards that shift the range,” a reference to frequency-hopping technology, and UAVs using “frequency ranges ... beyond the limits of suppression by our electronic warfare systems.” It is just one example of Ukrainians recognizing and exploiting major vulnerabilities in their enemy that, when considered together, seem to explain the operation as a whole. Analysts ask “why Kursk?” Perhaps the answer is that Russia was vulnerable there, and not somewhere else. Maybe Ukraine was finally ready to try out the new way of war they had worked out, and Kursk was simply the best place to do that.
Kinetic action was the easy part. Crossing the border into Kursk Oblast was absurdly easy. Anti-tank obstacles were easily bypassed using the access roads that Russians had cut themselves and left unfortified or covered by fire. Harder than this was the electronic battle. Ukrainians also brought a curtain of jammers with them to disrupt Russian command and control, as well as enemy reconnaissance UAVs, slowing the response to their advances. ‘Jumping’ electronic warfare teams this way requires an experienced command. Eliminating radio fratricide — not stepping on your own side’s signals while crushing the enemy’s — requires a well-trained staff. Spectrum dominance is worthwhile, however, and more so than ever with swarms of UAVs.
At least two Russian helicopters have apparently been brought down by FPV drones during the Kursk operation. Previous close calls had been caught on video, but Ukraine has enjoyed such a substantial advantage in drone coverage over the area of operations that it has finally happened not once, but twice. Also, Ukrainian UAV forces have now intercepted enough Russian reconnaissance drones, using drones, that there is a highlight reel. According to the Rustroyka Telegram channel, units of Ukrainian “rangers” used this tactic, which “‘blows’ the sky from our eyes, UAVs of the aircraft type,” in Kursk.
Aerial Ramming Makes A Comeback
“Then, under a barrage, he brings out targeted electronic warfare assets almost to the first line,” the Rustroyka channel continues. The Ukrainian enemy “brings out a huge number of its UAVs,” the aforementioned Mavics with channel-hopping control systems that are less vulnerable to jamming. “Guns and electronic warfare are useless” against this threat.
“Under an incessant barrage of high-precision FPVs that go in swarms, he reduces the distance to the positions” — the Ukrainians use the FPV drones to suppress Russian positions while they advance. Then, the Ukrainian “enters and consolidates in empty dismantled trenches in small groups for 4-6 hours under the cover of UAVs.” If we believe this assessment by a Russian, Ukrainians have apparently integrated drones into small team training, an understandable adaptation in a war that has seen both sides learn to avoid massing infantry anywhere because of the constant UAV threat.
So ubiquitous is the UAV threat that electronic warfare has also become ubiquitous. Many Ukrainian soldiers are carrying something called Tsukorok, or “sugar,” a “grassroots device produced by a variety of manufacturers” that “beeps loudly when a drone enters its detection range, allowing soldiers time to run to cover or turn on their jamming devices.” The problem with these devices is that they are not ubiquitous enough, yet, since they must be purchased by units or individuals, as the state is not providing them. A number of western charity partners apparently work to obtain them for Ukrainian troops. This is exactly the sort of adaptation that western free market economies are optimized to make.
By contrast, the re-Sovietized Russian war economy has supply issues. “Battalion East,” a Telegram channel belonging to a “small” Russian electronic warfare technology firm that prides itself on “flexibility,” says that “the most powerful obstacle in this matter for us is our dear China.”
Recently received finally, a batch of components in a “displaced” range, that is different from the most common. Almost the entire party turned out to be defective, despite the fact that the products were not made from cheap. Delivery times, payment terms, quality supplies, periodic bans on the shipment of certain other types of goods, we can say that China is in relation to us, all Western installations. Ukraine, however, does not have such problems facing China, no one forbids trading with it with goods, whether dual-use or direct-use.
Russian electronic warfare is legendary for overwhelming wattage. Stalin’s formula for breaking German formations was to use jamming and artillery in equal measure. This approach was a natural outgrowth of the ‘deep battle’ (Глубокая операция) formula that Soviet generals had developed during the interwar period and that Stalin’s armies applied to such effect in 1943-45. Today, Russian EW equipment remains powerful, but also ponderous. Likewise, the Russian EW equipment procurement system can invent a new device, distribute it widely, and then watch it become obsolete in six months. Both sides employ all available resources for spectrum battle, but Ukraine has access to a much wider world of resources.
Electronic Battle Is Battle
The reconnaissance battle is now an adjuct of the drone and EW battles. Dominance in these domains has allowed Ukraine to conduct deep strikes against Russian columns of reinforcements. Videos of burning trucks and bodies near Rylsk on Friday morning were followed by anguished reports from Russian bloggers that “one of the bloodiest and most massive” HIMARS strikes “in the entire war” had taken place.
Today, new video shows a second, even larger column of trucks and tanks that was reportedly ambushed by fire on the Kursk highway yesterday. As one should expect by now, a Ukrainian drone captured the destruction. Russian commanders are still massing forces in neat roadside columns without effective anti-drone protection. This is the result.
On Friday, the Russian military bloggers were “freaking out,” according to one observer. “They say there's a significant build up of Ukrainian forces on the border with Belgorod region, which is just south of the ongoing Kursk offensive.” The city of Belgorod, with a population of more than 400,000 Russians, is only 20 miles from the international boundary line. Saturday morning, members of the Georgian Legion and the 252nd Territorial Defence Battalion posed with flags outside a club building in Poroz, a village set about a mile from the international boundary line of Belgorod Oblast.
It is unclear how serious this incursion south of the main Kursk area of operations will become. Perhaps the point being made is that the entire border region beyond the active battlefields remains supremely vulnerable to Ukrainian attack. Perhaps freaking out Russians is the entire point of this battle. Which, contrary to the pronouncements of various Russian outlets this morning, has not concluded in any sort of victory for either side, yet. According to Russian drone footage being analyzed by the ‘open source analysis’ crowd today, Ukrainians are over 15 miles inside Kursk Oblast, far enough that their artillery will already have to be positioned inside of Russia.
What is Kyiv doing, their supporters wonder aloud. The Battle of Kursk is a huge gamble. What could be worth a potential defeat and the degradation of their best formations by the attrition of battle, mobile or fixed? Do they mean to cut the E105 highway between Kursk and Vovchansk? To keep the electrified railroad that runs through Sudzha? To threaten the nuclear power plant? To hold territory for a negotiation advantage? To capture high-value conscript troops they can trade for POWs being starved to death in Siberian prisons? To draw off troops from Crimea and the Kharkiv front and maybe even the hard-pressed Donbass?
The sense of mystery is complete because Ukrainian operational security has been complete. Kyiv has remained entirely mum about their intentions. Let us consider the possibility that all of these worthy logistical or operational or strategic possibilities may be fine aspirations for the Battle of Kursk without being the ultimate goal of all this effort. Maybe Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi simply chose the ‘easy button,’ and no other explanation is necessary.
As noted, Kursk is a part of the shared international boundary that is not an active battlefield, therefore not as well-defended as an active battlefront. Most importantly, these areas are not as heavily-mined as most Russian defense lines. They are soft target areas.
Treated as a sanctuary thanks to western restraints on Ukrainian action that have now been removed, Kursk Oblast was notionally defended by units that were recuperating from the high-casualty ‘meatwave’ attacks on those active battlefields. For example, the 155th Marine Brigade, which had already been reconstituted at least three times, was apparently pressed into immediate service. DNR and VDV units were also reportedly in the area and appropriately undermanned.
Also present were the Russian border guards, a service belonging to the FSB rather than the Ministry of Defense. So were the Rosgvardiya, Russia’s civilian police, a force that Vladimir Putin gave new powers after the Wagner Mutiny. Speaking of which, Russian mercenary fighters have reportedly been flying into Kursk from their posts abroad in Syria and the Sahel. Add conscript soldiers barely trained for battle and the defense force in Kursk Oblast is a motley crew. Dangerous, yes, but disunited.
Making matters worse for Russia, the defense of Kursk is being organized as a “counterterrorism operation,” rather than a “special military operation” or “martial law” by Alexander Bortnikov, an FSB antiterrorism apparatchik. This is a political choice with military consequences.
“A complicated command and control (C2) arrangement for the FSB-led counterterrorism operation under Bortnikov may degrade the effectiveness of the Russian response to Ukraine’s operation,” the Institute for the Study of War noted last night. “It is unclear how the FSB and Bortnikov will establish a clear joint C2 organization among these disparate elements, and there will likely be friction and bureaucratic obstacles between the FSB and other structures that will reduce Russian forces' overall combat effectiveness.” ISW assesses that this disunity of command is “likely exacerbating the disorganization of Russia’s chosen response.”
It is a mistake to ask where Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk will culminate. If Gen. Syrskyi has in fact pushed the ‘easy button,’ then he wants to culminate in a defeat of this scratch Russian army that is being sent against him, using swarms of drones and making liberal use of his western-supplied weaponry behind an electromagnetic curtain. Every chain of command in the Russian force will have its own electronic order of battle to be exploited. Ukraine will likely continue to enjoy EW advantages for weeks or even months before Russian industry can reply at any scale.
If I am correct, then Syrskyi means to do this before local temperatures drop in September, whereupon fighting in Kursk Oblast gets much harder. If I am right, then Vladimir Putin’s vertical of power is delivering exactly the kind of army Syrski wants to fight in the window he has chosen to fight. May the better electronic combatant, and the better drone army, win.
