Advanced Russian Electronic Warfare Capabilities

LTG Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Army Forces Europe, has frequently commented over the past year on the high degree of offensive Electronic Warfare (EW) proficiency demonstrated by the Russian Army against Ukrainian forces in Donbas. While most of this Russian EW usage was likely intended to support combat operations, it is quite possible that some of it had a secondary objective of intimidating NATO audiences. Likewise, the Russians may have also directly demonstrated a new EW system against U.S. forces on at least one occasion following the seizure of Crimea, though Russian propaganda claims regarding the system’s effects upon the USS Donald Cook were laughable. All the same, the Russian military has long appreciated that “radio-electronic combat” is integral to modern warfare, and accordingly that it offers a set of relatively inexpensive weapons that can potentially cripple an opponent’s ability to sense, communicate, and exercise command and control within a battlespace.

With that in mind, it’s worth examining a Russian propaganda piece from earlier this spring regarding a new Russian EW system dubbed Richag-AV. The article describes how Richag-AV will be integrated with a Mi-8 helicopter variant, then goes on to assert that the system can also be integrated with warships, ground vehicles, and other aircraft. Richag-AV is developed by Russia’s Radio-Electronic Technology Concern (KRET), which also produces several other prominent EW systems. One such KRET product is the aircraft-carried Khibiny that was allegedly used against the USS Donald Cook. It is noteworthy that KRET has claimed elsewhere that at least one variant of its truck-mounted Krasukha series EW systems will be mounted on aircraft and ships as well. A cursory search for pictures of Krasukha series systems online indicates that their size, weight, power, and physical antenna design attributes are vastly larger than anything that a Mi-8 might carry. Krasukha series systems’ physical attributes certainly differ drastically from Khibiny’s as well. Taken together, it seems likely that the claims that all these KRET products are equally extensible to different platforms aren’t fully true. Rather, it is quite possible the Russian claims actually signify that these different products share some common internal design approaches or underlying technologies and techniques.

The Sputnik News piece on Richag-AV contains another detail I find interesting:

In a combat situation, the system would operate as part of an aviation shock attack group aimed at breaking through virtually any defense system, blinding everything up to and including the US MIM-104 'Patriot' anti-aircraft missile system.

This immediately made me think of the opening hours of the First Gulf War when U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters struck Iraqi radar sites near the border with Saudi Arabia in order to create air defense coverage gaps the first waves of F-117s “going downtown” could exploit. The Apaches’ attacks, combined with Project SCATHE MEAN’s use of decoys to lure Iraqi air defenses into lighting off radars and expending precious Surface to Air Missiles, landed debilitating blows against Iraq’s integrated air defense system.

Now, it’s far from clear that Russian doctrine actually envisions using armed Mi-8s equipped with Richag-AV to achieve similar war-opening effects in a notional conflict with NATO. The Apaches’ nighttime nap-of-the-earth approach to their targets in Desert Storm was difficult enough over the desert; an equivalent raid into Poland from Kaliningrad, for example, would have to deal with much more complex terrain and might also have to contend with the coverage provided by NATO Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft. Nevertheless, U.S. and NATO planners ought to be thinking about how they might parry such a gambit.

It stands to reason, though, that Russian combined arms ground operations would likely feature use of aircraft-carried and vehicle-borne EW systems to blind, disrupt, deceive, or exploit U.S. and NATO sensor, communications, and command and control coverage within an objective area. Low-flying Russian helicopters would certainly be a plausible platform for suppression of the mobile air defense systems supporting NATO ground forces. Vehicle-borne Russian EW systems would likewise be plausible platforms for shielding Russian ground forces from NATO attacks.  

There’s obviously no way to be certain how Russian electronic attack capabilities actually stack up against U.S. and NATO radiofrequency systems. Such questions could only be answered in war, and that’s a ruinous proving ground one hopes the Putin regime and Western leaders equally want to avoid. It’s nevertheless worth pointing out that the Russian propaganda articles are incorrect in intimating that the edge in electronic attack is determined by an offensive EW system’s transmit power and raw coverage. Those are certainly important variables, but what matters even more is the adequacy of the targeted radiofrequency system’s electronic protection features and the comprehensiveness of the defending unit’s conditioning for operations under electromagnetic opposition. LTG Hodges has observed as much with respect to the U.S. Army. These observations urgently need to be translated into doctrine, operating concepts, tactics, force-wide training priorities, interim electronic protection upgrades to existing systems, and fielding of relevant ‘off-the-shelf’ EW technologies not only in the Army, but also across the U.S. armed services and their NATO counterparts as well.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

The 2015 Pew Global Attitudes Survey’s Findings on NATO Solidarity

Last month the Pew Research Center released the results of a public opinion poll conducted during April and May of this year in the larger NATO member countries, plus Ukraine and Russia, on perceptions of European security issues. The poll highlighted the unsurprising differences across NATO members’ publics regarding the desirability of supporting Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to fend off Russian aggression. It also underscored the Putin regime’s unsurprising depth of popular support at home, notwithstanding the domestic economic difficulties exacerbated by Western sanctions.[i]

The greatest amount of mainstream media attention, though, focused on Pew’s findings on the apparent unwillingness of large NATO member countries’ publics to support the use of military force by their governments to defend a fellow NATO ally from Russian aggression:

“Roughly half or fewer in six of the eight countries surveyed say their country should use military force if Russia attacks a neighboring country that is a NATO ally. And at least half in three of the eight NATO countries say that their government should not use military force in such circumstances. The strongest opposition to responding with armed force is in Germany (58%), followed by France (53%) and Italy (51%). Germans (65%) and French (59%) ages 50 and older are more opposed to the use of military force against Russia than are their younger counterparts ages 18 to 29 (Germans 50%, French 48%). German, British and Spanish women are particularly against a military response.”

This contrasts strongly with the poll’s findings on these publics’ views on Russia as a military threat to its neighbors:

And broad majorities of these publics believe the U.S. would rally to an embattled NATO ally’s aid:

“While some in NATO are reluctant to help aid others attacked by Russia, a median of 68% of the NATO member countries surveyed believe that the U.S. would use military force to defend an ally. The Canadians (72%), Spanish (70%), Germans (68%) and Italians (68%) are the most confident that the U.S. would send military aid. In many countries, young Europeans express the strongest faith in the U.S. to help defend allied countries. The Poles, citizens of the most front-line nation in the survey, have their doubts: 49% think Washington would fulfill its Article 5 obligation, 31% don’t think it would and 20% aren’t sure.”

The German numbers are the most disconcerting. It would be extraordinarily difficult for the U.S. to mount a ground and air defense anywhere in Eastern Europe or eastern Scandinavia if we couldn’t use German bases, air and sea ports, and transportation networks. Even so, the numbers Pew reported for responders in eastern Germany are not surprising given the longstanding and remarkably wide pervasiveness of Ostalgie across multiple demographic groups.

So what gives? And what can policymakers and analysts take away from the results?

For starters, a poll is only as illuminating as its questions are worded. Many of the Pew survey’s questions fall into the popularity contest category of ‘do you have confidence in (fill in the leader’s name) to do the right thing in foreign policy?’ or ‘do you approve of (fill in the leader’s name)’s handling of (fill in the international issue)?’ or ‘do you have a favorable opinion of (fill in name of country or international organization)?’ All this may indicate the probability that a “low-information” individual will follow some leader or embrace some organization based on “likability” alone, but it doesn’t tell us anything about what that individual’s actual policy preferences are (or would be if they had more information about the choices at hand).

And therein lies the weakness of most polls: they’re almost invariably too generally worded to truly help the policymaker and analyst understand what an informed public would or would not support. For example, consider Pew’s ‘rally to a NATO ally’s defense’ question:

“Q52. If Russia got into a serious military conflict with one of its neighboring countries that is our NATO ally, do you think (survey country) should or should not use military force to defend that country?”

People who don’t normally think about how geography or foundational principles of regional security relate to them in their daily lives don’t tend to take those intangibles into account in their gut responses to questions like this. And some might differentiate between an abstract case (e.g., “a neighboring country of Russia”) and an actual named country they can picture relative to themselves. So to further refine the data and better understand what people actually believe or want (as varied across a given country’s regions and demographic groups), a series of follow-on questions might be desirable:

1.      First, two questions to baseline whether responders support the core Helsinki principles at stake, and whether they believe their country’s relationship within NATO should be transactional and self-interested.

a.       “Do you believe your country, all NATO and EU members, and Russia should refrain from threatening or violating each others’ frontiers and territorial integrities?”

b.      “If Russia committed military acts of aggression or coercion against your country, would you want the U.S. and other NATO allies to militarily come to your country’s defense?”

2.      The next three questions would identify the degree to which responders believed NATO’s defensive burden should be shared in a conflict in the responders’ own neighborhoods.

a.       “If Russia committed military acts of aggression or coercion against (name of a fellow NATO ally that bordered responder’s country), would you want the U.S. to militarily come to that country’s defense?”

b.      “Would you support U.S. military use of your country’s territory to defend (name of a fellow NATO ally that bordered responder’s country)?”

c.       “If Russia committed military acts of aggression or coercion against (name of a fellow NATO ally that bordered responder’s country), would you want your country to militarily come to that country’s defense?”

3.      The final three would identify the degree to which responders believed the NATO defensive burden should be shared in a conflict beyond the responders’ own neighborhoods.

a.       “If Russia committed military acts of aggression or coercion against (name of a fellow NATO ally at a distance from responder’s country), would you want the U.S. to militarily come to that country’s defense?”

b.      “Would you support U.S. military use of your country’s territory to defend (name of a fellow NATO ally at a distance from responder’s country)?”

c.       “If Russia committed military acts of aggression or coercion against (name of a fellow NATO ally at a distance from responder’s country), would you want your country to militarily come to that country’s defense?”

We might not like the answers to these questions, but they would tell us a great deal more than what we found in the Pew survey.

Lastly, in digesting the Pew numbers, the slight rebounds in many polled countries regarding Russia’s and Putin’s “favorability” from 2014 to 2015 ought to be examined in terms of the possible effects of Russian propaganda. A good poll question to do this might have been to ask what principal media outlets in a responder's country, including social networks, the responder turned to for trusted news on Russia, NATO, or Ukraine. A pretty good picture of the information war would emerge from that data.

The EU is focusing its efforts to counter Russian propaganda on Russian-speaking populations in former Soviet states, including the Baltics. That’s all fine and good, but it would seem that the domestic information gaps regarding Russian political, informational, economic, and military threats to their own countries are in sore need of being addressed as well. NATO and EU member governments should be reaching out to the independent press within their own borders with hard and verifiable facts that counter the Putin regime’s narratives, highlight the Putin regime’s efforts to influence European politics and policy, and detail the Putin regime’s illiberality at home. National leaders on both sides of the Atlantic owe their citizens a frank and continuous dialogue on how the foundational values of European security enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act are being endangered by the Putin regime’s policies, and what that should mean to them in their daily lives. Those free electorates should then be left to decide whether those values are worth defending.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

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[i] Given the Putin regime’s authoritarian nature and the pervasiveness of its security apparatus, though, I don’t have much confidence that all the Russian citizens polled gave their true views without fear of repercussions. There is nevertheless more than enough qualitative evidence elsewhere that a majority of the Russian people support the Putin regime and its foreign policies. The resolute depth of that support is what's open to question. I find that Pew’s number highlights the extreme improbability that there will be any mass popular movements taking to the streets throughout Russia in opposition to the regime anytime soon. More importantly, Pew’s findings on the depth of Russian popular irredentism indicate the improbability of Western-leaning classically liberal politicians coming to power if the Putin regime were to fall.

The Use of the Marines in Europe for Deterrence

Marine COL William Nemeth has an intriguing article in this month’s Proceedings about how the Marines could contribute to deterring Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. Nemeth suggests the existing Black Sea Rotational Force could be expanded to a “full battalion combat team” he dubs “Rotational Force Europe” that could be deployed anywhere in Eastern Europe as needed. This combined arms force would consist of a reinforced infantry battalion with supporting combined arms attachments such as a reconnaissance platoon, light armored vehicle platoon/company, tank platoon, amphibious assault vehicle platoon, artillery battery, aviation combat element, and logistics combat element. I’m not going to do the approximate manpower counts for each of these components, but I’ll wager that their collective size would be more than double the Black Sea Rotational Force’s recent size.

Using Robert Rubel’s hierarchy of presence as a reference, my instinct is that Rotational Force Europe’s inherent capabilities when deployed as a aggregated group would fall somewhere between a tripwire force and a force capable of delaying/disrupting a notional Russian ground offensive (at least for a short time). If it functioned as part of a larger NATO standing forward combined arms conventional deterrent, the likelihood of bogging down a Russian thrust would probably be even greater.

But Nemeth also talks about splitting this Rotational Force Europe up into reinforced companies for deployment in widely-separated locations from the Baltics to Romania to even Georgia. He notes that the additional equipment needed to reinforce these companies could be pulled from the Marines’ prepositioned stockpiles in Norway, with augmentation personnel flown in from the U.S. All this is fine for peacetime engagement, training, and showing the flag. In a crisis, though, it seems to me that these companies would still be nothing more than tripwires. That’s okay as long as we’re honest about how a tripwire gambit must be structured in order to be effective. First, the tripwire must be placed in a location where an aggressor’s conventional forces cannot avoid coming into direct contact with it. Second, it must be latently backed by larger and heavier combat-credible forces positioned further back in the theater that can immediately provide it with combined arms support, begin deploying forward to reinforce it, and begin inflicting countervailing damage on the aggressor. Third, it must be able to latently back the host nation’s constabulary forces responding to an aggressor’s “salami tactic” incursions; the constabularies in turn must be able to provide physical security support for the tripwire’s emplacements and lines of communication/maneuver. Lastly, it must be accepted that losses in the tripwire force will likely be horrendous. That’s the price of being on the frontline at the beginning of a major war.

Nemeth goes into commendable detail regarding the air and naval assets that would be needed to support his Rotational Force Europe. It’s worth noting that he calls for there to be a standing presence in theater of two to three amphibious warships to perform transport, force insertion, or afloat staging base tasks. Given that the amphibious fleet is already overtaxed, something would almost certainly have to give in terms of presence in other theaters in order to restore that kind of presence in 6^th Fleet. The same is true for his call for a standing presence of two to four additional DDGs on top of the four now permanently deployed in Rota, Spain, plus four to five Littoral Combat Ships. He also calls for a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to be assigned to 6^th Fleet at all times; it is not clear whether this is the same as the amphibious warships he listed for transport or an additional set of such ships carrying their own Marines. While I don't disagree with him in terms of the need to reestablish a more sizable standing U.S. Navy forward presence in the European theater, note that CS-21R all but declares our existing force structure is insufficient to do so and also achieve all the other prioritized strategic tasks in other theaters assigned by our political leadership. CS-21R makes clear the burden for naval presence in Europe therefore falls on our NATO allies' fleets.

COL Nemeth briefly discusses how a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) might be used to quickly reinforce Europe in the event of a conflict with Russia. He suggests that a standing MEB headquarters element should be attached to European Command to plan for and command the flying-in of Marines from the U.S. to marry up with the prepositioned equipment stockpiles in Norway, and then deploy where needed in northeastern Europe—including the Baltics. He also implies that equipment could be prepositioned on NATO’s Black Sea members’ territories for contingencies in that portion of the theater. While I strongly agree with the use of a MEB for these purposes, I would point out that any use of the Baltic or Black Seas for transporting the MEB’s units towards frontal areas would be risky as a crisis peaked and nearly impossible if it had to occur after a war had already started. Russian sea denial capabilities in those waters will be too dense, at least during a conventional conflict’s first few weeks. This means gear must be prepositioned closer to where it might actually be needed. Norway is probably fine for Scandinavian operations. Prepositioning in Poland is probably necessary for operations in that country or the Baltics. Prepositioning in Romania and possibly also Bulgaria is unquestionably necessary for operations in those countries. Nemeth suggests that Rotational Force Europe might be used to enable the MEB’s theater entry and then movement to action; this could be a very important role for the former that deserves further analysis.

To make Rotational Force Europe, standing 6^th Fleet presence by a MEU, and the contingency MEB possible, Nemeth asserts that the Corps will have to stop rotationally deploying East Coast Marine units to augment Marine forces in Japan. While this is contrary to the Defense Department’s strategic prioritization of East Asia, it does make sense given the comparatively far higher military tensions with Russia than China at present. It also offers further evidence that our Navy-Marine Corps team is undersized (and budget levels being what they are, underprepared) for the strategic tasks it is assigned.

All in all, Nemeth has laid out an excellent and provocative article. Future analysis ought to look at how his ideas might pair up with Terrence Kelly’s ideas on how army forces (both U.S. and allied) ought to be used for conventional deterrence in Poland and the Baltics. More attention also needs to be paid with respect to how air and naval forces (whether U.S. or allied) ought to be used, especially in support of U.S. and allied ground forces fighting on the continent. And of course, the means for protecting the flow of reinforcements and logistical support into Europe and then onward towards frontal areas still requires much focused thought.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

Oscar II SSGN Modernization

Oscar-class SSGN, Undated (U.S. Department of Defense)

A few weeks ago a colleague passed me a Google translation of a TV Zvezda report on the Russian Navy’s plans for fielding advanced cruise missiles . Written in reaction to ADM William Gortney’s Congressional testimony in March that touched on Russian cruise missile threats to North America, the article initially highlights how Yasen-class attack submarines will carry up to 24 3M-55 Oniks (SS-N-26) ASCMs or 3M-14 Kalibr LACMs; presumably the sub can also carry 3M-54 Klub (SS-N-27) ASCMs. This information is not new in open source reporting.

What was new, at least to me, was the article’s assertion that the surviving Oscar II SSGNs’ 3M-45 Granit (SS-N-19) ASCM launchers will be replaced with “universal launcher” cells that can each contain up to three Oniks or Klub missiles. In doing some online digging, there have been rumors on non-authoritative sites for the last few years that Oscars undergoing modernization will receive this upgrade. The Zvezda report is the first one that is authoritative.

It’s impossible for me to say whether a launcher cell that can house three Oniks or Klub missiles can actually be integrated within the former space occupied by a Granit cell. That kind of question is never as simple as ‘does the peg fit in the hole?’ For the purposes of this piece, though, I’m going to assume that the hull and mechanical implications of the change can be readily accommodated.

The takeaway is that an Oscar II with the new launcher cells would be able to carry up to 72 advanced cruise missiles. That’s very impressive. Not only would the sub pose a formidable threat to naval battleforces, but it could also pose a medium-range land-attack threat. It is reasonable to interpret Oscar IIs with these capabilities as ‘gapfillers’ that account for fiscal or technical difficulties building out the Yasen-class.

A key follow-on question, though, concerns the means by which a modernized Oscar II would receive over-the-horizon anti-ship targeting cues. The Cold War-era method for doing this was fraught with exploitable vulnerabilities. A more modern approach would still likely be dependent upon cues from reconnaissance aircraft, space-based sensors, or perhaps a shore-based fusion apparatus. None of these are devoid of exploitable vulnerabilities, either. While there is no guarantee that a U.S. or NATO battleforce would be able to effectively blind, deceive, or otherwise degrade Russian oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance-strike systems in the event of a conflict, there is no guarantee that those systems would be able to successfully target their prey either. The principles I proposed last fall for maritime scouting and anti-scouting competitions would almost certainly apply.

Another question concerns their patrol areas. I have never seen any open source reporting of an Oscar deployment outside Russia’s maritime periphery. From their 1980s introduction through the present, their principal task has been serving as part of the Russian homeland's ‘outer layer’ defense against U.S. carrier strike groups. Oscars simply could not conduct over-the-horizon anti-ship engagements very effectively outside the coverage of Russian oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance systems. With a notional land-attack capability, however, modernized Oscars could conceivably be deployed further forward. For example, modernized Oscars might be used to threaten land targets reachable from the southern Norwegian Sea, the North Sea, the Sea of Japan, or the Northwestern Pacific. This bears watching.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.