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.

Chinese Maritime Strike Capabilities and the Fragility of U.S. Sea Lines of Communication Along the First Island Chain

On 30 March, the People’s Liberation Air Force conducted a long-range bomber exercise sortie into the northern half of the Luzon Strait. It isn’t clear from the media reporting whether the bombers flew further east into the open Western Pacific as part of the drill. The pictures accompanying the PLA’s press announcement on the exercise suggest H-6K bombers were employed—essentially a modernized version of the 1950s-era Soviet Tu-16 Badger. H-6K’s combat range is rumored to be approximately 1900 nautical miles. When one adds on an H-6K’s YJ-62 subsonic or YJ-12 supersonic ASCMs, the maximum anti-ship striking reach extends by roughly 180 or 250 nautical miles respectively.

In effect, and assuming an airfield relatively close to China’s coast, the PLAAF demonstrated a H-6K maritime strike at approximately 20% of the bomber’s notional maximum combat radius. This reach may seem underwhelming at first glance. However, if one were to draw that 20% as an arc extending outward along China’s entire coastline, then tack on the YJ-12’s assumed range, the entirety of the maritime approaches to Taiwan, the Ryukyus, the northern and western coasts of Luzon, the west coast of Kyushu, and the southern coast of South Korea lie inside the perimeter with plenty of standoff room.  20% can be more than enough.

It is quite possible that the effective range of those missiles against a given ship or surface grouping under wartime conditions would be significantly less than the advertised maximum range. Nevertheless, U.S. commanders would not only have to take the missiles’ maximum theoretical range into consideration when designing campaigns and operations, but would also have to account for the H-6Ks’ maximum theoretical range. Not to mention J-11 fighters carrying YJ-12s. Rest assured that these kinds of risk calculations are very much on the mind of U.S. treaty allies in the region.

The U.S. Navy has not faced an analogous “blue water” air threat since the Cold War days of Bears, Badgers, and Backfires. These Soviet bombers were not tasked with pressuring the trans-Atlantic flow of reinforcements and supplies to Western Europe, however (and Badger couldn’t reach far enough south in any event). Nor were there Soviet fighters capable of escorting them all the way out to those sea lanes. The principal theoretical threat to these flows was therefore Soviet submarines (even though that really wasn’t their primary mission either), which in turn drove design requirements for convoy escorts like the Knox and Perry-class frigates.

As alluded to above, Western Pacific geography presents a completely different story. Let’s use the Ryukyus as an example. It is highly desirable to deploy U.S. air and missile defense systems, Japanese anti-ship cruise missile batteries, and U.S. and Japanese fighters capable of dispersed operations from ad hoc airfields to these islands in order to pressure Chinese air and naval surface forces’ wartime abilities to break out into the Western Pacific. These systems are also highly important to complicating PLA air and naval surface operations within the East China Sea, as well as defending the Ryukyus from direct PLA strikes or expeditionary assaults. They might contribute significantly to bogging down a Chinese war-opening offensive long enough to prevent a fait accompli under certain circumstances.

How, though, will these forces be logistically sustained if PLAAF fighters can use their numerical superiority to disrupt or deny U.S. airlift efforts, and the striking reach of its H-6Ks and J-11s to pressure U.S. sealift efforts? How will transport aircraft and convoyed shipping be able to unload their cargoes if the requisite airfields and seaports have been subjected to debilitating air and missile bombardments (or mine-laying), or if PLA forces can direct fires against these facilities on short notice? Now let’s take this one step further: how will the U.S. and Japan protect the flow of basic economic sustenance to the islands’ civilian populations under such conditions? Also bear in mind that unlike the Cold War-era Soviet maritime bomber threat, H-6Ks can be escorted thousands of miles out to sea by J-11s (and many other PLAAF fighters for overwater missions closer to home), thereby providing a modicum of protection from U.S. and Japanese fighters. Now factor PLAN submarine capabilities into the mix. The difficulty of these challenges should be apparent. What’s more, the same challenges would apply in conflicts involving the Philippines, South Korea, and of course Taiwan.

This is why I say land-based forces positioned along the First Island Chain can “pressure” PLAAF and PLAN breakouts through the First Island Chain, not block them altogether. “Pressuring” them is very useful in that it can support friendly naval forces and convoys operating in the open ocean by providing some warning of an outbound raid as well as knocking out some of the raiders during both the outbound and inbound legs. It also would entice China to expend a disproportionate effort trying to locate and suppress the ‘gatekeepers’ early in a major war. Similar logic applies to the use of such forces for pressuring Chinese use of the East or South China Seas in the vicinity of allied islands, including the direct defense of the islands themselves.

As I’ve noted before, unless the maritime lines of communication to these islands are kept open, the maritime denial forces on them essentially become “wasting assets” if not sacrificial speedbumps. Yes, ammunition and food can be stockpiled to allow such forces to hold out for protracted periods—if such a foresighted step is taken during peacetime. And even if it is, the stockpile will only last for a finite period. Munitions expenditures will likely be higher than anticipated in peacetime planning. There will be combat losses and a corresponding need (or at least desire) to funnel in replacements. Can replenishment and reinforcement be done with confidence under the circumstances I’ve outlined?

Nor does any of this even begin to cover the islands’ populations’ needs for basic staples like food, medical supplies, fuel, whatever external trade can be sustained, and so on. Imagine the political pressures upon an embattled ally’s government—and thereby upon U.S. political leadership—to break a Chinese maritime siege. Imagine the political and strategic consequences if the siege could not be broken. This could, in fact, be a principal Chinese objective in a notional conflict of limited aims.

Such issues are seldom raised in public proposals of or commentaries on strategic concepts for deterring—and if necessary waging—a war against Chinese aggression in East Asia. There are a few indications that this fog may be lifting, though. I certainly hope that’s the case, as any strategic concept for East Asia that doesn’t address these questions is seriously incomplete.

It’s important to keep in mind that the challenges I’ve described are hardly insurmountable. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of measures that could contribute towards solutions:

• Contingency plans could emphasize offensive and defensive operations aimed at protecting critical maritime lines of communication to allied territories and forward forces.

•  Contingency plans could also incorporate entire sets of sequential or parallel operations in the physical, electromagnetic, cyber, and space domains to temporarily if not permanently degrade the surveillance-reconnaissance apparatus that PLA maritime strike aircraft, submarines, surface groups, and land-based missiles depend upon for over-the-horizon targeting cues.

• Combined arms operating concepts and tactics could be developed for screening convoys from air and submarine attack using existing (or forthcoming) platforms and systems.

• New logistics concepts for using existing or forthcoming transport platforms to keep dispersed forces supplied from afar when large airfields and seaports are unavailable.

• Medium-range air defense missiles could be added to the forthcoming LCS-derived frigate so that it could perform convoy escort in high air threat environments.

• A long-legged large weapons payload fighter (F/A-XX?) and a wide-area anti-submarine aircraft could be added to the future carrier air wing.

Bottom line: land-based maritime denial forces in the First Island Chain can do many things that complement naval battleforces at the campaign-level. They cannot substitute for them. 

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.

Conventional Deterrence by Denial and the Baltics

RAND’s Terrence Kelly published an excellent opinion piece at U.S. News & World Report last month outlining analysis-derived requirements for a NATO conventional deterrent in the Baltics:

Unclassified RAND war games indicate that Russian forces could overrun local defenders and the light U.S. and NATO units currently able to respond within as few as two days. While the capitals and a small number of key points could be held for some time, Russian forces could seal the border between Lithuania and Poland, prevent reinforcement by sea, and confront NATO with a fait accompli.

Once secured, these territorial gains would be defended by heavy ground forces occupying the conquered states, along with very capable Russian anti-air and anti-ship defenses on Russian territory. Any serious attempt to liberate Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would entail attacks to suppress these systems.

If a Russian invasion of the Baltic states could not be deterred or defeated, the North Atlantic Council and the U.S. president would be faced with a very unpleasant choice: conduct a costly counteroffensive and risk nuclear escalation, or abandon the Baltics to renewed subservience to Moscow. Such a catastrophic failure to uphold the mutual defense responsibilities of NATO could cripple or even destroy the North Atlantic alliance, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary goals. It is therefore of paramount importance to deter Russian aggression before it happens.

Unless one is sure that Putin’s Russia would not take these steps - a dangerous gamble, given Moscow’s recent track record - the United States and its NATO allies need to be able to deter, and if need be defeat, Russian aggression in the Baltics.

Kelly suggests that the standing peacetime deployment of one armored BCT in each of the Baltic states, supporting (but undefined) tactical air forces, and Division and Corps-level Headquarters to exercise unitary command and control over this combined arms forward defense would be sufficient to prevent Russia from achieving a limited but decisive territorial fait accompli. Based on this force’s size, it would do this presumably through delay and disruption. The U.S. Army arguably does not possess enough armored BCTs to carry the entire weight of this presence, though, while simultaneously meeting its other global contingency readiness commitments. As a result, the BCTs would likely have to be composed of forces contributed by multiple NATO countries. This underscores the importance of a unitary NATO approach to exercising command and control over this frontline deterrent.

Kelly does not comment on the degree to which existing NATO air forces deployed in Central and Eastern Europe might require permanent peacetime augmentation (presumably using U.S.-based squadrons). He does note that rolling back a Russian onslaught would require surge reinforcements, and given the state of European NATO members’ ground and air forces it’s hard to escape the conclusion those reinforcements would largely need to come from the U.S. This begs the question of how a modern analogue to REFORGER would be conducted. This would hardly be a small endeavor; even more so if debarkation air and sea ports or cross-continent supply lines came under fire from Russian long-range conventional strike weaponry.

He next details the tradeoffs between deterrent force positioning and posturing options. One path would be to warehouse heavy equipment in the Baltics, with crews flown in from the U.S. and other NATO allies to deploy this gear in the field in the event of a crisis. Such an approach might be rationalized as a signal of ‘flag-planting reassurance’ to the Baltic allies that is ‘less provocative’ to Russia than a standing manned heavy deterrent. Kelly correctly points out that the likelihood of dispatching crews to these stockpiles in time to mount an effective defense would depend almost entirely on detecting, correctly interpreting, and rapidly acting upon warnings of war—a sequence of events for which history and human psychology suggest there is little cause to be optimistic. He also correctly observes that these concentrated stockpiles would be highly vulnerable to Russian conventional first strikes, and by implication would be crisis-destabilizing.

Kelly follows by noting that standing ground forces based in (as well as equipment prepositioned in) Central Europe would be comparatively less exposed to the first strike threat, but would face the risk of not being able to deploy eastward fast enough to thwart a fait accompli thrust. This would effectively foreclose NATO options to pursue a defensive strategy of delay/disruption, never mind assured defense. Hence, Kelly concludes that a standing heavy presence in the Baltics—or in Poland at minimum—makes for the only credible ground force positioning and posture for deterrence by denial.

There is no doubt in my mind that some heavy ground forces contributed by NATO’s principal members would need to be positioned in the Baltic states in order to latently back constabulary forces responding to ‘plausibly-deniable’ offensive operations by Russian special forces or ‘civilian’ proxies. In the event of a conventional Russian ground offensive, these forces would be central to arresting the thrust’s progress while simultaneously incurring the commitment tripwire effect. Beyond that, it is reasonable to investigate options for splitting a standing deterrent’s positions between the Baltics and Poland in ways that increase their maneuver space as well as survivability against a first strike.

There is a broader deterrent-designing challenge, however, in that Russia could hypothetically escalate horizontally via offensive operations against other European regions in order to prevent NATO from concentrating combat power in Poland and the Baltics. While any such ground offensives would likely be fairly limited in scope, they would nevertheless hardly be inconsequential from the victims’ standpoint. Recent research published by the Royal United Services Institute’s Igor Sutyagin suggests much of the combat-ready Russian Army is tied down supporting operations in Ukraine, though. If Sutyagin’s analysis is accurate, and assuming Russian forces are not disengaged from the Ukrainian conflict anytime soon, then it seems Russia would be hard-pressed over the near-term to field enough combat-ready ground forces for major protracted anti-NATO offensives. This amplifies the potential credibility of delay/disruption-centric forward deterrents in the Putin regime's eyes, as it would heighten the likelihood of a protracted and risk-laden clash with NATO. These deterrent forces would certainly help backstop the 'first responder' constabulary forces needed to prevent 'non-linear war' fait accomplis.

Russia might have comparatively greater horizontal escalation flexibility in the aerospace and maritime domains. For example, Russia might conduct air and missile strikes or sea denial operations against NATO’s Black Sea members. Or perhaps Russia might conduct air and missile strikes, localized sea denial operations, small-scale amphibious assaults, or small-scale overland incursions against Norway or non-NATO Scandinavia. Some localized use of submarines or missile-carrying aircraft against NATO’s trans-oceanic and intra-theater sea lanes might also be possible. Depending on the strategic circumstances, Russia might even escalate both horizontally and vertically via long-range conventional aerospace strikes against Western European or North American NATO members. And of course, the possibility of Russian brandishing or use of theater nuclear weapons must be considered.

A fuller picture of a European conventional deterrent therefore ought to outline what kinds of tactical air forces are necessary to support ground forces, where those air forces should be positioned, what kinds of specialized aircraft (examples: AEW, JSTARS, electronic warfare aircraft, long-range bombers, tankers, etc.) would be necessary to support tactical air operations, and what the in-theater basing approaches would be to increase tactical air force survivability (examples: hardening, distributed operations using austere satellite fields and flexible command and control, etc.). Bases and ground maneuver forces will also require mobile air and missile defenses as well as electronic warfare support systems in the field in order to degrade Russian attacks. Defense of strategic targets against cruise missile attacks needs to be addressed. A approach for protecting the flow of logistics to forward forces additionally needs to be defined. Lastly, the roles of navies and coastal defense forces need to be outlined. The potential roles of Baltic Sea-bordering NATO members’ navies would be quite different from NATO members who border the Atlantic.

Kelly provides an outstanding foundation for examining NATO conventional deterrence requirements for the Baltics. His thoughts will serve as a starting point for the examinations of the other questions that I hope to write later this year.

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.

Russia Responds to Atlantic Resolve

Under Operation Atlantic Resolve, the U.S. has been rotationally deploying relatively small land-based force packages into Eastern Europe that are intended to signal American commitment to defending NATO’s boundary members against Russian aggression (while arguably also serving as deterrence tripwires). It's been pretty confusing trying to sort out what is being deployed where. Although last Thursday I noted the reported deployment of the 3^rd Infantry Division’s entire 1^st Armored Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Baltics, per the latest Atlantic Resolve fact sheet only a few hundred personnel and vehicles will actually be positioned in the Baltics. Furthermore, these vehicles will be consolidated with U.S. Army Europe’s prepositioned stocks in Germany at the end of the BCT’s deployment; they will not be left in the Baltics. According to LTG Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Army Europe, however, that does not preclude redistributing those vehicles to prepositioning sites in the Baltics or other Eastern European NATO members at a later date.

Russia’s response to all this is hardly surprising or unexpected. From Agence France-Presse via Defense News last Thursday:

Putin on Monday [3/16] ordered drills for more than 40,000 troops in regions spanning the country, from the Arctic to the far east to the volatile southern Caucasus, and ordered nuclear bomber jets to be deployed in Crimea a year after its annexation by Moscow.

Russia's chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Thursday that the "number of troops taking part in the exercises has gone up to 80,000, and the number of aircraft has increased to 220," quoted by RIA Novosti state news agency.

Troops in the western and central regions and military aircraft were scrambled for exercises, Gerasimov said.

The drills are the latest in a succession of large-scale military maneuvers that Moscow has ordered as relations with the West have plunged to a post-Cold War low over the crisis in Ukraine.

One of LTG Hodges’s takeaways from the Russian exercises is particularly telling:

"I've been watching the Russian exercises...what I cared about is they can get 30,000 people and 1,000 tanks in a place really fast. Damn, that was impressive."

Conventional deterrence by denial rests heavily on creating a perception that a fait accompli isn’t possible, or that achieving one would be very costly and risky. This is why forward presence is so critical to deterrence credibility. The challenge becomes even harder when the adversary can mobilize and deploy an order of magnitude faster than the defender can.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a longstanding and often well-sourced Russian military analyst, notes at the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor that:

This week (March 16-21), the Russian military began massive, “sudden” military exercises (“vnezapnaya proverka”). The authorities initially announced that the “sudden exercises” are intended to check out the battle readiness of Russia’s Northern Fleet and the possibility of reinforcing it with forces from other military districts. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, 38,000 soldiers, 3,360 military vehicles, 41 navy ships, 15 submarines and 110 aircraft are involved in the exercise. The mass deployment of air and naval forces in the Barents Sea practices ensuring the safety of Russian nuclear missile-armed submarines, which have to be defended at all costs before they launch their hundreds of nuclear warheads at the United States. The military plans to land marines and paratroopers on the shore of the Kola Peninsula close to the Norwegian border and on the polar archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land.

According to a defense ministry source, the “sudden exercise” was intended to send a message to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that Russia is ready for war and can counter with force the deployment of limited US and other NATO forces to the Baltic, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria. Moscow, apparently, did not give Western nations any prior notification about the exercise (Vedomosti, March 17).

Neither side has had experience with brinksmanship on par with the darker moments of the Cold War in over a generation. That does not bode well for crisis stability, to put it mildly.

--Updated 3/24/15 7:38AM EDT to correct typo in 6th paragraph--

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.

Conventional Deterrence Developments in the Baltics

In mid-February, it was reported that the 1^st Armored Brigade Combat Team (BCT) from the 3rd Infantry Division was deploying ‘to Europe’ for three months. It was implied that the BCT would disaggregate to conduct training events with host nation forces in the Baltics, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, and Poland.

It now seems that the BCT deployment will be concentrated in the Baltics. The Army is also stating that the BCT’s tanks and armored personnel carriers will remain prepositioned in the region.

I’m not certain, but the amount of armor to remain prepositioned appears to be an increase from what was being described back in December.

Unlike a parade of a handful of armored vehicles through the streets of Narva, the deployment of a BCT is a very serious move. I’ll leave detailed comparisons between this BCT and the Russian order of battle adjacent to the Baltics to experts on ground warfare, which I most assuredly am not. All the same, my gut instinct is that the deployment of a heavy BCT falls somewhere between delay/disruption and tripwire on Robert Rubel’s spectrum of forward presence. In the absence of evident tactical air support as well as air and missile defense support, I would think the needle still points towards tripwire, but the level of commitment that this deployment appears designed to signal is significant.

The obvious follow-on question is whether this BCT will turn over its armor directly to a relieving unit that will take over this presence mission, and if not, what the concept of operations would be to transport personnel forward to marry up with this equipment in a crisis.

Very interesting.

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.