What Western air attack means will be the first to disappear into the “Field” of the Russian EW?
The command post of one field-of-field interference system “Field-21” can control 100 antenna post interference transmitters. Each transmitting post has an 125 emission sector of degrees in azimuth and 25 degrees in elevation. The existing dimensions of the suppression zone of the P-340РП single-post antennas are 150х150 km, but after an increase in power, they may expand. One computerized post control station has a power of about 600 W
Legends have been circulating about the unique qualities of domestic electronic warfare systems, as well as about the combat capabilities of air defense systems. And these legends are quite justified by the events that occurred during the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Yugoslavia, when dozens of Phantoms, Stratofortresses were shot down, and then even such thoughtful "predators" as the inconspicuous F-117A "Nighthawk" intercepted Yugoslavia, and destroyed by the "Wasps" and "Shilka" over Iraq "Tomahawks." As for the direct electronic warfare, the last sensational incident occurred in the Syrian company immediately after the deployment of the Russian Air Force at the Khmeimim airbase. In early October 2015, the Krasuha-4 mobile electronic warfare system was delivered to its vicinity, which, together with the S-400 Triumph air defense system, literally closed the airspace over the northwestern part of the Syrian Arab Republic for tactical flights aviation Turkish Air Force and NATO Air Force. “Kraukha-4” supplemented “Triumph” with the ability to completely suppress the proper operation of the on-board radio equipment of the coalition strike aircraft, which could attempt to break through at low altitude.
The incident so perplexed General Frank Gorenk, the US Air Force commander in Europe, that he hurried to alert the alliance about the ability of the Russian Armed Forces to implement the most advanced Western strategic concept of restricting and prohibiting access and maneuver "A2 / AD", which NATO has been unsuccessfully trying to apply for a long time against the Russian Armed Forces in Eastern Europe. But the width of air corridors, from which a massive strike is possible with NATO’s strategic naval and air-launched cruise missiles, often exceeds the airspace covered by EW ground resources of our country. And as you know, the flight of the enemy’s missiles and aviation in the low-altitude air defense breakthrough mode virtually eliminates the capabilities of any ground-based EW complex at a distance of more than 30-40 km due to the concept of radio horizon. This is ordinary physics, against which no terrestrial radio-electronic countermeasures will strike. And there is also a relief that complicates the situation even more. The presence of aircraft of electronic warfare in the zone of breakthrough of a certain section of the air direction depends solely on the tactical air situation, i.e. they may not be at the crucial moment. The only solution may be as follows.
It is necessary to create a dense network of ground-based electronic countermeasure complexes, both mobile on a wheeled chassis and stationary, located on urban and industrial infrastructure, including chimneys of thermal power plants and various antenna-mast structures. Their average height usually fluctuates within 60-150 m, which gives an excellent radio horizon, which is 50 or more kilometers, and the whole low-altitude segment of the airspace is within the coverage area of the electronic equipment located on such structures. Also, standard cell phone towers are ideal for these purposes, even in places where there is no direct visibility from the city antenna mast structures.
Such a network of electronic countermeasures has already been developed and can be brought to the level of initial combat readiness in the coming months - a couple of years. We are talking about the most promising project of the JSC "Scientific and Technical Center of Electronic Warfare" - "Field-21". This system is represented by a huge number of separated transmitting antennas-emitters of radio-electronic interference P-340РП, located on the above types of structures. They will form the so-called intellectually controlled distributed aperture, where the part of the emitters will operate at the maximum radiation power of radio-electronic interference, in the zones of which the most numerous breakthrough level of enemy air attack vehicles will be located. In other words, the principle of optimization of the energy distribution, which allows the most correct use of energy resources, will also be implemented in the EW Field-21 system.
The importance of this principle is dictated by such side effects of P-340RP as the suppression of Russian consumers of the global positioning systems GLONASS and GPS, because the main task of the Field-21 is to disable all elements of the high-precision weaponshaving satellite correction devices via GPS. Selective use of maximum radiation power will make it possible to maintain GPS / GLONASS coordination to numerous units and civilian users of these systems, close to the main areas of electronic suppression. Interference can also be carried out in strictly specified sectors of the passage of high-precision weapons through the use of certain emitters and their phased switching. Due to this, the negative impact on friendly consumers is minimized. But both for the energy distribution and for the sector suppression, the “Field” must rely on the information of low-altitude radar detectors and airborne early warning aircraft transmitting to the ground system the exact coordinates of the enemy aircraft being accompanied. Moreover, Field-21, with its chaotic distribution of tens to hundreds of jammer transmitters, requires an ultraproductive command and control station, where computerized tools must receive the most accurate and updated topographic maps of vast areas of the system for maximum coverage with minimal side effects.
According to information from a source in the Ministry of Defense of Russia, now elements of the Field-21 system are already installed on various objects, and the network is becoming denser and more efficient: its coverage is increasing literally every day. Emitters of radio-electronic interference P-340РП are integrated into GSM antenna-mast cellular communication devices, while power is supplied from the same sources as GSM antennas, which greatly simplifies the installation of the complexes, repairs at the facilities, and also leads to a decrease in the total mass of additional equipment and power cables for the "Fields". In case of failure of the main radiators, the GSM antennas themselves can also be used as backup antennas, whose aperture is excellent for the frequencies used by the P-340RP. These elements provide interference at frequencies from 1176 to 1575 MHz (L-band), which, in addition to GPS / GLONASS, also includes the BeiDou and Galileo navigation systems. The latter, as is well known, can be a reserve radio navigation system of NATO.
An interesting quality of the Field-21 system is the low power of the P-340РП complexes. For more or less sustainable suppression of all the receivers of the above-mentioned radio navigation systems in the 80 radius of km, there is enough power equivalent to a car radio station, i.e. total xnumx w. And by increasing the power by another 20-10 W, it is possible to achieve effective disorganization of air attack means at the medium-altitude segment (15-2 km) at a distance of more than 5 km.
LIST OF ELEMENTS OF HIGH PERIOD IN THE NETWORK OF THE COUNTRIES OF THE NATO COUNTRIES THEME
The dependence of the armed forces of Western countries on global positioning systems is enormous. It is almost impossible to give an example of a large-caliber adjustable rocket missile of the MLRS, high-precision bombs or long-range cruise missiles, which would not be equipped with a high-precision GPS receiver to allow backup correction of the trajectory when the homing head is jammed with radio-electronic or optical-electronic interference, and optical correlation sensor out of order.
The most common and numerous complexes of high-precision weapons, using GPS-correction, include aviation aerodynamic control kit with JDAM satellite correction. This smart gear turns standard Mk-82 / 83 / 84 standard free-fall bombs into highly accurate guided bombs GBU-31 / 32 / 34 / 35 / 38, capable of hitting enemy targets with an accuracy of QBO, 10-15 / 30 / 21 / 15, which can strike at enemy targets with an accuracy of BWO, 350 / 850 / XNUMX / XNUMX bombs that can hit enemy targets with an accuracy of QBO of about XNUMX-XNUMX / XNUMX / XNUMX. km, depending on the speed and altitude of the carrier. Getting into the dome of radio-electronic interference of the Field-XNUMX system, the INS of the free-falling GBU stops receiving corrections from the GPS satellite relative to its flight path, the bomb slowly changes course due to oncoming and lateral gusts of wind, and can no longer be corrected. That's all JDAM is sent “to the firebox”: a miss can be no longer XNUMX, but all XNUMX or XNUMX meters, which also depends on the height and speed of the reset, as well as atmospheric conditions. There can be no talk of any destruction of a strengthened goal in this case.
The second type of precision weapons, lost in the shroud of electronic countermeasures of the “Field” - various modifications of tactical and strategic cruise missiles. First of all, these include: American tactical long-range cruise ships AGM-158A / B "JASSM / JASSM-ER" (range from 360 to 1200 km), TKRVB KEPD-350 "TAURUS", as well as modifications of the strategic CP "Tomahawk" of the ship and submarine-based UGM / RGM-109C Block III (range 1850 km), UGM / RGM-109D Block III (range 1250 km) and UGM / RGM-109E Block IV (range 2400 km). On the marching section of the trajectory, all these rockets are largely dependent on the correction via the GPS channel. When they get into the field of the Field-21 network, communication with the satellites will be lost and the slightest error of the on-board TERCOM optical-electronic correlation system may result in the loss of the rocket long before it reaches its target.
The third type of high-precision armament, suppressed by the P-340RP complexes, includes the M30 GMLRS (and its longer-range version of the ER MLRS), designed to be launched from the M270 MLRS and M142 HIMARS launchers, as well as the 3, the most high-precision versions -Tactical ATACMS family of ballistic missiles, which are equipped with GPS-receivers - MGM-140B, MGM-164A and MGM-164B. At the same time, the possibilities for suppressing GPS-modules for controlling M30 GMLRS missiles at the Field-21 are much higher than for radio navigation receivers OTBR ATACMS. The fact is that M30 fly along a more flat trajectory, at lower altitudes, where the effect of radio-electronic interference from the P-340RP continues to remain quite high, while the ballistic missiles MGM-164A / B rise to the upper layers of the stratosphere, and in a descending segment of the trajectory on speeds over 3M very quickly overcome the “jamming” area. Given the ATACMS warhead equipment in the form of P31 BAT self-guided combat elements capable of being guided by infrared radiation from ground-based armored vehicles, it becomes clear that these ballistic missiles do not need surgical precision. As a result, the rocket deviates approximately on 400-500 m (GPS operation is disturbed only on the short final leg of the flight) and SPBE, scattered at a height of several kilometers, can safely provide homing, despite this uncritical deviation.
It has an effect "Field-21" and the navigation capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles and combat aircraft. Blinded by interference, GPS receivers of tactical strike fighters and strategic bombers B-1B operating in terrain following mode will not allow the operation to be successful, since on-board radars designed for independent search and destruction of ground targets will also be suppressed by other EW-type systems “Avtobaza” And "Krasuha-4". At best, the powerful AN / APQ-164 radar of the B-1B rocket carrier will be able to map the earth’s surface only over a short distance, allowing you to leave our state’s airspace as quickly as possible by flying around the air defense lines detected by the AN / ALQ- 161. A huge part of the manipulations in the theater of military operations of the 21st century is carried out with the participation of the GPS system, and the impossibility of its correct operation will lead to a serious change in the predicted combat situation.
The EW Field-21 system has a great modernization potential. Several times we returned to the consideration of the possibility of developing and mass-producing airships of long-range radar detection and control for the rapid detection of low-flying, inconspicuous TFR and UAVs and targeting to long-range anti-aircraft missile systems. In a similar concept, you can also do with the “Field-21”, in addition, standard radiating radio-electronic interference antennas can be replaced with AFAR-emitters, each of which is capable of accurately suppressing individual EHVs or their groups in a narrow airspace sector. Accommodation on the airship will increase the radio horizon to several hundred kilometers, making the “Field-21” ten times more productive over remote areas where cell phone towers and other communications infrastructure have not yet been erected.
The “Field-21” is strikingly different from other EW facilities and in that it is almost impossible to identify it, unlike other EW mobile systems: compact emitting modules do not stand out in the background of GSM antennas and various AMCs that are present in the VO only number of several tens of thousands of units. The NATO command will be almost unaware of the deployment points of the P-340RP elements, and even the most advanced Western electronic intelligence will hardly correct the situation.
Information sources:
http://nevskii-bastion.ru/pole-21e/
http://izvestia.ru/news/628766
http://forum.militaryparitet.com/viewtopic.php?id=8929
Information