Don's Weekly, 3 March 2025: Part 4

by Donald Hill & Tom Cooper

(…continued from Part 3…)

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Equipment

Rheinmetall is converting two automotive plants into ammo production and military vehicle production. In 2024, it’s auto profit fell 3.8% while its arms and ammo business doubled. The company is expanding as fast as is commercially possible. Any faster rates require state funding - which, presently, is not arriving at the necessary speed: Scholz has been, de-facto, elected out as chancellor, and is now more insistent on ‘correct procedures’ than ever before…

Lately, there was a lots of reporting about a) decline in the number of the Russian UMPK glide bombs deployed against Ukraine, then b) about these becoming ever less precise…

Actually…

Earlier in the war (and despite decades of assurances from the Pentagon that this is impossible), Russia was able to jam the GPS-guided weapons that Ukraine used. As a consequence, at least two major weapons systems were withdrawn from use by the Ukrainian armed forces: the Russian jamming debilitated them into becoming useless.

The number of attacks by weapon types show that the UMPK bombs are back up even though they are not as accurate. Drone attacks continue to increase slightly.

Of course, as much as the Russians can jam the GPS, so also the Ukrainians can jam both the GPS and the Russian GLONASS satellite navigation system. The latter was in dilapidated state until around the times of the Russian military intervention in Syria (which began in August-September 2015): then experienced a period of some improvement. Meanwhile, it’s in poor condition again. Thus, jamming it is even easier than jamming the GPS.

Ukraine has enough jammers across the front to jam the satellite-guided weapons of Russia, most notably, the UMPK bombs. They are still accurate enough to hit something the size of a factory but, since around six-seven months, their precision decreased to a point where they are nowadays extremely unlikely to hit a frontline position. Is a co-reason why the Russian ground offensive is gradually coming to a halt.

Indeed, meanwhile, the situation is so bad, ‘voices’ within the VKS stress they need 8-16 UMPKs to hit a single ZSU position. However, their commanders wouldn’t let them do so: they’re still insistent on ‘one bomb = one target = one hit’ theories, and thus the same jets are releasing up to four different UMPKs at four different aiming points (‘targets’) per every single mission… and, meanwhile ‘regularly’, missing all four.

Ukraine reacted to this problem by making ever larger use of laser guided bombs (LGBs). Read: there’s a ‘forward air controller’ (FAC, or ‘J-FAC’ in modern military terminology) deployed at the frontline. De-facto operating like a sniper, and (as long as he or she is keen to remain alive), always well-hidden, they are equipped with a ‘laser markers’: systems resembling big laser-pointers, with a range of several kilometres. They point this at the desired target, at a desired point in time (as the jet carrying guided bombs is approaching) - and that’s it: as long as the LGB works (they do malfunction too, but that’s supposed to be kept at less than 1-2%), it’s striking within 6-20m from the point marked with the laser-marker. Such operations are very hard even to detect, not to talk about jamm. As a consequence, precision guided munitions (PGMs) deployed by Ukrainian fighter-bombers are still, and regularly hitting their targets. On the negative side: LGBs are much more expensive than GPS-guided JDAMs and they are available in much lower numbers.

The Russians do have LGBs, and laser-guided missiles, too, but none that can glide for 10+ kilometres far. They also have FAC/J-FACs, and were proudly bragging with these, back in Syria of 2015-2016, and again in Ukraine of 2022. However, because these depend on GPS and GLONASS, and their GLONASS is in such a poor condition, and because the GPS is jammed, but especially because their automatic tactical management systems - de-facto ‘internet’ connecting their FAC/J-FACs with headquarters - are dysfunctional, they are experiencing immense problems with deployment of such weapons.

Here one should keep in mind: the battlefield in Syria was very small: the principal area where the Russian FAC/J-FACs were operational was perhaps 50 by 50 kilometres in size. In such a small area, and with Syrian insurgents deploying no electronic countermeasures at all, it was ‘easy’ to improve the performance of (for example) the GLONASS through the installation of dozens of differential GLONASS-stations.

A still from a video of a Russian FAC underway in the mountains of northern Lattakia Province (Syria), back in early 2016. Notable is the ‘object’ in his left hand: that was a ‘binocular’ with laser-marker, that could automatically extract GLONASS-coordinates of the point at which the laser was pointed. In this fashion, the Russian FACs could extract geographic coordinates of their targets, and ‘upload’ these into the navigation/attack systems of such jets like Su-34 and Su-35 (and the few upgraded Su-24M-2s that were on hand). That was: at least in theory, during the testing of different of their ATMS at the time: eventually, the development of all of such software failed, and was then cancelled by the Keystone Cops in Moscow, in 2019-2020.

In comparison, the battlefield in Ukraine is endlessly huge, and the Ukrainians are jamming at least as heavily as the Russians do…

All of which nowadays means: the Russians have no options similar to those of Ukraine. They have to drop more of their GPS/GLONASS-guided UMPK glide bombs - and fly more combat sorties - to get the chance of hitting the same target. Alternatively, they have to use TV-cameras installed in their bombs and better data transmission systems, and develop and use inertial navigation systems. And the signals from the same are also heavily jammed by Ukrainians. Unsurprisingly, the VKS is expreiencing ever bigger problems and, right now, there’s no solution in sight.

….which, of course, shouldn’t mean they’re not going to find some. After all, electronic warfare is a game of ‘ping-pong’: as soon as one side deploys something new, the other starts working on a countermesure…