SITREP 4/27/24: U.S. Admits Top Weapons Failures to Superior Russian EW
A relatively scattered update today more as a filler piece and addendum to the last SitRep for which there have been a few interesting topical updates.
Firstly, last time I had posted Ukraine’s head of aerial reconnaissance support, Maria Berlinskaya, stating how Western systems in Ukraine have proven worthless because of the power of Russian EW. In fact, I’m going to post it again just to have it all under one roof for those who haven’t read the previous SitRep, and because I think this particular thread is that important:
Well, now, we have the highest level confirmation of the above from an actual U.S. official. The Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, William Laplante, just dropped a major bombshell which should dim any hopes of major ATACMS triumphs, as so many are emptily looking forward to:
That’s right—on a panel for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Laplante outright admitted that the much-hyped GLSDBs have proven an abject failure due to Russian jamming environments. Some have rightfully proposed this is due to the fact that an SDB glide-bomb is pretty slow once it detaches from the HIMARS booster rocket. And thus, as it slows while gliding toward the target, it must overfly a lot of EW contested airspace which gradually degrades its GPS course correction more and more until its targeting is way off by the time it reaches the actual target.
A detailed technical explanation was given by The Right People Z Telegram channel:
The antennas of the GPS correction modules integrated into the guidance and control systems of the GBU-39/B hybrid 227mm GLSDB guided missiles have been confirmed to have low interference immunity. This was once again reminded by US Undersecretary of Defence for Acquisition and Supply Bill LaPlante during the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conference.
It is obvious that the GPS receiver presented by the Boeing Corporation as anti-jam GPS has completely lost its effectiveness in the difficult jamming situation in the airspace over Donbass.
Even in spite of the top-oriented position of these antenna modules, EW complexes "Zhitel" ("Житель"), "Field-21" ("Поле-21") and "Serp-VS5" ("Серп-ВС5") easily suppress their receiving channel, which leads to an increase in the circular probable deviation of GBU-39/B bombs from 1.5 - 3 to several tens of metres, reducing their effectiveness to unacceptable levels.
On the contrary, domestic GLONASS/GPS-antennas "Kometa-A/M/R8" ("Комета-А/М/Р8") are able to withstand interference from the majority of enemy EW means operating in the L-band.
This has a number of very important implications, as this is one of NATO's main air-to-ground strike weapons and due to its use in Ukraine, it has become ineffective, which will make its future use against rivals such as China or Iran and even more local actors ineffective.
Other weapons systems not only fly faster and spend less time under the influence of EW, but they also have other targeting redundancies which the simplified systems like the GLSDB and JDAM-ER lack. For instance, more sophisticated systems like cruise missiles (Storm Shadow, Kh-101s, etc.) or even some ballistic missiles like Israel’s recently used ROCKS (Sparrow) or Russian Iskander have terminal opto-electric guidance in the form of DSMAC (Digital Scene-matching Area Correlator) which allow them to view the target with a camera and match it with a pre-programmed image of it to course correct. That means even if GPS is jammed, they could still accurately hit the target by what is effectively an AI visual guidance mode. But these systems are extremely sophisticated and expensive, and the whole point of the GLSDB was that it was billed as a cheap alternative, using old stockpiles of super cheap SDB bombs fitted onto HIMARS boosters.
This is likely the same reason JDAM-ERs have proven a dismal failure, as they function almost identically to the gliding SDBs and have already long been known to be highly susceptible to EW by the U.S. Pentagon, even long before the Ukraine war.
But here’s where the Russian defense industry has shown its ingenuity and robust adaptability in one: while Russian UMPK glide-bombs would theoretically suffer from the same exact issue, and likely did, which would explain some of the earliest reports of their “inaccuracy” by the Ukrainian side, Russian engineers quickly adapted. Recall my previous reports about the new Kometa-M satellite transceiver modules being found installed not only on Iskanders but UMPKs as well.
Russian UMPKs likewise started with only 4 or less Kometa receivers, and after some time were upgraded to 8, which now make them far more impervious to EW signals and therefore much more accurate, as the Glonass/GPS correction is not as degraded when overflying an EMI environment.
And on that topic, we have the latest:
That’s right, Ukraine has now officially pulled its Abrams off the line because they have proven ineffective. From the article:
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide an update on U.S. weapons support for Ukraine before Friday's Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.
For now, the tanks have been moved from the front lines, and the U.S. will work with the Ukrainians to reset tactics, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady and a third defense official who confirmed the move on the condition of anonymity.
“When you think about the way the fight has evolved, massed armor in an environment where unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous can be at risk," Grady told the AP in an interview this week, adding that tanks are still important.
“Now, there is a way to do it," he said. "We’ll work with our Ukrainian partners, and other partners on the ground, to help them think through how they might use that, in that kind of changed environment now, where everything is seen immediately.”
All of this comes on the heels of another interesting article from the NYTimes:
Some may recall I covered such efforts as the DOD’s Project Maven before, in articles like this one.
But in the new article, David E. Sanger writes that the results of this combined Google-DARPA effort to institute an AI-driven ‘back-end’ to process vast troves of battlefield surveillance data have in fact been ‘mixed’.
How’s this for admissions?
The first two years of the conflict have also shown that Russia is adapting, much more quickly than anticipated, to the technology that gave Ukraine an initial edge.
And another which corroborates the earlier GLSDB snafu:
In the first year of the war, Russia barely used its electronic warfare capabilities. Today it has made full use of them, confusing the waves of drones the United States has helped provide. Even the fearsome HIMARS missiles that President Biden agonized over giving to Kyiv, which were supposed to make a huge difference on the battlefield, have been misdirected at times as the Russians learned how to interfere with guidance systems.
The article goes on to name and describe the physical heart of this NATO ‘backend’ I’ve described for over a year now:
It names ex-Google CEO Schmidt as being the main impetus behind Ukraine’s new push toward autonomous AI drones which can hunt human targets on their own after their signal has been cut by EW.
Ultimately though the article confesses that these technological leaps will not be enough to defeat Russia, which is adapting just as quickly to battlefield developments, yet actually has the manufacturing girding on top of that which Ukraine lacks. In short: both sides hold key asymmetrical advantages over the other, but Russia is inching on the West’s advantage of satellite ISR—particularly the constellation of Starlink satellites—while Ukraine is not making any headway toward Russia’s massive munitions and armor manufacturing overmatch.
Next, let’s briefly mention some of the ongoing battlefield developments. The situation in the north/west Avdeevka sector continues to deteriorate for the AFU with a constant stream of revealing and sometimes urgent complaints from their channels giving us insight.
Here’s a soldier from the AFU’s 115th Brigade giving an update:
Read what he says: “My company was literally destroyed.”
He complains about leadership throwing them away like meat, and he goes on:
This was followed by statements from some of the most well-known pro-UA OSINT accounts with the highest followers:
And MSM chimed in about the ongoing situation:
The foregoing has culminated in a situation where everything between Ocheretyne and Novokalinov is now in a boiler, with Keramik said to have been totally abandoned by retreating AFU today:
Reports yesterday indicated that Russian troops were already entering the outskirts of Arkhangelske as well.
It has gotten even the most ardent Ukraine ‘experts’ and supporters admitting that the AFU may have to drastically fall back to a new defensive line behind the Vovcha River, abandoning at least a dozen or more kilometers of land:
Recall in my last report I relayed the words of a Ukrainian officer who feared Russia is slowly positioning to put Pokrovsk under the tip of a spear. It seemed unlikely then because Pokrovsk still appears a way off. But should the AFU fall back to the Vovcha, it would put Russian forces about 20km+ away across sparsely defended land which has not been fortified like the area now being overrun:
In fact, below one can see the blue line terminates at its west edge on what is reportedly Ukraine’s most recent defensive fortifications, constructed in Jan-Feb of this year. That means Russian forces are already about 1.5km from it:
Much farther west in the map above, between Prohres and Vesele, you can see a gigantic tank ditch which Ukraine constructed which was meant to be its main line of defense before the Pokrovsk front.
By the way, speaking of tank ditches, remember all the rumors about the embezzlement of funds when it came to building defensive fortifications? A timely Freudian slip on Ukrainian TV pretty much confirmed our suspicions:
Just south of there, Russian forces continue climbing through Krasnogorovka, making their way toward the center of the larger town:
A prominent Ukrainian soldier gives a dismal and bitter update from the Ocheretyne front:
Russian advances in Avdeevka sector since ~October of last year when the assault began:
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In other news, Russia again struck 4 Ukrainian thermal power plants last night with a range of weapons, from Kinzhals, to Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the sea, to Kh-101s from Tu-95s, as per usual.
The enemy confirms the defeat of thermal power plants in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and Lvov regions. In total, arrivals were reported at 4 power plants.
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Ukraine, too, struck a Russian oil refinery in Krasnodar:
But you can clearly see the difference in damage. A few fuel tanks which can be replaced in hours or days versus an entire power plant assembly with turbine hall, which is virtually irreplaceable.
Also, Russia has allegedly begun putting ‘cope cages’ or systems of netting on refinery tanks:
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In another bizarre development, Ukraine has apparently used a Yak-52 propeller plane to shoot down a Russian Orlan drone in the West of the country:
I guess those F-16s were no where to be found.
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Yesterday Blinken was humiliated in his visit to China. Not only was he not greeted in the usual customary way at the tarmac, with no red carpet or official entourage, but while awaiting Blinken’s arrival, President Xi was even overheard impatiently inquiring when the sniveling rat-faced apparatchik would be leaving the country:
Xi and China have no patience left for the U.S.’ disrespectful lecturing.
The pointless visit was capped off by China reportedly not sending a single official to wish Blinken off, and he was instead seen away by the U.S.’ own ambassador stationed in China:
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In another dispiriting development for Ukraine, it has now been revealed that most of the weaponry sponsored by new U.S. aid will in fact not make it to the foundering country for years:
Read the middle portion:
“The equipment—which also includes ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems—likely won’t arrive in Ukraine for several years, as the money is being allocated under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Under USAI, the Pentagon issues contracts to American defense firms to build new equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to drawing from current U.S. stocks.”
Whoops.
Even pro-UA stalwarts were forced to bitterly concede:
Woe is Ukraine.
That follows several other articles affirming the trouble Europe is having in finding actual munitions for Ukraine:
In confirmation of one of our last through-lines about the U.S. trying to push Ukraine off onto Europe, we see headlines like the following as well:
Meanwhile, Germany admits that Russia is producing so many munitions that it goes well beyond anything it currently needs or uses:
This is further corroboration to something I’ve written about many times before as well: the fact that Russia is building strategic reserves and stores for a potential NATO conflict that could take place directly after or even concurrently with the Ukrainian one. NATO is clearly signaling escalation to “save” Ukraine, which is why Shoigu called up an entirely second army of 500k+ for that very contingency. Now, Russia is also building up stores for that army in case it needs to actually clash with NATO in the near future. Either way, it’s simply revealing of how much munitions Russia is producing that even despite the high usage in the Ukraine front, it’s still generating a vast surplus.
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And one last interesting development in the realm of BlackRock and Ukrainian farmland, which many have speculated on. There is a lot of unfounded conjecture when it comes to this, some of which I’ve debunked before, but for the first time we’ve had some interesting high level confirmation.
For instance, this alleged memorandum below, signed by Alex Soros and Yermak, was presented, which transfers lots of land in western Ukraine to Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, etc.
⚡️🇺🇸🇪🇺 The US and NATO plan to create a “gray” zone in Western Ukraine
Soros' son Alexander agreed with the Ukrainian authorities to allocate 400 square kilometers of agricultural land to American corporations for the disposal of hazardous waste, according to an investigation by French journalist Jules Vincennes.
He writes, citing a source in the Ministry of Agriculture of Ukraine, that in November, Soros Jr. and the head of Zelensky’s office, Yermak, reached an agreement according to which Kiеv indefinitely and free of charge transfers land in the Ternopоl, Khmelnytsky and Chernоvtsi regions for the disposal of hazardous waste from chemical, pharmaceutical and oil production.
Among the companies named are Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, Evonik Industries, Vitol and Sanofi. We remind you that Dow Chemical is the company which provided Agent Orange and Napalm to the American military to poison and destroy Vietnam. Whilst BASF is the company which provided Zyklon B to the Nazis.
Probably, the decision was made after the destruction in the spring of 2023 by the Russian Armed Forces of ammunition depots with depleted uranium located in the Khmelnitsky and Ternopоl regions.
This situation threatens an environmental disaster not only for Ukraine, but also for other countries in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea basin as a whole.
Kiеv and Washington continue to use all means to prevent the possible entry of Western Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation in the context of the ongoing retreat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
But the most damning was a new interview with Polish president Andrzej Duda, who—when commenting on Polish-Ukrainian farmer relations—quite eye-openingly revealed outright that:
So, he basically frames the farmer conflict as Poland defending its farmers’ rights against BlackRock-controlled minions like the above-mentioned DuPont, Dow Chemical, and the like, operating out of their newly-conquered Ukrainian demesne. Interesting!
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Lastly, isn’t it fascinating how something decried as ‘barbaric’ and ‘illegal’ when used by Russia in actual war is treated as commonplace and with indifference when it comes to anti-Israeli protesters?
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Blackrock is the East India Company of the Globohomo American Empire.
It is slowing sinking into even the most delusional supporters of Ukraine that they are badly losing and that there is nothing that they can do.
After being wrong for years and calling everyone who disagreed with them "Putin propagandists", I think that the Ukrainian supporters are going to have to eat some humble pie.
More significantly, this is a major strategic defeat for the West. As some have predicted, maybe even the end of NATO as a functional organization, although it will likely stay in name (too many corrupt high paying jobs at stake). It just will remain an ineffective organization at nation state war, just a swindle for taxpayers to make a few corporations and wealthy people even richer.