The US supplied Ukraine with ‘threat emitters’ or what could also be called fake radars designed to confuse Russian fighter pilots to compensate for the loss of Ukraine’s dwindling inventory of surface-to-air missile systems.
More than ten months into the war, the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS), which is numerically and technologically superior to the Ukrainian Air Force, still has not been able to gain full control of Ukraine’s airspace.
As the EurAsian Times discussed earlier, the air war was not about air superiority for Ukraine as much as it was about denying airspace to Russian combat aviation assets by using an array of air defense systems.
Ukraine introduced medium and long-range air defenses, such as the S-300s and Buk-M1s, which forced Russian fighter jets to fly at altitudes below 4,500 meters, right into range of the man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) responsible for a significant number of downed Shooting of Russian planes.
However, as of today, Ukraine’s inventory of SAMs and launchers for these SAMs appears to be dwindling at a rate that could pose a massive problem for the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine is losing S-300 quickly!
Ukraine has lost about 36 S-300 launchers so far, according to figures compiled by military tracking blog Oryx based on visual confirmations. It is possible that the actual number of losses may be higher.
Reports in July suggested that Ukraine’s air defenses were losing S-300 launchers at a rate of at least three or four a week.
In addition, in recent months, the Russian military has repeatedly filled Ukraine’s skies with a stockpile of missiles and stray munitions to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems, depleting Ukraine’s surface-to-air missile inventory at a heavy rate.
Therefore, as Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov recently announced, Kyiv is holding discussions with other countries to replenish Ukraine’s S-300 missile inventory.
“S-300, they work very well. The fact is that they were not produced in Ukraine; that is, we do not have S-300 missiles, so we use stocks. Therefore, with our colleagues, defense ministers of countries that also have S-300, we manage And providing the possibility to renew this stockpile of missiles from their warehouses and arsenals,” Reznikov said.
The US appears to have supplied threat suppliers to Ukraine to bolster its air defenses until Kiev finds another source for the S-300 systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx-NTzVd_c
Is the US supplying Ukraine with fake S-300 radars?
The U.S. delivery of the threat emitters to Ukraine was first reported by Aviation Week on December 4. The threat emitters emit a radio signal similar to an air defense radar without the same signal processing systems.
Militaries typically use them to train their aircrews to identify and respond to threats in simulated combat scenarios, where pilots study the signatures of hostile aircraft and missiles and learn how their sensors would detect such threats in real-world circumstances.
One such system is the Joint Threat Emitter developed by Northrop Grumman. It consists of a command unit operated by soldiers and radar emitters mounted on a trailer. A command unit can control up to 12 different threat emitters, and each emitter can simulate up to six threats simultaneously.
However, when deployed in an actual conflict, these threat emitters can deceive the enemy fighter pilot by giving the impression that local defenses are stronger than they actually are, thus potentially dissuading them from launching a raid.
Using threat emitters is just a deception tactic, one that Russia and Ukraine have used against each other since the start of the war by deploying models or dummies of weapons systems like HIMARS and S-300 air defense systems, as previously discussed at great length by the EurAsian Times.
🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ “Golyy pistol” has changed.
— 🇮🇱🇺🇦Дядя Хаим🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@IsraelThreads) August 10, 2022
It is not yet clear what exact threat the refugees they provided to Ukraine will pose. Reports indicate that the threat emitters in question may duplicate the 36D6M1-1 air defense radar sold to the US military in 2018 by Iskra, a Ukrainian radar manufacturing company.
The 36D6M1-1, also known as the ‘Tin Shield’, is a mobile 3D airspace surveillance radar capable of detecting low-flying air targets under active and passive jamming protection. It is said to be associated with the S-300 air defense system.
The Chief of Staff of the US Air Force (USAF), General Charles K. Brown Jr., said that the delivery of threat emitters to Ukraine is an example of how the Pentagon can find quick ways to address problems during a crisis, pointing to the delivery of missiles Raytheon AGM-88 fast anti-radiation missiles (HARM) to Ukraine in August.
Brown said that before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the idea of modifying HARM to integrate it with the Mikoyan MiG-29 would have been immediately dismissed as too difficult, but in the face of the crisis, the Pentagon and contractors were able to make it work.
“So there are ways to work with the industry and with those who actually build systems to understand the details and move forward in certain areas due to need and a sense of urgency,” Brown was quoted in “Aviation Week”.
The military and industry should continue to do this thing and not “go back to our regular plan,” he continued. “We have to think like a crisis before a crisis so that we are in a better position and ready.”
