Soviet Radio-Electronic Combat

[MKSheppard]

From the UCAV thread in N&P; I wrote:

Radio only goes so far, depending on line of sight, and the time of day -- e.g. you can send signals further at night due to atmospherics -- though you could redirect it through AWACS orbiting at 25-30,000 ft for longer ranges. And radios can be jammed -- the Soviets had a fairly comprehensive suite of jammers for every radio spectrum you could think of -- they even deployed special jammer vehicles based on BMPs or BTRs (I forget which) that were designed to jam VT fuzes so they would not airburst.

Nobody we've ever faced since the GODLESSS SOVIETS has ever deployed or developed such a comprehensive jamming strategy.

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I give you:

"Soviet Radio-Electronic Combat" from Armor Magazine, March-April 1982 (since it is a USG pub, I can freely redistribute it).

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The attack by the enemy had been stalled by the U.S. and West German forces near Frankfurt am Main, but intelligence reports indicated a renewal, of the offensive was to begin in a matter of hours. Colonel Hardluck, commanding the 1st Brigade, 66th Armored Division, desperately wanted to discuss the tactical situation with his task force commanders and their operations officers (S3), but not at the Brigade Command Post (CP). There was already too much activity in the area, and, as a precaution, he had ordered the CP to move to a new location in one half-hour.

The colonel climbed in his jeep and headed generally toward the forward edge of the battle area (FEBA). A quick check of his map revealed a road junction behind the FEBA that could be reached quickly by all his subordinate commanders. The colonel reached back for the radio mike. As usual, his "green machine" was not working, so voice transmission would not be secure.

"ROMEO TWO THREE, ALFA TWO THREE, INDIA TWO THREE, THIS IS BRAVO TWO THREE, OVER."

The commanders of Task Force (TF) l-482d Armor and TF 2-482d Armor answered their brigade commander's call, but there was no reply from TF 1-612th Mechanized Infantry. Colonel Hardluck ordered his driver to stop, reached back to his radio set and turned the power to high, and put out another call. This time, INDIA TWO THREE replied.

The brigade commander told his three task force commanders to meet him in 20 minutes with their S-3s and then dropped his KAL-61 as he started to encode the coordinates of the road junction. He gave them all a "wait one" while he retrieved his KAL-61. Two minutes later, he was back on the air with the encoded location, and all 3 stations acknowledged the order.

Since the brigade commander was already moving when he called his task force commanders to meet him, he arrived at the junction before them. While he was waiting, he called to each commander asking for their estimated time of arrival. They all answered, and a few minutes later, all the commanders and S-3s had arrived at the road junction and moved into a concealed area a few feet off the road. The brigade commander spread his map on the hood of his jeep and everyone gathered around, but their conversation was drowned out by the deafening explosions of incoming ordnance. Soviet BM-21 multiple rocket launchers (MRL) had unloaded a battery volley of missiles on the road junction area.

Was it just a lucky shot that, in one instant, killed all the senior officers of an entire brigade? Before answering, the reader should know that, while this scenario on a future battlefield is hypothetical, a similar fate befell a brigade commander during the recent Arab-Israeli war when he failed to take the enemy's electronic warfare capabilities seriously.

Let us examine the events leading up to the Soviet BM-21 MRL attack as seen from the enemy side of the FEBA.

The Soviets are aware of our dependence on electromagnetic communications and noncommunication emitters associated with command, control, and communications (C3I). They have targeted our C3I, target acquisition, and fire control systems, with a fully integrated electronic warfare and conventional firepower systems approach. They call it radio-electric combat (REC). Through REC, the Soviets believe they can neutralize or degrade 50 percent of our C3I, target acquisition, and fire control capabilities. The only REC priority higher than our C3I is our nuclear storage and delivery capability.

In order to understand the Soviet REC system and how it is employed, let us trace the events from the time Colonel Hardluck left his CP to meet his task force commanders.

Colonel Hardluck's first mistake was in believing that his KY-8/38 NESTOR "green machine" equipment was not working. The Soviets know that we do not have enough NESTOR secure voice equipment to cover more than 10 percent of our tactical communications equipment. Therefore, those systems that are covered are generally high priority command, control, operations, or intelligence nets. In this case, when the Soviet REC collection operators identified the 1st Brigade's command net, the REC commander opted to selectively degrade the encrypted net by knocking the NESTOR equipment out of synchronization with his R-330A very-high-frequency and frequency-modulated jammers. The Soviet intent was to force the American radio operator to transmit in the clear, which Colonel Hardluck did.

The colonel's second mistake was the selection of an easily identifiable terrain feature for the meeting, and his delay in encoding and transmitting its location. This gave the Soviet REC operators ample time to get a radio direction finding (RDF) fix. He also gave the Soviets his future intentions and, in spite of the fact that he encoded the coordinates, the Soviet analyst located several likely areas for the meeting on his map. It was obvious to the Soviet analyst that BRAVO TWO THREE was a commander because he had ordered three other persons to meet him and he had said "S-3" in the clear. The analyst knew that only battalion or brigade-sized units have an S-staff, thus, BRAVO TWO THREE was at least a brigade commander.

Colonel Hardluck's final transmission from the road junction, which was a long transmission to get his task force commanders' estimated time of arrival, sealed their fate. Soviet RDF and terrain analysis pinpointed the target for a Soviet fire support element.

Soviet REC units have direct communication with the nearest division artillery group (DAG); and once information such as the rendevous site in our scenario is given to the DAG, a unit is tasked to fire the mission. In this case, an MRL battalion was directed to fire a battery volley, since this was a soft target in a well-defined, small area. Also, the MRLs would ensure saturation of the entire target area. As a result of this close coordination between REC and artillery, the three task forces took the main Soviet attack several hours later were commanded by less experienced officers.

What could Colonel Hardluck have done to preclude his untimely demise? First, he should have been aware of Soviet REC capabilities and our vulnerabilities to their intercept, RDF, and jamming techniques. He should have also known that our current fielded encryption equipment has some inherent vulnerabilities in a hostile electromagnetic environment. He should have used proper electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) and communications security (COMSEC). For example, he should have moved to a new location when he didn't get a reply from TF 1-612th Mech Commander (poor ECCM) instead of turning his power to "high" (poor ECCM and COMSEC). He should have encoded his message before transmitting so as to keep the message under 15 seconds and should never have transmitted from the rendezvous site (command impatience).

How many Colonel Hardlucks are there in the U.S. Army today? Far too many. In fact, all of us are guilty to a gross degree of the very same mistakes made in the scenario, often as a carry over from Vietnam. But we cannot afford the luxury of improper radio procedure in a high intensity and lethal environment, especially against a sophisticated enemy. Now is the time, during peacetime training, to familiarize ourselves and those under our command with Soviet REC. We must practice proper radio-telephone procedure, ECCM, and COMSEC, and develop the habit of using other, more secure means of communication whenever possible. This will be especially hard in fast-moving armor and mechanized forces, but it must be done.

The Soviets have told us in their own military literature that they plan to cut our communications in half and, thus, destroy the control of our maneuver and fire support forces. The question facing us today is whether we help the Soviets make this prophecy come true in any future conflict or deny them their optimistic prediction of an electronic warfare victory. We must win the first battle of the next war and, to do so, we must learn to make the electromagnetic environment assist us and not defeat us.

WILLIAM H.WILSON
Major, MI
Florence, SC

KELLY M. MORGAN
Major, Armor
Marion, SC

[Shroom Man 777]

How true does this hold today? Are American/Western communications still vulnerable to jamming? Do the Soviets still have considerable ECM assets? Are the Stas Bushes toying around with that stuff? And how fair would modern American forces fare against a moderately ECM-proficient enemy?

[Sea Skimmer]

New digital radios are less vulnerable to jamming and now because they change frequencies very quickly. This means the jammer has to chase them, and when you are trying to jam a number of frequency agile radios like this at once, very quickly you can end up needing to jam a large portion of the radio spectrum. That isn’t good because NATO and Russia actually share a lot of the same radio frequencies, the size of both sides militaries precluded using completely different ones. So this means extensive communications jamming is something which might be carefully planned. The soviets intended to do it at decisive moments in battle, not just to stop any guy from asking for a radio check.

All that Soviet jamming gear still exists in the Russian arsenal, but its one of the things that has largely been placed into reserve units or the hardware has just been stockpiled. This as opposed to keeping entire jammer regiments in active duty. The US and Russia have also certainly not stopped developing new ground electronic warfare gear, though not very much is actually being produced.

Also keep in mind ground jammers can do more then jam communications. Jamming counter battery and ground surveillance radars are also major tasks, along with jamming the radar and radios of enemy aircraft and surface to air missile batteries. However on the other end of things, the US has found it can adapt the HARM missile to target different kinds of jammers, besides just radar sets. Unless used very carefully, jammers will not survive long.

[Blayne]

Okay give me a couple of days I have over a dozen hard cover resource books on the Soviet Army (Viktor Suvoror, Liddel Hart, many others) and some of them discuss jamming I could probably read up on it and seehwat I can dig up.

I wonder if the choose your own adventure novel "Armour Attacks" considers ECM and jamming in its choices. (I own infantry platoon but nothing really about radio security).

[JointStrikeFighter]

Oh man Armour Attacks That shit is awesome. And no, it doesn't talk about COMSEC.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Okay give me a couple of days I have over a dozen hard cover resource books on the Soviet Army (Viktor Suvoror, Liddel Hart, many others) and some of them discuss jamming I could probably read up on it and seehwat I can dig up

Be careful with that Rezun stuff. Although it is not appropriate to say everything he wrote is bullshit, very large parts of it nevertheless are, and it's often difficult to know which parts. You should not accept anything he writes that is not corroborated by other separate sources. Quoting Rezun as a proof of anything is going to get you a lot of trouble on any reasonably competent military history forum, including this one.

[Blayne]

by Rezun you mean Victor Suvorov? I heard about that one from tvtropes, but I have like 12 different books on the Soviet military that I can flip through I'll see what I can find.