The ongoing Ukraine conflict has evolved into a battle of the drones but underlying that is a little appreciated battle of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum.
This battlefield now extends up to 150 kilometres on each side of the frontline and features congested radio waves, jamming of communications and denial of satellite navigation services, all requiring significant changes in tactics and procedures.
In any future conflict, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) can expect to encounter exactly this and more.
In a presentation to the Military Communications and Information Systems (MiLCIS) conference in Canberra, representatives of Australian defence communications company Codan and its tactical radio division DTC outlined their experiences in Ukraine, which employs a range of Codan radios, especially for UAS.
Andrew Dobson, from Codan DTC UK, said a small number of Codan personnel were based in Ukraine at the time of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“In that period relationships were formed and we were continually tested over that time,” he said.
“Ukraine is not a benign environment. It wasn’t benign at the beginning. It was contested in terms of the communications you use on a daily basis.”
Currently Codan has around 20 people in Ukraine supporting around 20 local manufacturers.
Codan chief technical officer, Ukrainian born Dr Jack Sudarev, said technology needed to be battle tested and battle innovated, with speedy feedback.
“We are not talking about months or years of development. We have to think about weeks (or) days of turnaround for new capabilities, for example enhanced or additional EW (electronic warfare) capabilities,” he said.
RF transmission power means a lot but was not decisive, he said. What’s needed are effective directional antennas and alternative transmission channels, with immediate switching when one channel is jammed.
Sudarev said Ukraine features a “zoo of drones” with multiple different types produced by different manufactures, many doing the same job but with different RF control systems.
“One potential solution is to select one or two communications platforms across different UAVs,” he said.
He said Codan released new firmware every three months.
“We are a software defined radio company so it means we can do those turnarounds very, very, fast. In a contested environment we have to be agile,” he said.
With reliable GPS navigation degraded or totally denied, various techniques and technologies have been tried, including inertial navigation and terrain recognition. Ukrainian drone operators have navigated by following roads, tracking progress on a rolling satellite map.
“We have something called ranging that allows us to triangulate all the radios that sit within our EW feature set,” Dobson said.
The ADF, which uses Codan radios in capabilities such as the new Sypaq Corvo-X UAVs, can benefit from this experience.
“All the lessons and all the techniques and all the capabilities that we are evolving quickly for Ukraine and testing in Ukraine and delivering to Ukraine naturally flow out with every firmware update to the remainder of the network,” said Matt Jones, Codan DTC Vice President for the Asia-Pacific.
“Those capabilities are made available to all the users and in this particular case the Land 159 Sypaq solution.
“We are now talking to a range of other UAV providers in the Australian market context. We are talking to both CASG and Defence about how they can leverage a common radio platform that enable you to start to collectively operate multiple different drone types from multiple different drone manufacturers.”
So, what are some other lessons from the Ukraine conflict?
Capabilities such as Main Battle Tanks, including the Australian-donated M1A1s are no longer used in their traditional battlefield role but primarily for indirect fire support. Drone proliferation makes it just too dangerous.
Long range strikes once aimed to take out traditional target types but now also imposes a tangible economic impact, for example by damaging oil production.
Russia started the conflict with impressive deployable jamming capabilities. They don’t last long and are targeted the moment they switch on. There’s still plenty of Russian jamming, delivered by smaller less sophisticated systems reportedly supplied by China.
It’s risky to be a Ukrainian drone operator, who are actively targeted, often before their drones even leave the ground. One solution is silent mode, where drones emit no RF until they are well into their mission.