Ukraine EW Jammer Programs Russian Drones To Think They're In Peru And Crash

In addition to their creativity and lethality, a key element of Ukraine's electronic warfare experts' effectiveness is their sense of humor. 

Programming Russian drones to believe they are half way around the world from where they actually are is diabolical - and hilarious. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art:

Ukraine's Night Watch electronic warfare team's "Lima" jammer programs Russian drones that they are in Peru, not in Ukraine. Night Watch found the manufacturer of the receivers in China, and recruited a Chinese spy to steal the specification. “We then produced an upgraded Lima version jamming all three [Global Navigation Satellite System] bands. Deployment caused Shaheds to fail. They crashed in fields, lakes or even drifted into Romania and Moldova.”

In August 2023, the Ukrainian defense ministry tasked the Night Watch electronic warfare team with a critical mission: defending the port of Reni from Russia’s Shahed drones.

Reni, one of the ports of the Danube River in southwestern Ukraine, is a vital backup to Ukraine’s main strategic port, Odesa. The 440-pound Shaheds threatened to throttle Ukraine’s grain exports—the backbone of its economy.

Night Watch’s Lima jammer was just the thing to protect the port. But actually defending Reni wasn’t the team’s only challenge. It also had to prove it was defending the port.

One of the team’s methods was also an inside joke. It branded its Lima jammer by programming it to tell Russian drones—and Ukrainian rivals—that they were in Peru, not in Ukraine.

 

The first Lima installment was less than perfect. “We deployed a network of systems—but during the first attack, 25% of Shaheds penetrated,” Night Watch’s leader, whose nom de guerre is “Alchemist,” told Trench Art.

It turned out the Russians had added satellite navigation receivers to the Iranian-designed drones, making them harder to jam. “We analyzed debris and discovered the drones used receivers on L1, L2 and L5 bands, not just L1,” Alchemist explained. “They were new K-series Shaheds.”

Night Watch found the manufacturer of the receivers in China, and recruited a Chinese spy to steal the specification. “We then produced an upgraded Lima version jamming all three [Global Navigation Satellite System] bands,” Alchemist said. “Deployment around Reni caused Shaheds to fail. They crashed in fields, lakes or even drifted into Romania and Moldova.”

(In the video at top, a Shahed veers off course and explodes on a go-kart track.)

But the team had other problems. For one, many Ukrainians didn’t believe the jammers were working. They attributed the fall-off in successful Shahed raids to other defenses.

“The air-defense service claimed most missiles jammed by E.W. were shot down,” Alchemist recalled. “Some intercepts were credited to mobile firing groups” equipped with truck-mounted spotlights and guns. “Even a news story about a soldier shooting down a Shahed by machine gun aired nationally.”

Actual Shahed shoot-downs “were minimal,” Alchemist claimed. Lima jammers were taking down most of the drones.

Night Watch had its work cut out for it proving it was doing what the government had asked it to do—so it could keep doing it. “Scientists complained they lacked data,” Alchemist said. “Even when analyzing Reni’s defense, they ignored drones falling in Romania or sinking in the lake—excluding them from metrics.”

But Alchemist said their team refused to do what some other E.W. firms allegedly do—and exaggerate its jammer’s successes in order to drown out critics, skeptics and rivals. “Our main goal was to protect the country,” Alchemist said. “Scientists or buyers should not have any incentive for inflated reports.”

Night Watch even applied that philosophy to its pricing, Alchemist claimed. “Lima was priced three times below the closest competitor—while achieving an order-of-magnitude higher efficiency.”

Alchemist compared Night Watch’s jammer, and its business practices, to the rival A.I. Petri jammer and the practices of its producer, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Not only is A.I. Petri less effective than Lima, according to Night Watch—it may include code that Poroshenko’s team stole from a Lima jammer. How does Alchemist know this?

Because Night Watch programmed Lima to tell enemy drones they were in Lima, Peru. And according to Alchemist, if you switch on a handheld GPS receiver inside the jamming zone of an A.I. Petri system, the receiver will tell you you’re in—you guessed it—Peru.