The war in Ukraine has had a huge impact on modern electronic warfare (EW) in ways few nations were prepared for or could foresee. The rapid development of technology related to electronic warfare and the use of drones is now redefining many defence forces around the world. The aggressor, Russia, has for the last 20 years focused on developing and integrating electronic warfare as a key component of its armed forces. From day one of the full-scale invasion, EW has been extensively used in the war in Ukraine.

As the war progresses, Russia is continuously adapting its electronic warfare capability as well as its technology to the current situation, and its forces are gaining a great deal of new knowledge from the war, which most likely will be used in future conflicts. For the West to keep up with Russia, it is important to understand the current situation, draw conclusions from it, and conduct realistic exercises under similar conditions. Such work is of vital importance for the future defence against Russia.

A prioritized capability for Russia

In modern times, the Russian armed forces have long been known for possessing a very strong electronic warfare capability, especially within the ground forces. Lessons from conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia led to doctrinal changes in Russian warfare in the early 2000s as well as substantial investments in new and updated electronic warfare complexes.

The results of developments in Russian EW were especially noted in the West during the period after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its participation in the war in Syria in 2015. There were many reports of Russia using Ukraine as a proving ground for its most modern electronic warfare systems. In western Ukraine, numerous newly developed and adopted systems from around 2010 were used to locate and disrupt Ukraine’s communications. In Syria, the US drew similar conclusions; both navigation systems and radars were affected. Some of the first reports of Russia using the heavy Krasukha-4 complex, capable of jamming many of these systems, originated from this conflict.

In recent years, the number of occasions on which Russia has practiced its EW capabilities in the Baltic Sea region has increased. These incidents involve disrupting GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems), regardless of the impact on security and civilian society. Attention to Russia’s EW capabilities in recent years has led to a greater focus in the West on developing EW capabilities and robustness against their use. As an example, the US launched its major EW programme, Multi-Functional Electronic Warfare (MFEW), largely in response to this. This was primarily the result of US forces training Ukrainian soldiers and then witnessing Russian EW capabilities being used against them, which led to the realisation that these were capabilities the US lacked at the time. Despite a bigger focus on EW, there was not really much progress among the forces of the West in matching Russian EW capabilities, especially in Europe, before 2022, when Russia initiated its full-scale attack on Ukraine.

Extensive use of EW capabilities in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine involved many of its most modern electronic warfare complexes, including many of the subsystems comprising the Borisoglebsk-2 complex, a system capable of geolocation and radio-jamming, as well as the heavy GNSS jammer R-330Zh Zhitel. Since the Russian Armed Forces were poorly prepared for the war, however, many of their large EW complexes were either lost or destroyed, especially during the initial stages of the war. This could, for instance, be monitored through the Oryx and Warspotting websites. These websites use open-source intelligence to document both Russian and Ukrainian losses, for which photographic or videographic evidence is available. According to Oryx, almost 100 Russian EW systems were either destroyed or captured before 2026. Similar numbers can also be found on Warspotting. Many of the destroyed or lost systems were large and complex installations on trucks or armoured personal carriers and involved high costs as well as long lead time to replace.

There are no official statistics stating the number of EW systems the Russian forces have lost compared to their total number of EW systems; however, the systems are not likely to be so easily replaced, partly because the origin of the components from which they were designed now makes them harder to procure. There have been numerous reports of captured Russian trophy systems that have been exploited in order to discover and evaluate the systems’ capabilities and weaknesses, as well as to map the origins of their components. Summaries of sanctioned components in Russian systems can be found, for example, on websites such as War Sanctions. According to analyses of some of the subsystems of Borisoglebsk-2, many of the key components originated from the US, Europe, South Korea, and Taiwan. This is not unique to Borisoglebsk-2; rather, it is common that most of the critical components in Russian EW systems, as well as other weapons and sensors, are designed with high-performance components developed almost entirely in the US. These components are typically analog/digital converters, FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), or GPUs (Graphical Processing Units). These are components that in many ways define the performance of the systems.

Continued sanctions on Russia targeting key components should in theory cripple its ability to produce more advanced EW systems. However, it has become obvious that the sanctions do not work one hundred per cent, and many components still find new ways to slip through to Russia. It is also likely that China will emerge as a new supplier of advanced technology in the near future. China has already made major technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence that points to a growing capability. There are also many reports of Russia using Chinese systems on the battlefield, such as Chinese battlefield radios as well as Chinese mesh radios and CRPA (Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas) in the Shahed drones. Also, many of the new Russian EW systems are designed with cheap Chinese technology, such as signal generators and power amplifiers. The share of Chinese technology in the Russian military is continuously increasing. It is likely that the Russia–China ties will render future sanctions less effective and reduce dependence on the West.

The crucial impact of electromagnetic spectrum limitations

While electronic warfare against radars and communication systems has played, and still plays, a key role in the war in Ukraine, the major drive for the development of electronic warfare has been the detection and mitigation of unmanned systems, mostly UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), also known as drones. The threat from drones has had a major impact on the overall course of the war, and according to many sources, around 80 per cent of all casualties in the war result from drone attacks. Using electronic warfare to detect and jam both control and video links, as well as the navigational systems of the platforms, initially proved highly effective. Both sides of the conflict soon understood the potential of using drones and the need to protect against them. This has led to the development and deployment of a huge number of different EW systems designed primarily to detect and jam drones. These systems have, however, evolved rapidly during the war. In the early stages, the EW systems used to protect against drones were usually designed only for typical drone frequency bands. Soon, both sides started to shift the frequencies of the control links of the drones to more unconventional frequencies in order to mitigate the jammed frequencies. This shift made many EW systems that were designed to only cover a few frequency bands useless, some of them were even at the stage where they had been procured but not yet deployed when the shift occurred. This continuous EW cat-and-mouse game has continued to accelerate throughout the war, and in the current situation there are few frequencies on which drones are not being controlled, and few frequencies that are not affected by jamming.

To cover the vast frontline, huge numbers of EW systems have been deployed. The development of this type of warfare has led to a frontline consisting of millions of soldiers using wireless communication, jammers, and radars that in turn create an immensely congested spectrum.

The war in Ukraine has proven that in a modern conflict the electromagnetic spectrum will be important as well as complex. There will be a combination of military communication, radars, and jammers, as well as civilian telecommunication populating large portions of the spectrum that somehow need to coexist. The West has not been prepared for such a spectrum, nor has it trained under such conditions. Instead, the rules regulating spectrum usage in the West are usually highly rigorous and limit the possibilities for training in a realistic way. Usually only certain frequency bands are used for military communication, while the rest are used for civilian or commercial purposes. The military frequency allocations are usually not sufficient to apply electronic warfare protection techniques, such as frequency hopping, wide signal bandwidths, or other agile or cognitive behaviours. The introduction of systems into armed forces is therefore often carried out using only a few frequencies or small frequency bands in order not to collide with other systems. This makes the systems both easier for an adversary to detect and jam. The use of military frequencies has led to the procurement of many radio systems that work in only a few specific frequency bands rather than across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The need to consider more agile spectrum usage and training armed forces in situations similar to the one in Ukraine should therefore be prioritised by the West in the planning for future conflicts.

The congested spectrum on the battlefield also creates major technical challenges when developing and implementing EW systems, especially for COMINT (Communications Intelligence) and DF (Direction Finding). The trend among these types of systems is to incorporate more wideband radio receivers in order to cover the entire spectrum instantaneously. The dense spectrum leads to a risk of making these systems more susceptible to high levels of electromagnetic energy. In turn, this may result in saturated receivers and false results. To find signals of interest in a clutter of noise can be a big challenge for EW personnel operating these systems. To handle this situation, the operators of the systems require a lot of training in relevant scenarios.

EW systems evolution

The reason for the destruction or capture of many of the Russian EW systems is a combination of their being considered high-value targets, that they are very stationary during operations and that they tend to have unique visual signatures. As a result, there has been a shift from using mostly large EW complexes to smaller distributed types of systems, which are usually remotely operated. Because of the drone threat and the huge number of EW systems used in the war, many systems have also now been designed to be simple and easy to use, with only a few switches to activate detection and warning of incoming drones, or to activate protection against them by jamming large frequency bands. So instead of just being a capability for certain specialists, EW has now been distributed across the forces on both sides. Many soldiers on the battlefield now have an understanding of EW and spectrum operations. As an example, the risks of being geolocated and target- 113 FOI-R--5951--SE ed when activating an emitter, no matter whether it is a jammer, radio, or radar, is knowledge that is now much more widespread than before the war.

Conclusions

Although it is unlikely that other countries will end up in the same situation as Ukraine in the near future, it is nevertheless of great importance to draw conclusions and learn as much as possible from the current situation and its evolution. It is vital to realise that Russia as well as China, North Korea, and Iran are continuously learning from this situation and will gain and share knowledge for use in their future development of EW capability. This may lead to a major impact on future warfare against the West. For Western forces, it should therefore be a priority to match the knowledge gained by the Russians and their allies by training in similar situations and scenarios. Exercises in the West should be heavily influenced by EW, with a focus on jamming of communication, navigation, radars and unmanned systems. In the development of new systems working in the electromagnetic domain (for example unmanned systems, communication systems and radars) it is vital that they are hardened against EW and adapted to a continuously shifting spectrum. The effects of EW, for instance, GNSS jamming, should not be limited to military exercises but should also be included in exercises with civilian actors.

This article is written by researcher Hampus Thorell, as part of the report Strategic Outlook 11: Wide Awake in a World of Disorder. The report examines how geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change are reshaping the international system and challenging established patterns of cooperation. It explores key security, economic, societal, military, and technological developments emerging in an era of strategic rivalry and systemic competition.