Another reason for the upswing in online interest regarding Russia’s rumored ability to simply shut off many Western combat systems and proven capability to crash low flying Raven drones and scramble Ukrainian army radio signals: the Israeli Air Force testing Moscow’s willingness to respond to their strikes against targets in Syria, typically launched from either IDF controlled air space over the Golan Heights or from above Lebanon. As the Russians clearly do not wish to engage the IAF with their S300/400 long range SAMs based near Latakia and Tartus (or they would have done so by now), one alternative to shooting down Israeli pilots may involve switching on the Tonka-truck like Krasukha 4 jammers to blind Israeli F15I/F16 targeting warplane radars or scramble the GPS and inertial guidance systems of their JDAMs and missiles.
After the hotly denied Cook incident the U.S. military of course, is likely to be impatiently waiting on the IAF-goaded Russians to do that very thing, so ELINT data can be gathered on the Russians’ ‘off switch’ from NSA/GCHQ listening posts in nearby Israel, Turkey and across the Med at the Royal Air Force bases on the island of Cyprus.
For those who insist the Cook incident is a total propaganda myth, and that Russian EW capabilities are no big deal, and that the U.S. is miles ahead of anything Moscow can field, it’s fair to ask them a simple question: why then have we seen a drastic increase in ELINT collection flights all around Russian territory since April 2014? Why would the systems that NATO’s supreme commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges described in 2015 as ‘eye watering’ in sophistication be limited to merely jamming the counter-battery radars (one of which was captured by the Donbass forces at Debaltsevo) and short range drones the U.S. provided to Ukraine? Would there not be much more powerful systems kept in reserve by Moscow for use at sea and to defend Russian military strong points like on the Crimean peninsula or Kheimmim in Syria?
Continued at: https://www.roguemoney.net/blog/2017/9/7/russian-ew-kret
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