Trent Telenko Profile picture
Nov 22, 2022 15 tweets 7 min read Read on X
On Nov 19th I did a thread on the Przewdow missile strike making the case it wasn't a Ukrainian missile and I mentioned a radar & electronic warfare angle I didn't address.

This 🧵will do just that.
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The thing about being one of the few people who have researched General MacArthur's Section 22 radar hunters is you learn all the old tricks with mechanically rotating antenna radars like that on the 1977 vintage E-3 Sentry AWACS APY-1.

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A radar design fielded in 1977 is a lot closer to 1945 than 2022.

Both phased arrays and mechanically scanned antennas were 36 (+) years old when the APY-1 was fielded 45 years ago.

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The primary weakness of a mechanically rotated radar antenna is dwell time. The radar beam is only looking the right way a fraction of every revolution.

This fact can be exploited for both gain intelligence on radar, like the USMC did at Okinawa in 1945, or to spoof direction
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...finding on a radar with active decoys by imitating the detection beam of a rotating radar antenna (see photo).

The Westinghouse APY-1 was designed & implemented in the early 1970's during the shift from discrete transistor devices to integrated circuit chips that enabled

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...the use programmable software for consistent pulse doppler detection.

It was also given a radar beam shape with very small 'side lobes' to defeat 1960's jamming.

See:
428-MN-9705 Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (1962)
NARA I.D. #75132

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The pulse doppler effect the APY-1 exploits is an artifact of the reflection of energy waves from an object to calculate speed. An approaching object compresses sound or radio waves. A departing object stretches them.

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And an object going perpendicular to a radar beam is undetectable by pulse doppler techniques.

The APY-1 radar on the E-3 Sentry had to be programed with a relatively high pulse doppler floor because of how fast Germans drove their cars on autobahns.
8/
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The Soviet and now Russian military has known all of what I've laid out for the APY-1 radar for 40 odd years.

You can't classify radar physics, rotating antennas or German autobahn car speeds.

9/
All of the previous tweets were a build up to this map of a possible 5V55K missile shot trajectory from Belarus.

Simply flying parallel to the border is going to reduce the doppler shift an APY-1 or APY-2 (same radar w/sea search) on an E-3 Sentry.
10/
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The dogleg you see at the end is plotted over a Ukrainian SAM base using the 5N63 FLAP LID to direct it.

That velocity bleeding turn would have generated a large doppler return from the 5V55V nose seeker antenna for the APY-1 to track & also resulted in a smaller crater.

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The S-300 can launch the 5V55K missile in the 4.5 seconds of every six when the APY-1 isn't looking and then command it to fly s-curve trajectories when the E-3 radar beam is looking to reduce the detectable doppler shift.

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The Track Via Missile command uplink of the Patriot connected to a late Cold War era electronic warfare system could pull this off versus an AWACS type plane with a rotating antenna.

US Military just never thought of it because it had plenty laser and now GPS guided bombs.
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The Russians in the 21st Century with their TVM missile uplinks -- and empty guided bomb and tactical ballistic missile inventories in the middle of this war -- certainly can.

Different militaries having the same technology can and do use that technology very differently.

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This was one of the biggest lessons of watching Imperial Japanese radar development in WW2 through Section 22's reports.

It was an important lesson suppressed by the Joint Chiefs after WW2 and not relearned in the 80 odd years since then.


14/14 End.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Apr 18
There is an tragi-comic story behind this Russian foreign ministry claim.

The Russian use the term "direct participation" because of a lie by Chancellor Scholz a year ago when he claimed the computer system used to program the Taurus missiles...
1/
...was a huge supercomputer in Germany that could not be replicated for Ukraine.

But German computer scientists found an article that described the 20 year old computer system used by Taurus.

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BLUF: Today that Taurus mission planning software could be operated on a MacBookPro.

But the lie was never retracted by Scholz and the Russians still use it for propaganda.

So Russians can not exploit Scholz's lie to scare Germans, because they know it's a lie.🤡

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Read 4 tweets
Apr 17
The CO of the top scoring Buk [Nato designation SA-11 Gadfly] battery in the PSU did an interview ~2 years ago (early 2023).

He said they used their own Mavic drones to check that their camouflage and

Zoltan Dani & A2/AD doctrine🧵
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...that their battery concealment was good enough to fool Russian drones.

So, the PSU does a drone quality assurance check on its camo during the "hide" phase of the hide-shoot-scoot cycle, AKA you have to survive in order to have the opportunity to shoot enough to become the highest scoring SAM battery.


2/
In contrast, the Russian VKS parks their missile TELARs in the middle of a field to get maximum obstacle clearance and range. Then they are shocked when hit by deep strike assault drone or GMLRS rocket.


3/
Read 18 tweets
Apr 16
In 2005, the Strategypage -dot- com web site had the following on the downing of an F-117 over Serbia.

These tactic are the heart of Ukrainian IADS doctrine.
---
How to Take Down an F-117

November 21, 2005: The Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117, in 1999, has retired, as a colonel, and revealed many of the techniques he used to achieve all this. Colonel Dani Zoltan, in 1999, commanded the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade. He had search and control radars, as well as a TV tracking unit.

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The battery had four quad launchers for the 21 foot long, 880 pound SA-3 missiles. The SA-3 entered service in 1961 and, while it had undergone some upgrades, was considered a minor threat to NATO aircraft. Zoltan was an example of how an imaginative and energetic leader can make a big difference. While Zoltan’s peers and superiors were pretty demoralized with the electronic countermeasures NATO (especially American) aircraft used to support their bombing missions, he believed he could still turn his ancient missiles into lethal weapons

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The list of measures he took, and the results he got, should be warning to any who believe that superior technology alone will provide a decisive edge in combat. People still make a big difference. In addition to shooting down two aircraft, Zoltan’s battery caused dozens of others to abort their bombing missions to escape his unexpectedly accurate missiles. This is how he did it.

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Read 15 tweets
Apr 15
Lots of US military officers like to believe Ukraine is identical in most ways to Saddam's Iraq & some are foolish enough to say so publicly.

It'd just not true in terms of Ukrainian IADS leadership, equipment, organization, training and doctrine.

1/
The #2 of PSU in Feb 2022 had been imbedded in Serbian air defense in 1999 during Operation Allied Force.

Where Col Zoltan Dani SA-3 Goa unit not only defeated USAF SEAD doctrine from 24 Mar to 10 June 1999 with good training & tactics.

Zoltan also bagged an F-117.

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Ukraine spent 23 years duplicating Zoltani's emissions control and mobility doctrine for it's IADS.

Additionally in 2014-2015, the PSU IADS operated under the Russian long range MLRS/TBM park directed by UAV's that were cued by EW-Sigint for a year.

Minimally the Ukrainians
3/
Read 11 tweets
Apr 14
The problem for this USN-Taiwan "hellscape strategy" is it's obsolete given that the Chinese have access to Russia's newest generation of FPV interceptor drones to counter it, via using China's "5 times bigger than the rest of the world combined" drone industry & sea militia.

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US Flag ranks and their senior staffs' refuse to acknowledge the disintermediation of drones mil-tech.

All you need is a game controller/radio or a smartphone controller & a waiter tray stand.

Then you are launching a FPV drone with 70% the lethality of a Javelin ATGM
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The Drone paradigm shift for Flag rank ground officers is like Horse Cavalry from 1913 to the WW1 1918 battlefield - cold.

For Flag Rank naval officers, it is like going from the 1922 battleship line to 1950's jet carrier battle group.

USN senior leaders have more problems.
3/
Read 6 tweets
Apr 13
One of the 'benefits' of being a 33 year 3 month vet of the US military procurement enterprise is you are around when the bodies are buried, directly or through people you know.

Such was the case with US Army anti-drone procurement.

Portrait of US Army procurement failure🧵
1/
This is an email correspondent of mine talking about US Army anti-drone kit testing, prior to 2010, about a competition between two anti-drone contractors --

"The toughest part of detecting drones is figuring out if they're drones or birds.
2/
That was actually the big 'step' they managed.

But, no, the directed pulse did not interfere with their radar. And the test they did they took down seven drones in less than seven seconds at range.
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Read 18 tweets

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