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.
1/
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.
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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.

13/
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

Jul 2
Injection molding requires an industrial scale, and above all, _reliable_, supply chain to be more efficient that 3D printing.

This is in a lot of 3D/AM industrial guru papers on the transition from low thousands a year production to the tens of thousands scale.

1/
Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.

3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.

2/
The issue for Ukraine versus Russia is Ukraine has to more widely disperse its industrial base because Russia has a bigger cruise and 500 km(+) ballistic missile production base.

Ukraine's need to disperse production and evolve drones means 3D/AM is a better industrial fit.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jul 1
Ukrainian mass production of FPV interceptor drones has reduced the cost per shot from $7,200 to $5,800.

The US Coyte II drone interceptor runs to $100K a shot.

The cost difference was the Big/Expensive/Few platform & missile cult was in charge of developing the Coyote II.
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The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.

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So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.

And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.

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Read 4 tweets
Jun 27
The F-35 Big/Expensive/Few Platform & Missile cult is in deep denial of this battlefield reality.

Air superiority below 2,000 feet/600 meters has been lost by crewed aircraft.

F-35's are irrelevant for the Mavic drone threat, save as a budget threat to the C-UAS procurement.
1/
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
2/
The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.

It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.

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Read 9 tweets
Jun 27
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.

Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!

1/
This means things as the Russians make these FPV's from Chinese commercial drone components in six figure and soon 7 figure (millions!) numbers.

This has huge implications for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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When China invades Taiwan, the 1st move will be occupying the small islands around Formosa (left) and making them drone, GMLRS & HQ9 SAM bases.

50 km circles around all those small islands cover almost all the invasion beaches (map right) with PLA 50km fiber optic FPV's.

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Read 5 tweets
Jun 24
It isn't just a matter of pre-2023 sniper tactics being obsolete.

Every patrolling tactic taught by the US Army Infantry and Ranger schools are obsolete when you can "just send a drone. "

1/3
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.

Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.

And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮

2/3
"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 23
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

2/2 Image
P.S.

This is the wiki on Gorgon Stare technology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_St…Image
Read 4 tweets

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