Ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have given Russia an opportunity to test the employment of electronic warfare (EW) capabilities that it has developed over the last decade in order to deter and counter military threats from the West. News reports suggest that pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine have utilized Russian systems and concepts for electronic warfare in their operations against Ukrainian government forces. In that conflict, jamming technologies have hindered the operations of monitoring drones flown by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Moscow also has touted that capabilities deployed in Russia’s area of operations in Syria could “blind” NATO radar systems.
Anya Loukianova is a PhD candidate, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park and a graduate fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM).