Russian forces in Ukraine are deploying Silok radio jammers to disrupt the radio between Ukrainian drones and their operators.
But the Ukrainians eliminated several Siloks with drones. More recently, a Mavic quadcopter of the Ukrainian Aerobomber unit shelled a tripod-mounted Silok with grenades and destroyed it.
Let’s add drone strikes to Silok’s anti-drone systems to the long and ironic list of operations carried out by Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian artillery blows up a Russian counter-artillery radar. A Ukrainian GPS-guided bomb detonates a Russian GPS jammer. And many, many examples of Ukrainian drones bombing Russian drone jammers.
Russia expanded its war against Ukraine in February 2022 with what was, on paper, the world’s most formidable electronic warfare force: overlapping radar and radio detectors, automated jamming systems, and plenty of jammers, giant and small.
It deserves to be clear, so far, that Russian electronic warfare does not work very well under the strain of genuine combat. “It turns out that such devices are only effective on Russian educational grounds,” the Ukrainian military said after the army’s 128th mountain rally. The Assault Brigade captured a plateau in Silok in September 2022.
The Silok automatically detects and jams drones’ radio links out to range of up to 2.5 miles. For static defense, it rests on a tripod. It also can travel on a truck. The first Silok reached front-line forces in 2018 and participated in a war game in Orenburg Oblast in western Russian the same year.
According to the Kremlin, the Silok in the Orenburg exercise helped to repel a swarm of 10 drones conducting a mock assault on a command post. But the Silok’s performance in Ukraine has been … less than stellar. Ukrainian forces previously struck Siloks in June and October 2022
It’s unclear why Siloks can’t always block pursuing drones. It is imaginable that Ukrainian drone operators could simply counter Russian interference by periodically converting radio frequencies.
It’s also conceivable that the Silok simply doesn’t have the sensitivity to trip over a drone and the strength to block it. In other words, it’s conceivable that it’s just not very good. And in fact, it doesn’t help that Ukrainian intelligence has access. to an intact Silok since the 128th Brigade captured a copy in late 2022.