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usafphantom2 · 1 month ago

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U.S. Navy Officially Adopts ‘Murder Hornet’ Moniker for F/A-18E/F Equipped with Nine Air-to-Air Missiles

Rin Sakurai

Murder Hornet

Super Hornets, which have been armed with five AIM-120s and four AIM-9Xs since April 2024, were recently referred to as “Murder Hornets” in a year-in-review factsheet published by the U.S. Navy.

In a recently published year-in-review factsheet, titled “Delivering Warfighting Advantage,” the U.S. Navy mentioned under the ‘Aviation’ column that the Super Hornet’s heavy air-to-air loadout with nine air-to-air missiles (AAM) is now referred to as the ‘Murder Hornet’ configuration. The heavy AAM load was first employed in combat in 2024 to counter drone attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea.

Super Hornets, which have been armed with five AIM-120s and four AIM-9Xs since April 2024, were recently referred to as “Murder Hornets” in a year-in-review factsheet published by the U.S. Navy.The need for more weaponsThe ‘Murder Hornet’ loadout

Also related to this, the document includes the mention of the first naval air-to-air engagement of a hostile Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Other major accomplishments included in the document are the first combat employment of the AGM-88E AARGM (Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile) and the unveiling of the AIM-174B long-range air-to-air missile.

The Navy already confirmed last summer the first instance of AARGM use in combat, performed during a joint and coalition effort that struck 60 Houthi targets across 16 sites in Yemen. In that occasion, on Feb. 24, 2024, an EA-18G Growler assigned to the Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 130 “Zappers”, deployed aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, struck a Houthi Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter on the ground with an AGM-88E.

After photos of a new large missile being tested emerged in early 2024, last summer Super Hornets taking part in Rim of The Pacific 2024 (RIMPAC 2024) were photographed carrying AIM-174B missiles, the air-launched variant of the SM-6 surface-to-air missile. The Navy acknowledged that the AIM-174 is operationally deployed, likely in Initial Operating Capability (IOC).

A ‘Murder Hornet’ F/A-18E assigned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt landing at an airbase in Jordan, clearly showing its unique heavy air-to-air loadout. (Image credit: U.S. Air Force)

The need for more weapons

As previously reported, we first saw the ‘Murder Hornet’ loadout in pictures from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 2024, when F/A-18Es assigned to the Gunslingers of VFA-105 (Strike Fighter Squadron 105) were first photographed with this heavy payload. The ‘Murder Hornet’ features four AIM-9X Sidewinder IR-guided AAMs and five AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile) radar-guided AAMs.

The loadout is significant especially in current and future conflicts, where large swarms of various cheaply manufactured drones are abundant. This means that a larger emphasis is now placed on being able to carry more ordnance, as there are simply more targets that need to be shot down from the air.

This was also highlighted during a recent mission by U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles that found themselves short on missiles while shooting down Iranian drones in defense of Israel back in Apr. 2024. In fact, just a little earlier, the ‘Murder Hornet’ loadout was born in response to urgent operational demands that the jets be equipped with more ammunition to combat the kamikaze drones launched by Houthi militants in Yemen.

Previously, there have also been nicknames for aircraft touting a unique configuration, such as the F-35’s ‘Beast Mode’, which refers to the situations when weapons are carried on underwing hardpoints. This is in contrast to the ‘Stealth Mode’ which focuses on reducing the aircraft’s RCS (Radar Cross Section) and thus improving its low observability.

A ‘Murder Hornet’ F/A-18E is prepared for launch, with markings indicating drone kills highlighted in red. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)

The ‘Murder Hornet’ loadout

The four-Sidewinder loadout is only possible because of a new capability that the Navy introduced back in April 2024, which it cleared the AIM-9X to be carried on the F/A-18E/F’s stations two and ten, its outermost underwing stations. This brought the maximum number of AIM-9Xs carried by Super Hornets up to four (along with the original wingtip mounts), while also introducing the AIM-9X to the Growler.

The ‘Murder Hornet’ loadout features four AIM-9X high off-boresight heat-seeking missiles, of which two on the F/A-18’s wingtip stations and two on station two and ten, five AIM-120 AMRAAMS (with two pairs on two LAU-115s, each with two LAU-127,s and one on the chin station), an AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared) targeting pod and a 480-gallon fuel tank on the centerline.

Although the ATFLIR can be replaced by another AIM-120, it is usually carried as it gives the Super Hornet’s pilots various targeting and identification advantages. Furthermore, the pod is capable of collecting intelligence on aerial targets, and a basic IRST (InfraRed Search and Track) mode is also available for detection of stealthy targets.

The AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting pod on the chin station of a F/A-18E with VFA-115. (Image credit: Kai Martin)

The weapons configuration also leaves two additional underwing hardpoints empty. This is potentially to reduce drag and allow the aircraft to retain some speed and maneuverability. Furthermore, since the loadout only contains one drop tank, it limits the time that the fighter can stay on station and its range, which is likely due to the fact that the loadout is specifically suited to fleet air defense.

This is not the first example of fighters carrying a large number of air-to-air munitions; in fact, the legacy F/A-18C/Ds are capable of brandishing up to ten AIM-120s and two AIM-9s in one go. Furthermore, in 2024, pictures of a VX-9 (Airborne Test and Evaluation Squadron Nine) armed with four massive AIM-174Bs, three AIM-120s and two AIM-9Xs also circulated online and were unofficially dubbed ‘Murder Hornet’, and Boeing’s Advanced Eagle demonstration team flying the F-15QA Ababil carried out airshow demonstrations with 12 AMRAAMs.

AIM-174

A U.S. Navy F/A-18F assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 9, flies over the Point Mugu Sea Range in Southern California during Gray Flag 2024 on Sept. 24, 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr. Kory Hughs edited by The Aviationist)

@The Aviationist.com

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his-heart-hymns · 10 months ago

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Israel killed aid workers from the World Kitchen Centre. If you think it was just an accident, then you need to know some facts:

The World Kitchen Centre was coordinating with the Israeli forces, which means the Israeli army had their real-time locations. The Israeli forces used precision laser-guided missiles, so you cannot say it was just another collateral damage when they were targeting Hamas.

The last and most important point is that these aid vehicles and trucks had the logo of the World Kitchen Centre, and the UAVs or any fighter jets the Israeli army might have used are capable of extremely high optical magnification.

Look at the precise impact of the missile and the huge logo at the top:

DO YOU STILL BELIEVE IT WAS A MISTAKE???

#gaza genocide #man made famine #israel #gaza under attack #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #free gaza #free congo #congo genocide #free palestine #israel hamas war #hamas #israel is an apartheid state #lgbtq community #lgbtq #desiblr #desi tumblr #muslimblr #urdu lines #desi aesthetic

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saturniandragon · 4 months ago

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hello airplane enjoyer. i am curious about your thoughts on the design of the God Phoenix from Gatchaman? the old one that fucks, not the new one

Ooh, plane anon. Alright, never heard of that plane or that show before, so let me do a little searching...

Oh.

Well that's definitely a plane for sure.

Only one pair of main wing and... somehow 3 vertical(ish) stabilizers? I wanna see if there's a rear view, hold on.

Two engines, so that's pretty standard. I can't tell where this thing's cockpit is, if there is one. Assuming it's not a drone/UAV.

I'm not an aerospace engineer but realistically I don't think this sort of design will be able to fly irl, because the main wings are so far back and there's nothing on the front to generate lift like small canards. Which means all the lift will be at the rear, so the nose wouldn't be able to pitch up...?

I guess that depends on the weight distribution, like if 80% of the mass is at the back half of the plane. But I don't think that's likely here.

Those exhausts look... hm... pretty normal. You'd still find jet nozzles like that in current era jets. Wonder if that's capable of thrust vectoring too.

Those pencil shaped things on the wingtips look like fuel tanks, kind of like the ones on an F-104 Starfighter, so that's taken from reality as well.

I can't make out what it is with that triple vertical stabs arrangement thing, definitely unorthodox.

Actually let me just read the wiki page of this Gatchaman show, which, again, I've never heard of before. But that design definitely speaks 1970-1980 aesthetics.

HOLD UP

It's a vehicle carrier, a spaceship and a submarine at once?! The designers must had been on crack when designing it. This thing has to be honking massive.

I mean, it speaks 1970-1980 aesthetics, so I guess rule of cool is the number one rule here.

It can reach Mach 5 in plane mode and 40 kts underwater. I don't know what the second and third point means but the fourth point is a concern because... well I can't see how you would use jet/rocket hybrid when traveling underwater. But again, rule of cool.

Yeah it's got nukes, so it has to be honking massive. I guess now that I'm reading the weapon/armament section, it is more like a spaceship fighter. That can also... function as a submarine.

Definitely one of the vehicles of all time, I can tell you that much.

#thanks for the ask!#anon

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darkmaga-returns · 2 months ago

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With a historic mandate secured, here’s some bold ideas for the incoming president’s tenure:

Make American defense great again

The military and the Department of Defense have many issues. Here are a few big ones:

The bidding process is uncompetitive.Defense industry behemoths, such as Raytheon, Boeing, etc aren’t innovating as much as they should be, and there is no room for smaller players to enter into the industry without first having pledged fealty to the defense contractor industrial complex. To resolve this, Trump II should consider opening up the Pentagon-contractor relationship to many more patriotic endeavors.

The DOD is attached to old ideas and outdated platforms.For example, the Pentagon’s insistence that America retains manned fighter jet platforms well into the future. That will leave the United States at a competitive disadvantage when squaring off against Chinese platforms. Instead of investing in expiring ideas, they should instead deploy those resources into UAV, jamming, and counter-jamming technologies.

Thanks to the efforts of Democrat administrations, so much of the military has been allocated to appealing to hyper wokeness.The military shouldn’t be understood as a social welfare program. It should be purposed to defend the country and achieve victory in battle. All of the trans/DEI/ESG stuff is harming military readiness, and it’s sabotaging recruiting. It all needs to go, as soon as humanly possible.

Annex Greenland

Yes, the Trump Administration should absolutely try to find a way to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Greenland is insanely resource-rich and its geopolitical position is incredibly significant to American interests.

Denmark is hyper-liberal and wants to preserve Greenland, cutting the territory off from most human contact (other than the 50,000 or so people who live there) because they have bought into all of the climate narrative hysteria, so they’re just letting perfectly good (but very cold) land waste away.

The Trump Administration should reach out to Copenhagen and start the process of negotiations over the future of Greenland. They can start by leveraging Denmark’s failure to live up to the two-percent defense spending threshold as a NATO member.

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ghostwarriorrrr · 7 months ago

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🇹🇷 Bayraktar #KIZILELMA Unmanned Combat Aircraft Fully Automatic Landing

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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Above the bar at a small brewpub in Užupis, a hip neighborhood in Vilnius, Lithuania, hangs a portrait of a Madonna-like saint cradling a weapon—something between a rifle, a bazooka, and a 5G antenna.

The caption below reads: “Saint EDM4S.”

EDM4S—or Electronic Drone Mitigation 4 System—is a portable electronic-warfare weapon from Lithuania. Point the EDM4S at a hovering uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) and pull the trigger: The drone should lose contact with its operator and fall inertly from the sky.

Hundreds of EDM4S systems have been donated to Ukraine over the past two years. They are just one weapon in an unseen, and under-appreciated, battle for control of the electromagnetic spectrum. Powering this battle is a furious arms race. Ukraine and its allies on one side, Russia on the other. Both sides are trying to innovate better ways to spoof, jam, and disrupt enemy communications, particularly drones, while simultaneously working to harden their own systems against hostile signals.

This is electronic warfare. In late 2023, Kyiv identified winning the upper hand in this battle as one of its key priorities. With Russia steadily advancing across eastern Ukraine, the need to gain control of the electromagnetic space—and the skies—has only grown more important. Regardless of how this war unfolds in 2025, Ukraine has already changed electronic warfare forever.

Fighting to Electromagnetic Stalemate

Electronic warfare, or EW, has been a part of human conflicts for more than a century. Soon after radios were deployed to the battlefield, soldiers realized that sending bursts of static over a frequency could disrupt the enemy’s ability to communicate. But it wasn’t until World War II that EW really came into its own.

Early in WWII, the British were desperately trying to recapture control over their skies in the Battle of Britain. While British dogfighters grew steadily better at downing incoming Luftwaffe bombers, the Germans slowly moved their raids to the cover of darkness. This prompted a perplexing mystery for the British: How were the Germans so good at flying to their targets in the dead of night?

A young British scientist solved the mystery when he discovered a clue in the wreckage of a downed bomber. The plane’s landing assistance system, which used radio waves to measure the plane’s relative distance to the runway, had been improved so dramatically that it was being used as a rudimentary navigation device. Operators on the ground in Germany and occupied France would emit long, narrow bands of radio signals over British skies: The target factory or town could be found where the two beams coincided.

Armed with this information, the English raced to build their own radio and relay stations, broadcasting their own radio beams into the skies to confuse the incoming German pilots.

Thus began the Battle of the Beams. The Germans refined and upgraded its ability to broadcast and receive signals in British airspace, while the United Kingdom raced to detect and disrupt those signals. It set the pace of EW fights for a century to come.

Today, the electromagnetic space is much more complicated: Different types of signals are broadcast straight across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radar to GPS and GLONASS, to cellular signals. At any given moment, a soldier, UAV, fighter jet, or cruise missile could be sending and receiving a variety of different signals.

With that, militaries have raced to find new ways to jam, intercept, and even spoof those signals. One nation may issue new encrypted radios to its forces, prompting a rival country to develop more powerful radios to flood those channels with static. Recent decades have also seen radar and radio used to detect artillery launches and triangulate their exact position, allowing counter-battery systems to hit the source of fire. Fighter jets, in particular, have developed some of the most advanced onboard radio and radar systems for communications, EW, and counter-EW.

Throughout the Cold War, NATO and the Soviet Union were locked in a fierce battle to obtain even a marginal advantage over the other in this EW fight. That dynamic has driven some anxiety. A 2017 report commissioned by Estonia’s military took stock of Russia’s EW capabilities and warned that, should Moscow invade NATO’s eastern flank, it could likely knock out communications across a huge swath of the Baltics, thereby “negating advantages conferred on the Alliance by its technological edge.”

It wasn’t until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that the world got to see the extent of Russia’s EW prowess. And it was a dud.

“Russian EW was a no-show,” wrote Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, in a July 2022 analysis for IEEE Spectrum.

Moscow had spent years planning for a major war with NATO, designing its EW systems to interfere with the onboard systems of advanced fighter jets and to jam the targeting computers of advanced ballistic missiles. Instead, it found itself in a war against fast-moving defenders making ample use of off-the-shelf UAVs.

Russia’s systems were “not very mobile, not very distributed,” Clark tells WIRED. Their relatively small number of big systems, Clark says, “weren’t really relevant in the fight.”

Moscow’s strategy assumed there would be a relatively static battlespace. Along the front, they would deploy the Infauna, a heavily armored vehicle that targets radio communications. Further out, around 15 miles from the front lines, they would send the Leer-3, a six-wheeled truck capable of not only jamming cellular networks but of intercepting communications and even relaying SMS to nearby cell phones. Even further out, from a range of about 180 miles, the fire-truck-sized Krasukha-4 would scramble aerial sensors.

“When you get close to the front, you get electronic weather,” Clark says. “Your GPS won’t work, your cell phone won’t work, your Starlink won’t work.”

This electromagnetic no-man’s-land is what happens when you “barrage,” Clark explains. But there’s a big trade-off, he says. Jamming across the spectrum requires more power, as does jamming in a wider geographic area. The more power a system has, the bigger it must be. So you can disrupt all communications in a targeted area, or some communications further afield—but not necessarily both.

Move Fast and Jam Things

Russia’s military was marred, early in the war, by bad communication, worse planning, and a general sluggishness in adapting. Even still, it had a big head start. “Unfortunately, the enemy has a numerical and material advantage,” a representative for UP Innovations, a Ukrainian defense tech startup, tells WIRED in a written statement.

So Ukraine developed two complementary strategies: produce a large volume of cheaper EW solutions, and make them iterative and adaptable.

Ukraine’s Bukovel-AD anti-drone system, for example, fits comfortably on the back of a pickup truck. The Eter system, the size of a suitcase, can detect the jamming signals from Russian EW systems—allowing Ukraine to target them with artillery. Ukrainian electronic warfare company Kvertus now manufactures 15 different anti-drone systems��from drone-jamming backpacks to stationary devices that can be installed on radio towers to ward off incoming UAVs.

When the full-scale war began in 2022, Kvertus had one product: a shoulder-mounted anti-drone gun, like the EDM4S. “In 2022, [we were producing] tens of devices,” Yaroslav Filimonov, Kvertus’ CEO told me when we sat down in his Kyiv offices this March. “In 2023 it was hundreds. Now? It’s thousands.”

“Our advantage is that we have many clever people and clever engineers, and we have our own research and development department,” Filimonov says. “Our reaction for different changes on the front line is very fast.”

That’s because Kvertus dispatches its staff to the front lines to see how things are working—or not. EW operators constantly send back reports on which parts of the spectrum are being bombarded by Russia, and which parts of the spectrum Russian forces are inclined to use. Military tech firm Piranha-Tech’s systems are now capable of downing drones from more than a kilometer away, from a height of roughly 500 meters.

UP Innovations was financed as part of Business Springboard, a government-led initiative to finance veteran-run businesses in Ukraine. Being veteran-run means they have firsthand knowledge of what their soldiers actually need. UP has been working on special helmet pads with fabric that works as a Faraday cage to protect the wearer’s radios from jamming.

“Today, every unit has specialists working with tactical radio electronic warfare devices,” Yuriy Momot, deputy CEO of Piranha-Tech, tells WIRED. “There is no operation that goes without the use of radio electronic warfare. As we talk, one of their anti-drone guns sits on the table between us. Just the day before, guns just like this one helped one unit shoot down a dozen enemy drones—including one carrying a grenade.

The early versions of these anti-drone guns caused some skepticism that they would ever be much use in the real world—Russian military analysts mocked them as cheap toys. That mockery has long since faded, however. In recent months, plywood shacks have been popping up on high-rise rooftops in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They house a couple of Russian soldiers, a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a Russian-made anti-drone gun.

But when it comes to defending themselves, Kyiv has opted for a very apropos solution: a decentralized, distributed EW solution.

For more than two years, Ukraine has faced an onslaught of missiles, drones, and glide bombs—all equipped with onboard communications and radar designed to overcome Ukraine’s air defense systems. In recent months, the Iranian-designed Shahed drones have been known to weave, deke, and loiter through Ukrainian skies, distracting and frustrating air defense systems.

To deal with this aerial threat, Kyiv developed Pokrova, a secretive mesh network of EW systems that was revealed earlier this year.

“It’s not one, not two, not three transmitters” that make up Ukraine’s electromagnetic force field, Oleksandr Fedienko, a Ukrainian politician who serves as deputy chairman of a parliamentary committee on digital transformation, wrote on Telegram earlier this year. “There are hundreds of thousands of devices that are installed throughout the country.”

Pokrova isn’t just jamming the Shahed navigation systems, but spoofing their signal. This allows Ukrainian EW operators to feed them new coordinates, gently bringing down the drones so that they can be analyzed and cannibalized for parts. In recent months, Ukraine managed to spoof the signals being sent to these drones—flying more than 100 back into Russia.

Fedienko promised that Ukraine was still racing to scale up the system even further. “It's only a matter of time when the rockets and missiles with which the Russians attack us will fly in the opposite direction,” he wrote.

EW isn’t completely foolproof. But it remains an incredibly promising defensive technology when layered on top of other anti-air systems.

Ukraine’s ability to scale up this domestic industry has put it toe-to-toe with Russia, once thought to have the most impressive EW program in the world. But Russia has learned and adapted too. It’s now a “cat-and-mouse game,” Clark says.

Beating EW

In a secret drone workshop in Kyiv, Yvan holds up a tiny chip. Installed on a small FPV drone, Yvan hopes this chip could overcome Russia’s EW efforts.

With these chips and two cheap antennas, Yvan’s drones are programmed to hop across the electromagnetic spectrum at a dizzying rate, as many as 25 times per second, in unison with its base station.

Yvan hopes that the link between the drone and its operator can move frequencies faster than Russian EW operators can jam the signal. If that works, it could keep these drones in the air significantly longer. AI is already being used to make this signal-hopping seem as random as possible. (Just as AI is being used to detect the hopping pattern in order to predict its next move.)

There are existing solutions to these problems, like controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs), which can tune out jamming signals. However, they can cost upwards of $30,000 per unit, meaning Ukraine simply cannot afford to acquire them at scale. So they’ve had to innovate. Yvan’s solution can be dispatched for just hundreds of dollars.

Ukraine first started sending drones deep into Russia in early 2023—with a brazen attack on the Kremlin itself. Then, one small drone exploded spectacularly over the Moscow sky. Since then, Ukraine has stepped up its efforts. In early September, Kyiv launched its most expansive drone attack on Russia since the beginning of the war: An estimated 158 drones descended on targets across the country, setting fires at oil refineries, power plants, and pipelines. Although most were downed, likely through more traditional air defense systems, the attack shows the limitations of Russia’s own EW defenses.

With this constant competition on the electromagnetic spectrum, defense companies are getting creative about how their drones travel.

“In the Western world, GPS always works. Here, GPS never works,” says Stepan, a Ukrainian defense executive. (WIRED is using only his first name for security reasons.) That’s why he’s been developing drones to operate without GPS—or its Russian equivalent, GLONASS. Instead, he employs the drones’ onboard cameras to conduct thermal imaging of the ground below, employing “pure math” to confirm its trajectory by checking terrain, landmarks, and waypoints. This is not entirely new: The US Tomahawk missile, for example, has used terrain mapping for decades. What’s novel is how quickly and nimbly Ukraine has been able to distribute this technology to its nascent drone industry.

Since speaking to Stepan in Kyiv in March, this strategy of terrain mapping has become more common on the battlefield. Artificial intelligence has helped augment how drones understand the land below. They’ve also introduced other kinds of strategies, such as using cell phone towers as landmarks to guide their trajectory—much like the Luftwaffe pilots used radio beams to guide their flight towards British cities.

“The newer systems are using a combination of GPS, terrain mapping, and electronic signal intelligence to figure out where they are and to make themselves more precise,” Clark says.

Ukraine is already coming up with new ideas about what it could achieve if its drones can penetrate deeper into Russia. One drone prototype is equipped with EW systems that could, if it lands in the right spot, wreak havoc on Russian radar, air defense, and communications systems.

Innovation isn’t just moving forward—it’s also looking backwards. One of the most ingenious innovations being deployed in Ukraine is the German-made HIGHCAT drone, and it’s surprisingly old school. A lightweight quadcopter, the drone comes with a 6-mile cable, providing a fixed link to its base station.

It’s not just uncrewed aerial vehicles that are targeted by EW: Ukraine has increasingly deployed land and naval drones to aid in its fight to recapture territory.

Drone manufacturer SkyLab has, despite its name, become known for its ground-based autonomous vehicles. Those land vehicles have been used to deliver artillery, carry wounded soldiers, and could even be used for demining efforts. At their secretive offices in Kyiv, Denys gestures to a stout four-wheel vehicle in the corner. He says SkyLab has been exploring everything from AI to lidar to help these devices find their way home, even in an electromagnetic barrage. (WIRED is identifying the executive with a pseudonym for security purposes.)

“What frequency and mode do I have to use in the next version? What cameras, what gimbals, what logistics, what batteries?” he says. “Now it’s six, maybe seven generations of this rover.”

Innovate or Die

The Battle of the Beams was on track toward an electromagnetic stalemate. As they continued to improve and pioneer their radio warfare technique, neither the British nor the Germans looked set to gain a meaningful advantage over the other.

Then Britain innovated. When the Bristol Beaufighter took to the skies in mid-1940, it adapted Germany’s innovation to create an early aircraft interception radar. By using radio signals to identify enemy planes in the dark skies, British pilots quickly began downing Luftwaffe bombers and took back control of its airspace. The Germans then abandoned the Blitz and redeployed most of their offensive air assets eastward.

England’s victory in the battle came, in large part, because it was capable of uncovering the secrets to Germany’s innovation and reverse engineering it.

That’s happening in Ukraine, too, in both directions. Filimonov says his company’s effort to stay one step ahead is always frustrated by the “rats”—those who are “gathering information and then sending this information to our enemy.” The longer Ukraine’s technological innovation remains a secret, the more effective it will be. On the other side, Piranha-Tech’s Momot says he is always racing to identify Russia’s technological leaps forward, then “developing a countermeasure before the enemy can start large-scale production.”

Late last year, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the erstwhile commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, wrote in a detailed paper that Ukraine had achieved “parity” with Russia on EW—but it needed superiority.

While Ukraine is iterating advantages, a real breakthrough may have to come from Washington.

The United States has transferred an enormous amount of equipment to Kyiv, but it hasn’t—yet—handed over the EW crown jewels. “Electronic warfare is one of those very, very closely held technologies for the US and its closest partners,” Mick Ryan, a veteran of the Australian military and an independent military analyst, tells WIRED. “We're going to have to change the paradigm on how we look at EW and how we share the technologies with other partners, if we want to beat the Russians.”

Clark agrees that the Pentagon is “holding back some of the most sophisticated capabilities,” but there are signs that has changed in recent months: When the American-made F-16 fighter jets arrived in Ukraine in August, the US announced it had upgraded the jets with advanced onboard EW systems.

“One F-16 with a reprogrammed pod won’t achieve air dominance alone, but it may give you a pocket of air superiority for a moment’s time to achieve an objective that has strategic importance and impact,” the director of the US Air Force 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing said in a statement.

More than 80 years after the Battle of the Beams, Ukraine has put a modern spin on the Bristol Beaufighter: drone-on-drone combat. Footage emerged last year of two drones duking it out over the front lines. In mid-April, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was briefed on a new drone capable of intercepting Russian helicopters and loitering munitions.

The world may soon see more of these drone dogfights. Igor, another defense executive (who WIRED is not identifying for security reasons) says his company has been working furiously on a drone designed to hunt and destroy Russian UAVs.

Igor’s anti-drone drone would be a “fire and forget” solution, he says, meaning the drone could loiter in the skies, using a suite of onboard sensors to target all incoming Russian drones. If perfected, it would bring the story of EW full-circle.

There’s one big technological problem with having these drones patrol the skies, Igor says. “You need to confirm that it’s not a bird,” he laughs. “You don’t want to make enemies with Mother Nature.”

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mokhosz-nafo · 3 months ago

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TOP NEWS TODAY 🔝

✈️ Minus Russian Su-34 fighter jet!

🇺🇲 $425 million aid package from USA: 200+ Stryker, ammo for HIMARS, artillery and more!

🔥 UAV hit an oil depot near Stavropol, Russia at night!

🚀 Polish Foreign Minister hopes that NATO will allow shooting down Russian missiles over Ukraine.

🇨🇦 Canada is urging allies to lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western-supplied weapons, - Foreign Minister of Canada Mélanie Joly

🇵🇱 Speaking about aid for Ukraine, Sikorski emphasized that Tusk's government "introduced a proposal for a defense loan."

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ultrajaphunter · 1 year ago

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Over the Past Few Days, the IDF Ground Forces Have Directed over 150 Attacks using Fighter Jets, Helicopter Gunships and UAVs to Eliminate Terrorists and Damage Enemy Infrastructure

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cyberbenb · 7 days ago

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Ukraine war latest: Poland scrambles jets, puts air defense on high alert during Russian missile attack on Ukraine

Key developments on Feb. 1-2:

Poland scrambles jets, puts air defense on high alert during Russian missile attack on Ukraine

Russia’s new naval base raises fears of Georgia’s involvement in Ukraine war, WSJ reports

Massive fire breaks out at Kharkiv warehouse after Russian drone attack

15,000 Russian troops ‘neutralized’ in Pokrovsk direction in January alone, Syrskyi says

5 people including 2 children injured in Kherson after Russia targets minibus with drone, governor says

Polish and other allied aircraft were quickly mobilized on Feb. 1 in response to a large-scale missile attack by Russia on western Ukraine, Poland’s Armed Forces reported on X.

“Attention, due to the attack of the Russian Federation performing strikes on facilities located in the west of Ukraine, among others, the operation of Polish and allied aviation in our airspace has begun,” the statement said.

All available forces and means were activated during the attack, the command said, adding that it was constantly monitoring the situation.

In accordance with procedures, fighter jets were dispatched, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance assets were put on high alert, the Polish military said.

Russia launched a combined attack of 165 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and missiles at Ukraine overnight and in the morning on Feb. 1, Ukraine’s Air Force reported. Ukrainian air defense intercepted 56 Russian UAVs, the Air Force said.

At least seven people were killed and 14 injured in a residential building strike in Poltava. Civilian enterprises and infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, and Kyiv oblasts were damaged, according to the report.

Poland has scrambled jets amid Russian attacks on Ukraine several times over the past year.

Russian attacks against Ukraine kill 9, injure 36 over past day

“Last night, Russia attacked our cities using various types of weapons: missiles, attack drones, and aerial bombs. Another terrorist crime,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram in response to the attacks.

The Kyiv IndependentNatalia Yermak

Russia’s new naval base raises fears of Georgia’s involvement in Ukraine war, WSJ reports

Russia is building a new naval base in Ochamchire, Abkhazia, a move that raises fears Georgia could be drawn into the war in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.

The base is part of Moscow’s strategy to safeguard its naval forces after suffering heavy losses in the Black Sea. Since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has lost or sustained damage to roughly a third of its fleet in the region.

Satellite images obtained by the outlet show continued upgrades at the Ochamchira port, including expanded access points to fit larger vessels. Though relatively small, experts say the facility could host ships equipped with cruise missiles, bolstering Russia’s military presence in the Black Sea.

Ochamchire, more than 700 kilometers southeast of the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory, could provide Moscow with a naval base that remains largely beyond the range of Ukraine’s existing long-range strikes.

Russia has occupied Abkhazia after a war with Tbilisi in 2008, backing local breakaway leadership. The region is internationally recognized as Georgia’s sovereign soil.

The Wall Street Journal reports that if Ukraine were to target Russian warships there, Georgia could find itself pulled into the war.

Beyond military risks, the base threatens a key trade route between Asia and Europe. Before Russia’s invasion, more than 85% of land-based trade between China and Europe moved through Russian territory. Sanctions have disrupted that route, shifting attention to the Middle Corridor, which runs through Georgia.

The World Bank estimates this corridor could handle 11 million tonnes of cargo annually by 2030, up from less than 3 million tonnes in 2023.

Multiple Georgian opposition leaders arrested as pro-EU demonstrators block highway in Tbilisi

Georgian police arrested two opposition leaders, including the former mayor of Tbilisi, during a street protest against the ruling Georgian Dream party, Echo of the Caucasus reported on Feb. 2.

The Kyiv IndependentSonya Bandouil

Massive fire breaks out at Kharkiv warehouse after Russian drone attack

A large-scale fire broke out at a warehouse in Kharkiv after a Russian drone struck a civilian enterprise late at night on Feb. 1, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported.

Russia launched a drone attack against the city’s Slobidskyi district, causing a massive fire in a production and warehouse facility. The fire spread over an area of 2,000 meters, the State Emergency Service said.

Firefighters contained the blaze at 1:27 a.m. local time on Feb. 2.

The warehouse was part of a civilian enterprise, according to authorities. No casualties have been reported.

Located less than 30 kilometers from the Russian border, the northeastern city of Kharkiv has suffered relentless aerial attacks over the past two years of Russia’s full-scale war.

Moscow often targets densely populated neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure with missiles, drones, and glide bombs.

Zelensky comments on Defense Procurement Agency dispute, says Umerov is entitled to make any decisions to prevent military supply delays

President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the conflict between the Defense Ministry and the Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) on Feb. 2 in an interview with the Associated Press (AP), commenting that the Defense Minister has the right to do everything to ensure that there is no slowdown in supplies.

The Kyiv IndependentSonya Bandouil

15,000 Russian troops ‘neutralized’ in Pokrovsk direction in January alone, Syrskyi says

Some 15,000 Russian soldiers were “neutralized” by Ukrainian forces in the Pokrovsk direction in Donetsk Oblast during January, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Feb. 2.

In a post on Facebook that included a video of combat footage, Syrskyi said the area “remains one of the hottest” on the front, adding Ukrainian forces were “continuously inflicting losses on the occupiers."

“In January of this year alone, our soldiers neutralized more than 15,000 invaders here, of which about 7,000 were killed,” he added.

0:00/0:541×The video released by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Feb. 2 of combat in the Pokrovsk sector (Facebook)

The Kyiv Independent could not verify the figures.

A report from the monitoring group DeepState, published on Jan. 28 said that overall across the front lines, the intensity of Russian assaults was declining, but remains high.

It added that Russian forces have concentrated 44% of their attacks in the Pokrovsk sector, a crucial logistics hub for Ukrainian troops in Donetsk Oblast.

Russian forces were deploying small groups in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the sector, Viktor Trehubov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces, said on Jan. 27.

The peak intensity of Russian offensive efforts across the front lines was recorded in the second half of December, following a surge in attacks that began in late November.

According to data published by Ukraine’s Armed Forces, 840,260 of Moscow’s troops have been injured or killed since 2022.

Russian losses in Ukraine are helping fuel a demographic timebomb that could see the country’s population reduced by half by the end of the century, experts told the Kyiv Independent earlier this month..

“The impact on Russian society is devastating,” said Harley Balzer, emeritus professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.

“From Russia’s perspective, (winning the war in Ukraine) is the smaller problem. The bigger issue is, is it going to be a viable country afterward regardless?"

Zaluzhnyi proposed Kursk-style incursion into Russia’s Belgorod Oblast in 2022, Ukrainian general says

The plan was similar to Ukraine’s cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024.

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk

5 people including 2 children injured in Kherson after Russia targets minibus with drone, governor says

Five people, among them two children, were injured after Russia targeted a minibus with a drone, Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Feb. 2.

A 12 year-old boy and a 13 year-old girl, along with three adult women, have been diagnosed with concussions after the attack.

“All the victims have been taken to medical facilities, where doctors are providing them with the necessary assistance,” Prokudin wrote.

Kherson Oblast remains under partial Russian occupation on the left bank of the Dnipro River. The region, including the city of Kherson, is frequently targeted by Russian forces, with regular attacks resulting in civilian casualties.

Drone attacks targeting civilians in the southern city of Kherson have become so frequent that locals speaking to the Kyiv Independent last year described the violent campaign as a “human safari."

Under international law, the intentional targeting of civilians who are not actively engaged in hostilities during wartime constitutes a war crime.

18-year-old injured in Russian drone attack on Sumy dies

Denys Zhurba’s father was among those wounded in the attack.

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk

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