According to Ukrainian commanders and a Ukrainian military research project, some American-made precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proven ineffective on the battlefield; their accuracy has been severely reduced by Russian jamming efforts.
The projectiles performed well when first introduced to the battlefield, but lost effectiveness as Russian forces adjusted their defenses, according to two confidential Ukrainian reports. The problem prompted the Ukrainian army to stop using the weapons, two artillery commanders said.
The reports, first revealed by The Washington Post, focus on the American-made Excalibur, a 155mm guided artillery shell, and the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB). One of the reports was shown to The New York Times by people familiar with the investigation. The second report was described, but not shown to a reporter. The individuals asked not to be identified because the reports contained classified military information.
Every war is a kind of laboratory for weapons systems, and Ukraine has provided a testing ground for weapons never before used against such an advanced, high-tech enemy as Russia. The performance of US and Russian weapons, both defensive and offensive, is closely monitored by the Pentagon and NATO – as well as Russia and China – with significant implications for future weapons.
More directly, Ukrainian commanders say some of the Western weapons supplied to them have failed, at the cost of lives.
Russia has deployed electronic warfare systems around static targets such as headquarters and command centers that may be targeted by Ukrainian precision weapons. The systems emit so much interference that they drown out the GPS signal that powers the Excalibur’s targeting software, said Thomas Withington, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute and an electronic warfare specialist.
The data in the reports confirm comments made by Ukrainian military officials in recent months, including former army chief General Valeriy Zaluzhny, who said that some Western projectiles had given Ukraine significant superiority over Russian forces, but only for a short period of time .
Zaluzhny called the Excalibur grenade a good example of a Western weapon that lost its effectiveness because its targeting system uses GPS, which is particularly sensitive to Russian interference.
Ukrainian officials and military analysts have described similar problems with the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kit and grenades used with the high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS), both of which rely on GPS.
The GLSDB, a precision munition with a longer range than the Excalibur, jointly produced by Boeing and the Swedish company Saab, is also hampered by Russian electronic warfare, according to the second military report.
Ukrainian forces have stopped deploying the GLSDB on the battlefield, said Andrew Zagorodnyuk, head of the Center for Defense Strategies, a research organization in the capital Kiev.
An official from the US Department of Defense press office, who asked not to be named in accordance with military protocol, said in an electronic message that the US has supplied more than 7,000 precision-guided 155mm bullets to Ukraine since February 2022 had delivered. but added that he could not provide more specific information.
“We are acutely aware of the electronic warfare threat that Russia poses in Ukraine and that this threat is constantly evolving,” the official wrote.
“As a result, we are working closely with Ukraine, along with defense industry partners, to continuously assess and provide rapid solutions to these threats, and to ensure that Ukraine remains effective in a highly complex EW environment. This includes the ability to deliver precision munitions on the battlefield,” the official wrote, using EW to refer to electronic warfare.
Ukraine began the investigation because of the severity of the targeting failure, but also in the spirit of cooperation as a NATO ally, the people with knowledge of the project said. It was important, one of them said, that the Ukrainian military provide feedback to Western partners on the performance of their weapons against an advanced military power like Russia.
The researchers collected data on the use of nearly 3,000 Excalibur shells fired from US-supplied M777 howitzers on the front lines in Kherson in the south, Kharkov in the northeast and Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region between December 2022 and August.
The reporting showed that the percentage of confirmed successful strikes fell over a period from a high of 55% in January 2023 to a low of 7% in July and 6% in August, the months when Ukraine’s struggling summer offensive was at its peak. At one point, only 1 in 19 Excalibur rounds hit its target, according to one of the people familiar with the report. At that rate, the report calculated, the price of a successful strike rose from $300,000 in January 2023 to $1.9 million in August.
Commanders of Ukrainian artillery units confirmed that the Excalibur shells had proven highly accurate in hitting targets when they were first introduced in 2022, but had later been effectively neutralized by Russian jamming.
“We have some problems with accuracy,” said a commander of an artillery unit of the 45th Brigade operating in the Donetsk region, which uses the call sign Musician, in accordance with Ukrainian military protocol.
The American M777 howitzers used by Musician’s crew were praised for their capabilities when first introduced into the Ukrainian theater in 2022. But Musician said his unit stopped using Excalibur grenades in early 2023 due to their ineffectiveness.
Instead, he said, they fired unguided artillery shells, which are less accurate and require larger amounts of ammunition to take out a target.
Another commander, who gave only his first name, Oleh, for security reasons, said he had sometimes received other weapons, including laser-guided projectiles, that are less affected by Russia’s interference with GPS signals.
It is not unusual for weapon systems to lose effectiveness during intense warfare as determined adversaries find new ways to counter them.
The most effective countermeasure to combat GPS signal interference is simply to eliminate the source of the interference, military analysts said. Ukrainian forces have focused on eliminating fixed Russian radars and other jamming equipment, particularly in the Crimean Peninsula, allowing them to hit targets such as command posts and supply depots deep behind enemy lines, Withington said.
At closer range, both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries use mobile electronic jammers to ward off explosive drones, which use GPS to reach their targets.
But Russian jamming is not impenetrable, says Michael Bohnert, an engineer at Rand Corp. who specializes in electronic warfare in the US Navy. Countermeasures can include simple techniques such as changing the timing and location from which the munition is launched. Guidance systems that rely on lasers or maps of the terrain avoid the problem of GPS blocking. Western suppliers have also developed software patches for some projectiles to improve resistance.
“You can always find a way to get something through,” Bohnert said.
He noted that the Excalibur was designed in the 1990s, when GPS was in its infancy and electronic warfare technology was not nearly as advanced as it is today. “Those elderly people have fundamental problems,” he said. “Better weapons should have been given sooner.”
Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based research organization, warned that Ukraine’s Excalibur experience was an example of how superior weapons systems can be hampered by a lack of software adaptability and urged the Department of Defense focuses on promoting a culture of innovation and flexibility to be able to adapt quickly.
“The life cycle of a radio in Ukraine is only about three months before it needs to be reprogrammed or replaced as the Russians optimize their electronic warfare against it,” Patt wrote in his testimony. “The maximum efficiency of a new weapon system is only about two weeks before countermeasures are introduced.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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