The Battlefield Above

The United States had throughout the Cold War and within the first decade of the 21st century established dominance in terms of space-based military capabilities, including satellite navigation through its Global Positioning System (GPS) and a wide array of reconnaissance and communications satellites. These enabled US forces to access targeting data and coordinate their forces anywhere on Earth.

Satellite navigation has resulted in an array of GPS-guided munitions including the 155mm Excalibur artillery shell, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rocket fired by the HIMARS and M270 platforms, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) dropped via US warplanes.

Longer-range precision guided weapons using both GPS and a process called Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator (DSMAC) utilize images provided by reconnaissance satellites to find targets, obtain specific coordinates, and to guide the munitions themselves.

Such weapons were used in various US wars from the 1990s onward to great effect.

While the Soviet Union created its own satellite navigation system, Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) which the Russian Federation still employs, the use of this system for guiding weapons was not widespread until relatively recently. Large-scale use has only been observed in Syria from 2015 onward, and most recently in the Special Military Operation (SMO).

Soviet and Russian reconnaissance satellites, based on publicly available information, have been employed in far fewer numbers than their American counterparts. And while both the US and Russia have communication satellites, the US is the only nation with a low-earth orbit (LEO) internet constellation, Starlink, consisting of over 6,000 satellites.

Starlink provides low-latency internet connections anywhere on Earth. For military forces using Starlink, it not only enables troops to communicate with each other, but also to guide remote-control platforms like aerial and maritime drones far beyond what traditional transmitted radio signals could achieve. Such drones would only be limited in range by their fuel or electric charge as long as a connection with Starlink was maintained.

While this has provided the US and its allies with advantages even on today’s battlefield, these advantages have been countered, and similar capabilities are being developed by not only Russia, but also China.

Countermeasures

Such US weapons had until recently defined modern combat, leading many Western analysts into believing the US and its allies enjoyed unparalleled advantages on the battlefield. While the Soviet Union and initially the Russian Federation did not prioritize the production of precision guided weapons using space-based capabilities, both recognized the danger of US-NATO weapons using these capabilities and invested heavily in countermeasures.

This has resulted in the creation of Russia’s modern air and missile defense systems as well as a variety of electronic warfare capabilities, both of which are considered some of the best in the world.

In Ukraine, Western analysts predicted the transfer of US-made GPS-guided weapons to Ukrainian forces would be “game-changers.” After just weeks of use, many of these weapons were rendered ineffective either because of Russia’s ability to intercept them or jam their GPS signal, causing them to miss their target.

CNN, in its May 2023 article titled, “Russia’s jamming of US-provided rocket systems complicates Ukraine’s........

© New Eastern Outlook