Some American-made, precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proved ineffective on the battlefield, their accuracy badly diminished by Russian jamming efforts, according to Ukrainian commanders and a Ukrainian military research project.
The projectiles performed well when first introduced to the battlefield, but lost effectiveness as Russian forces adapted their defenses, two confidential Ukrainian reports found. The problem prompted the Ukrainian military to stop using the weapons, two artillery commanders said.
The reports, first revealed by The Washington Post, focus on the American-made Excalibur, a 155-millimeter guided artillery shell, and the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb or GLSDB. One of the reports was shown to The New York Times by people familiar with the research. The second report was described but not shown to a reporter. The individuals asked not to be identified because the reports contain classified military information.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The systems blast out so much interference that they drown out the GPS signal that guides the Excalibur’s targeting software, said Thomas Withington, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute and a specialist in electronic warfare.
The data in the reports corroborates comments made by Ukrainian military officials in recent months, including the former army chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny who said that some Western projectiles had afforded Ukraine significant superiority against the Russian forces, but only for a short period of time.
Ukrainian officials and military analysts have described similar problems with the Joint Direct Attack Munition kit called JDAM and shells used with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, both of which rely on GPS.
An official from the U.S. Department of Defense press operations office, who asked not to be named, in accordance with military protocol, said in an electronic message that America had supplied more than 7,000 precision-guided 155-millimeter rounds to Ukraine since February 2022, but added that he could not give more specific information.
The researchers collected data on the usage of nearly 3,000 Excalibur shells that were fired from December 2022 through August 2023 by American-supplied M777 howitzers on the front lines in Kherson in the south, Kharkiv in the northeast and Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukrainian forces have concentrated on knocking out fixed Russian radars and other jamming equipment, in particular in the Crimean Peninsula, which has then allowed them to hit targets like command posts and supply depots deep behind enemy lines, Mr. Withington said.
The original article contains 1,321 words, the summary contains 260 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!