Signal Troops - Ukraine 2022
During the 2022 Ukraine invasion, an inability to communicate -- up and down the chain of command and across branches of the Russian military -- impeded Moscow's war plans. Only three weeks after hostilities began, the Internet was already filled with photos of cheap Chinese civilian walkie-talkies that the Russian military was forced to use instead of professional equipment, intercepts of conversations of Russian officers who had to call each other on regular phones, and testimonies of prisoners who tell how they could not call for reinforcements or find the right way due to lack of communication with the outside world.
Having tried to understand the sources of this problem, Radio Liberty came to the conclusion that corruption, the general technical backwardness of the troops, and the factor of war on a foreign land, where cellular networks are in the hands of the enemy.
Evidence suggests that some of the roots of the Russian communication lapses lie in mismanaged development and procurement processes for things like tactical military radios, undertrained and under-deployed specialists, and the challenges of operating on foreign soil, where the enemy controls not only cellular networks but also wired communications that frequently serve as a reliable backup channel.
The predicament was on display over the first 24 days of the war through statements by captive troops, tapped conversations, and other clues posted by Ukrainian intelligence or others eager to highlight perceived weaknesses in the much larger invading forces, and reports suggesting an unsecured call might have aided Ukrainian forces in targeting at least one of four Russian generals who have reportedly been killed in the conflict.
One of the results has been varying complexity among the systems used by troops for voice and data communications, multiplying challenges particularly because they involve mixed air, land, and naval forces. In such cases, all troops are forced to use a system that's common to the least advanced among them.
Mixing so-called open and encrypted systems makes them only as strong as their weakest link. Some of those Russian forces' older equipment can be decrypted almost in real time and thus it's not useful to add the extra layer of complexity to operate the equipment when there's little benefit.
A deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, Yevgeny Meychik, pledged that "by the end of 2011, we plan to bring a radio station to every serviceman, to every combat vehicle." But while Meychik's plan presupposed use of the main tactical-level army radio system at the time, known as Akveduk, the Defense Ministry instead opted to pursue the development of a wholly new, sixth-generation system that came to be known as Azart. An upstart manufacturer, Angstrem, one of whose owners had been an adviser to Medvedev, was chosen for the project. Years of promises and many unmet deadlines to deliver the phones, dubbed "green crocodiles" by troops because of their half-meter-long antennas, followed.
The Russian military's failure to implement a modern, automated command-and-control system was a serious problem. By 2020, it was planned to equip just 45 brigades of the Russian ground forces with such a system, but Russia hasn't managed the task. The situation is even worse with the coordination between ground forces and the air force," which, he says, operates on its own command-and-control system. The resulting problems in coordination present another problem that seems to have manifested itself as the 2022 Ukraine war ground on. At the beginning of the war, the Russian Air Force acted quite successfully because the positions of the enemy were known to it. Now this doesn't always work. Documents appeared to show the Russian Air Force operating by making sorties to designated targets with little or no ability to communicate with ground forces who, for instance, might otherwise request a change of targets or air support.
In the absence of special, secure army communications, many soldiers and officers succumbed to the temptation to use ordinary phones. They would simply take out Ukrainian SIM cards and call Russia, allowing the Ukrainian military and intelligence not only to easily intercept the content of the conversations, but also to determine the location of the caller.
The BBC reported in the first days of the war that audio messages purportedly including Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov suggested that a commander in his guards corps was traveling to Moscow on the eve of the war to obtain "clean Ukrainian SIM cards," presumably leaving communications with those devices vulnerable to Ukrainian high-tech eavesdropping. The New York Times quoted U.S. military sources as saying many Russian generals talk on unsecured phones and radios, and in at least one case Ukrainians geolocated a call and killed him in an attack on his location.
The Russian Battalion Tactical Groups immediately went a great distance from the border. At the same time, there was a lack of equipment that could provide secure communication with the command post along with them. Usually these are several repeater cars, new communication towers need to be installed along the way, but they were only on the border with Ukraine. Even if relays were to go inland with the troops, there would still be one more problem: the need for experienced operators who can set encryption keys. If units are forced to involve even conscripts in the operation, such specialists may simply not be enough. It should also be taken into account that in the early days, Russian troops moved very quickly, and signalmen simply could not keep up with such a pace: after all, it is needed not just install a repeater, but also to find a suitable place for it, so that it does not get into the radio shadow, and so on. Indirectly, this indicates that the Russian offensive groups of troops did not expect to stay on the road for a long time.
At the beginning of the war, Russian aviation acted quite successfully, because the positions of the enemy were well known to it. Later this did not always work, given the lack of normal operational communication with the ground in the Russian military. The Ukrainian army, apparently, learned to use well, managing to quickly move potential targets from place to place.
Signal Communication Troops Day is celebrated every year in the Russian Army on October 20. For more than 100 years, since its foundation in 1919, signalmen ensure seamless communication in the most challenging conditions, playing a pivotal role in the special military operation.
Throughout the course of Russia's special operation, the significance of signal forces becomes paramount. They provide a lifeline of modern communications, including secure satellite, radio relay, mobile, and radio communications, maintaining constant connectivity for command and control. Their work ensures that orders can be transmitted without interruption, allowing for efficient decision-making in high-pressure situations.
The dedication of these servicemen is evident as they work tirelessly around the clock, regardless of weather conditions. Their efforts have been recognized with state awards and departmental insignia, highlighting their vital contribution to the armed forces.
Since the launch of the special operation, more than 2,000 signal soldiers had been honored with awards. In essence, signal servicemen are the lynchpin that ensure the operational effectiveness and success of Russia's military endeavors.
Russia blocked Discord, a messenger that was initially popular among gamers, but during the war in Ukraine, it became actively used by the Russian occupiers. As reported 08 October 2024 by Roskomnadzor, access to Discord is limited "to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, recruiting citizens to commit them, selling drugs, in connection with the posting of illegal information."
Russian users began to notice problems with the work of Discord in mid-September. On Tuesday, even before Roskomnadzor announced the blocking, the number of complaints increased sharply, especially many of them coming from the eastern part of Russia. The authors of Z-channels and Russian "militants" criticized the decision to block the messenger. They draw attention to the fact that Discord is used by Russian troops for combat control and write that due to the blocking, part of the command posts and headquarters may be left without broadcasting from drones, and there is no alternative to the messenger.
Putin stated at an extended meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Defense, which was held 16 December 2024 at the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation. "In order to reduce the time for decision-making when managing units on the battlefield, an inter-species information exchange system based on mobile devices has been created and has proven its effectiveness. More than six and a half thousand such systems have already been delivered to the troops. As a result of their use, the time for setting tasks has decreased by one and a half to two times. Now, by implementing advanced developments of the military-industrial complex, it is necessary to form as soon as possible a single information circuit combining reconnaissance and destruction assets at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of control."
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