Ukrainian Special Ops Report Destruction of Russian 'Tirada-2' Satcom Jamming System

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) reported on its Telegram channel on Monday that it had successfully destroyed a Russian “Tirada-2”, an electronic warfare system designed to disable communication satellites, in the Donetsk region.

Operators from the 3rd separate regiment of the SSO had discovered the “Tirada-2” during reconnaissance operations undertaken in the area of Donetsk and, having determined its exact location, were then able to direct a missile attack by units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on its position which resulted in the destruction of the valuable Russian weapon.

Russia began developing the system in 2001 which was first mentioned publicly in 2017. A contract for the supply of the system was signed at the “Army-2018” forum in August 2018 between the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Elektropribor plant based in Vladimir, a town about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.

Following successful testing that autumn, the Russian state agency RIA Novosti reported in December 2018, that “Tirada-2” would enter service in the Central Military District of Russia in 2019.

On March 19, 2019, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) reported that its drone had recorded two jamming systems, one of which was believed to be the “Tirada-2,”near the village of Yuzhna Lomuvatka, about 60 kilometers west of Luhansk.

At that time analysts from InformNapalm, a volunteer initiative set up to monitor Russian actions in the occupied territories, assumed that the system was being used to jam the communication channel between the American RQ-4B Global Hawk UAV and the satellite.

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These drones, equipped with the HISAR (Hughes Integrated Surveillance & Reconnaissance) integrated surveillance and reconnaissance system, was conducting monitoring along the lines of contact in the Donbas.

The destruction of the “Tirada-2” complex will deprive Russian forces of the ability to disrupt the use of satellite communications by Ukrainian forces which are an important element of AFU operational coordination on the battlefield.