Key Russian war mystery solved: it's their satellites, stupid

Russian satellite: UKRINFORM

Military experts, scholars at defense think tanks, and probably even Pentagon generals have puzzled over why the Russian war effort has gone so poorly since Russia attacked Ukraine more than year ago.  Russia’s strategic mistakes and tactical losses began with its failure to take Kyiv in the early months of the war.  In April of last year, the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the area around Kyiv with most of its units driven back into Russia itself.  Russia’s military only briefly held Kharkiv province before being driven out by a Ukrainian offensive last September.  They lost the port of Kherson last November.  Since then, the war has stalemated along a 600-mile front line from the Russian border through the Donbas to what remains of the Russian “land-bridge” to Crimea.  Currently, the big battle of the war is for Bakhmut, where Russia is reported by the BBC to have lost as many as 30,000 soldiers over the past six months.

Putin has lost hundreds of field combat commanders.  He fired the first three overall ground commanders he put in charge of his war.  As many as a dozen senior generals have been killed in action by Ukrainian attacks on Russian unit headquarters in Ukraine.  On the battlefield, there are reports of dissention in the Russian ranks and mass desertions of entire platoons.  At home, Putin faces increasing criticism for the poor performance of his army from his right flank.  Leaders of militias fighting for Russia like the Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have been outspoken in their criticism of General Valery Gerasimov, the latest Chief of Staff of the Russian Army, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.  At this point in the war this amounts to criticism of Putin himself.

And for good reason: according to the Ukrainian Embassy, since the war bean Russia has lost more than 150,000 soldiers, 3,500 tanks, 7,000 armored personnel carriers, more than 2,500 howitzers, about 500 multiple rocket launch systems, and nearly 600 aircraft and helicopters.

I have to stop here.  Just look at those figures!  I remember when I wrote that Russia had lost 400 soldiers, then a thousand, then 10,000, and I remember when Ukraine claimed they had knocked out Russian 500 tanks. The losses above are heavy for an army that began the war sending a force of 140,000 to attack Ukraine.  Russia has by now lost that many soldiers and more.  Putin was forced to impose a draft of 300,000 citizens, causing millions of young men to flee the country, and now there are conflicting reports that he's doing it again.

Right from the beginning, Russia chose to engage, apart from the battlefield, what can only be called a strategy of war crimes, launching missiles, drones, and aircraft attacks on civilian targets in population centers from one end of Ukraine to the other.  The port of Mariupol lies completely in ruins.  Having pulled out of Kherson, Russia has begun shelling the city relentlessly, even though there are few military targets within the city’s borders.  The International Criminal Court at The Hague has charged Putin with crimes against humanity.

And so back to the question at hand:  why has Russia, long considered one of the world’s superpowers, conducted such a disastrous, losing war against its much less powerful neighbor?  A large part of the answer is Russia’s deficit in modern satellite intelligence technology.

Way back in April of last year, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) published a little-noticed story about the poor condition of Russia’s network of intelligence satellites:

“Russia has long been saddled with a small and inadequate fleet of communications and surveillance satellites that in many cases rely on either outdated technology or imported parts that are now harder to come by due to Western sanctions,” they reported.  “In principle, Russia is already practically blind in orbit, " Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based analyst and expert on Soviet and Russian space programs told RFE/RL.  “Russia has two optical reconnaissance satellites in orbit now, called Persona,” Hendrix said, “but they were launched between seven and nine years ago, meaning they may be near the end of their working life.”

According to a story in Popular Mechanics published at the end of March, “Russia has just two optical intelligence (photographic) satellites in orbit now.”  RFE/RL reports that only one of them passes over Ukraine, and then only once every two weeks, meaning Russia is effectively blind the majority of the time to what the Ukrainian army is doing on the ground.

RFE/RL goes on to report on the poor quality of the imagery the Russian reconnaissance satellites are capable of.  “The maximum resolution of the Persona satellites is believed to be 50 centimeters per pixel,” Hendrix told RFE/RL.  U.S. reconnaissance satellites “see” the earth with a resolution of 5 centimeters per pixel.  Even commercial American satellites such as those used by Maxar Technologies are capable of 15 centimeters per pixel resolution.

Russia’s satellite rocket launch program has been “plagued by problems,” according to RFE/RL.  Because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union after Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, Russia has not been able to import the electronics needed for its satellites and heavy launch rockets, causing Russia to have launched only three rockets capable of carrying satellites.  Now new sanctions, a consequence of the Russian war against Ukraine, have halted the importation of even more computer and optical technology, most of which comes from Germany.

Russia’s GPS satellite network, called GLONASS, is equally old and unreliable.  According to RFE/RL, in order for its GPS system to work properly, they need 24 satellites in orbit.  Russia currently has only 23, and the entire network is so old, it’s in danger of becoming useless.

According to the recent report in Popular Mechanics, “While the GLONASS GPS satellites work, users (troops in the field) lack terminals and electronic maps to utilize satellite navigation…which only exacerbates the Russian military’s rigid and compartmentalized command system.”

It is unknown how accurate the Russian GPS system is, but the U.S. satellite navigation system used by the military can pinpoint places on the ground to an accuracy of inches.  The U.S. GPS system is being used in combination with our real-time satellite photo intelligence to help Ukraine in targeting its artillery and HIMARS rocket strikes. 

Ukraine uses drones to locate a target and relays the grid coordinates back to higher command, which sends them to U.S. intelligence based in Germany.  American military optical satellites and GPS are used to identify the target and pinpoint its location.  New grid coordinates are then relayed back to Ukrainian troops in the field who use them to aim artillery and HIMARS strikes. 

There are reports that HIMARS rockets armed with air-burst anti-personnel warheads have been used to hit wave attacks by Russians around Bakhmut. Russia’s multiple launch rockets that are equivalent to our HIMARS use that country’s less accurate GPS technology, which probably accounts for Russia’s disproportionate battlefield losses in Bakhmut, where Ukraine is said to be killing seven Russians for every soldier they lose.

Russia has been throwing bodies at Bakhmut, but they get accurate photo intelligence of that battlefield only once every two weeks when one of their optical satellites passes overhead.  The U.S. has geo-synchronous satellites in orbit over Ukraine, both military and civilian, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  I’ve been wondering why Russia’s artillery is so inaccurate.  This column has published two Maxar satellite photos showing Russian 155 mm artillery barrages wasted on empty agriculture fields pock-marked by shells that missed their targets.  Now we know why. 

Russia’s entire satellite intelligence network is outdated and inaccurate, and so is its GPS system.  The troops down in the trenches firing howitzers don’t even have the GPS locator screens and maps necessary to aim their weapons, and they don’t have the photographic intelligence to find targets. 

A military reconnaissance satellite that passes over Ukraine only once every two weeks is no way to win a war, Vladimir.