What Electronic Warfare Means in Ukraine

Plain-English explanation

Electronic warfare (EW) is the use of the electromagnetic spectrum — radio frequencies, radar bands, satellite navigation signals — to attack an adversary, protect friendly forces, and collect intelligence. It breaks into three classic categories: electronic attack (jamming an adversary's communications, GPS receiver, or drone control link), electronic protection (hardening your own systems against jamming or spoofing), and electronic support (listening, locating, and characterizing enemy emitters to build a picture of their activity).

In Ukraine, all three categories are in simultaneous, continuous use. The distinction between jamming and spoofing is worth making precise: jamming overwhelms or denies access to a signal — a drone relying on GPS loses its fix and falls or returns to base. Spoofing is more dangerous because it substitutes false data for genuine signals. A drone, missile, or ship that believes a counterfeit GPS fix will continue flying with apparent confidence on a completely wrong course. The difference matters operationally: systems built to detect GPS absence may not detect GPS deception. Russia has employed both, but has increasingly shifted toward spoofing as Ukraine's drone operators learned to switch to inertial or visual backups when GPS dropped out entirely.

What is new in Ukraine is neither the technology nor the principle — both sides had EW doctrine before 2022. What is new is the speed of adaptation, the density of systems at the tactical level, and the fact that EW has become a daily combined-arms function rather than a specialist supporting capability. According to IFRI's June 2026 comprehensive battlefield analysis, EW has been transformed from a centralized, high-power function into "a continuous, software-driven contest embedded at the tactical level, where adaptability, integration, and spectrum management matter more than centralized, high-power jamming systems."

Why it matters in Ukraine

Russia entered the war with a large, capable EW establishment — systems like Palantin, Zhitel, and Moskva-1 — capable of networked, multi-system disruption across wide areas. According to analysis from the U.S. Army's Operational Environment enterprise on Russia's Palantin system, its key advantage is the ability to combine multiple EW subsystems into a single working network. Yet the war has exposed limits in that centralized model. Ukraine adapted faster at the tactical edge, fielding small, cheap, software-defined EW kits at the squad and platoon level — enabling individual units to jam drone control links, disrupt GPS near their positions, and protect their own communications without waiting for centralized EW support.

The results are measurable. By April 2026, Ukrainian Ground Forces EW head Maksym Skoretskyi stated that Ukrainian EW systems were neutralizing more than 50 percent of Russian aerial assets — disrupting control channels, jamming navigation, and interfering with video transmission links, according to Ukrainska Pravda. The EW effect on Russian cruise missiles is also documented: by jamming the primary GPS guidance, Ukrainian EW forces missiles to switch to less effective optical or inertial backup guidance, causing them to miss targets by 100–200 meters or more. Russia has evolved in response, shifting from predictable GPS reliance toward intelligent spoofing and corrupted data-packet attacks that attempt to overload drone receiver logic rather than simply deny signal. The emergence of fiber-optic-guided drones on both sides — which have no radio link to jam — marks the most significant adaptation: Ukraine's fiber-optic drones operate entirely outside the electromagnetic attack surface, and Russia is following suit.

Why it matters to U.S. and allied warfighters

Russia's GPS spoofing has already crossed NATO's borders. In May 2026, Defense News reported that Lithuania had counted 36 active GPS spoofing transmitters in Kaliningrad — up from just three at the start of 2025 — with an interference radius of approximately 450 kilometers, covering the Baltic states and much of Poland. Those transmitters have been used to steer Ukrainian strike drones off course into NATO airspace, causing incidents in Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. The transmitters have been localized to two coastal sites near Kaliningrad's naval base, according to research from Gdynia Maritime University and the University of Colorado. This is no longer a theoretical NATO vulnerability — it is an active operational problem.

NATO's June 2026 Atlantic Council report on air-domain deterrence identifies two specific EW gaps that European allies must close: insufficient capacity to collect, analyze, and distribute electronic intelligence, and insufficient depth in airborne electronic attack. The report recommends podded EW solutions deployable across multiple platforms in the near term, and autonomous alternatives to specialized crewed EW aircraft in the medium term. European allied EW capability is currently concentrated in too few specialized platforms to support both strike and defensive operations simultaneously. For U.S. warfighters deploying to European theaters, integrating with allied EW systems requires understanding these gaps, not assuming they are filled.

Why it matters to industry and manufacturing

The speed of EW adaptation in Ukraine — both sides cycle through countermeasures and counter-countermeasures in weeks, not months — has major implications for how EW equipment must be designed and procured. Systems that cannot be updated through software in the field are effectively obsolete within one to two equipment cycles. The U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army have all experienced this problem with legacy EW platforms that require hardware modification to accommodate new threat frequencies or modes.

For manufacturers, the Ukraine EW competition has demonstrated that software-defined radio architectures are no longer optional — they are the only platform with a viable operational lifespan in a contested EW environment. At the component and supply-chain level, the heavy use of off-the-shelf communications electronics in Ukrainian and Russian EW systems — many with Chinese-sourced parts — underscores both the supply-chain trust problem and the dual-use export control challenge. Allies and manufacturers building EW systems for NATO use must be able to verify the origin and integrity of components operating in systems that will interact with classified GPS receivers, encrypted communications, and allied networks.

Common misunderstandings

• "Jamming is the same as spoofing." They are meaningfully different. Jamming denies or degrades a signal; a receiving system that notices the absence can switch to backup procedures. Spoofing substitutes a convincing false signal; the receiving system may continue operating with apparent confidence on bad data. As Thomas Withington, a recognized EW analyst, explained to Defense News: "The idea behind spoofing is to create deception."
• "EW operates at the brigade level and above." Ukraine has pushed EW down to the squad level, with individual units carrying portable jammers and electronic protection systems. This is now NATO doctrine direction as well: the LCI-X initiative explicitly calls for connecting squad-level EW into the broader layered counter-UAS architecture.
• "Fiber-optic drones make EW irrelevant." EW remains essential for the majority of drone threats that still use radio links, for missile and guided-weapon disruption, and for communications protection. Fiber-optic drones are one countermeasure in a specific mission set (short-range FPV strikes), not a blanket solution.
• "NATO's EW problem is primarily a hardware gap." The Atlantic Council's 2026 analysis emphasizes that electronic intelligence must be integrated into targeting and battle management systems. The bottleneck is as much data integration and doctrine as it is hardware inventory.

Related technologies and concepts

Electronic warfare is directly upstream of resilient PNT: the GPS jamming and spoofing that degrades navigation and timing infrastructure is an EW attack, and the architecture for defending against it — M-Code, inertial navigation, visual homing — is the PNT layer's answer to the EW problem. The two fields cannot be separated in a contested environment.

EW also underpins counter-UXS: jamming and spoofing a drone's control link, GPS receiver, or video feed is the non-kinetic kill mechanism in a layered counter-drone architecture. The EW layer handles threats that do not require kinetic interception, preserving costly interceptor missiles and kinetic systems for threats that cannot otherwise be defeated.

Further reading and videos

The Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) published a comprehensive June 2026 analysis, "Mapping the MilTech War: Eight Lessons from Ukraine's Battlefield," at ifri.org, which addresses EW, drone adaptation, and the electromagnetic contest in systematic detail. Defense News's May 2026 reporting on Russian GPS spoofing of Ukrainian drones into NATO airspace is essential reading for understanding the current threat environment. The Association of Old Crows' AOC Europe 2026 conference in Helsinki (May 2026) brought together EW practitioners from across NATO and produced publicly available session summaries at jedonline.com. For official Ukrainian statements on EW effectiveness, Ukrainska Pravda's English defense desk publishes regular reporting from front-line commanders.

How Helicon works in this area

Helicon's EW and Counter-Electronics capability area focuses on moving Ukrainian-developed EW and spectrum-management technology — tested in the highest-density EW environment in modern warfare history — into U.S. and allied programs. Helicon Labs provides the software integration layer that connects these tools with allied C2 and sensor architectures. The company does not develop offensive EW systems; its role is in technology transition and trusted production.

---

Key sources, explained

Each card explains why a source matters, what it teaches, and the Helicon takeaway. We link out — we do not republish.

Cited sources

Every factual claim above traces to these sources, confirmed live as of the research date. Independently verify before operational use.

• MASK_31
• MASK_32
• MASK_33
• MASK_34
• MASK_35