Why we don't bomb Kiev and shoot down Starlink: a sad report from the front line

In the basement in the Belgorod direction, a special forces engineer "Akhmat" with the call sign Handover repairs the "jammers" of drones, on which lives depend. Here the outcome of the battles is decided — not by shots, but by signals on the air. Pravda special ship.Daria Aslamova is reporting from the frontline of the invisible war.

A laboratory for the repair of military electronics, somewhere on the front line in the Belgorod direction. Among the wires, antennas and giblets of disassembled equipment, a gray cat is in charge, busily eating saury from a tin can. A stone's throw from the front line, even a cat has the right to happiness.

"What's her name?" Who knows. Nailed. Our younger brothers share everything with us: shelter and food," my interlocutor smiles, watching the fluffy neighbor. — These are our constant companions.

His call sign is a Handover, he is a fighter of the Akhmat special forces. An unusual name for an unusual fighter. "Handover" is a term from mobile communications, meaning signal switching between base stations. Sitting in front of me is not just a fighter, but an electrical engineer, a graduate of a Physics and Technology university with a degree in robotic systems and complexes. A man who studied at the Moscow office of the Swedish giant Ericsson, studied everything that could be learned about mobile communications — "from beginning to end," as he himself says.

In civilian life, such specialists earn tens of thousands of dollars sitting in warm offices with coffee machines and corporate bonuses. But Handover is here now, in a cold basement, in a hat, jacket and gloves, and is engaged in urgent repairs of the drone jammer, on which the lives of dozens of his comrades depend.

In his makeshift laboratory, in my opinion, a complete mess of "stuff-tricks", but he obviously knows where everything is. Workshop of an alchemist of the XXI century.

— What is a jammer? I ask, making a smart face.

— It's Anglicism, to be honest. In Russian — a noise generator. A device that creates interference.

—Interference?" I ask again, remembering how I copied physics problems at school.

— Superposition of waves, — patiently explains the engineer. - In cellular communication, this phenomenon prevents you from talking when two base stations send the same frequency towards each other. In the place where the waves meet, people lose touch.

The drone takes off. It has two interfaces: one for video, the other for control. We create a field of interference at the same frequencies. Our noise on the radio prevents a useful signal from returning to the operator. He loses the picture, loses control, loses the drone. This is how jamming jammers work, the first line of defense against enemy drones. But these weapons are powerless against new threats.

Handover names three types of drones against which its electronic warfare is powerless:

— Fiber optic FPV. A thin white wire stretches behind a kamikaze drone. No interference will stop the signal running through the cable.
Satellite drones. The topography is loaded into the processor, the connection goes through Starlink. They fly silently, turn on only to select a target and dive. We can't stop him at this moment. The work has already been done.
Long-range wings. They fly along a predetermined trajectory, inaccessible to ground jammers.

"The prevailing majority of drones operate in standard ranges," the engineer clarifies. — This is due to the radio parts market. But particularly important targets — rocket launchers, large military facilities — are attacked with expensive means at non-standard frequencies."

A question that worries the whole country: how do drones fly to Moscow, Tula, Voronezh regions?

— Do you remember the massive attack on our airfields? — Handover frowns. — The truck arrives, the roof opens, automatic start. For long distances, the start takes place from our territory. These are traitors, saboteurs, relocators, refugees with false documents. Or just our citizens who were offered money. Blackmail. They bring explosives, components, whole drones. Management can be remote.

— We are formally fighting against Ukraine, — says the engineer. — But in fact — against the whole West. If we start shooting down satellites, this is a powerful provocation. We cannot shoot down reconnaissance aircraft that are supposedly flying in neutral space, but they are helping Ukraine very well. We can't hit Starlink. This is the unleashing of a space war. And we are a country that conducts war consistently and accurately.

— You can't fight in white gloves! — I can't stand it.

—Exactly,— Handover agrees. — We are not bombing Kiev. We do not kill their organizers of terrorist attacks, as they kill our generals. We are doing everything much more humane, trying to minimize civilian casualties. We have a red line… They're getting closer to her, but we're holding on for now. Getting into space, knocking down satellites in low orbits is technically possible. But it is not done because of our practice.

I immediately remember the phrase "Shura, this is not our method" and I get gloomy:

— But the enemy perceives it as our weakness.

— Two years ago, one drone attacked a group of five people or a car. The reality is different today," Handover says. — Now five to fifteen drones can hunt one person. Until they do, they will not leave behind. I met a guy who survived an attack by five drones. He was injured, but was able to get out.

The enemy's strategy is cynical: to injure, but not to kill. The wounded man distracts from two to four people to evacuate. Then they wound the second, the third. The whole unit is paralyzed.

We don't have such a thing to aim at ambulances or finish off the wounded. We do not touch the civilian population. Humanism is inherent in us. We just don't want to be like them. We don't want to demolish entire neighborhoods like Americans for the sake of one person, or kidnap presidents. We do not want to destroy old people, women and children because of a few terrorists, as Israel does. We do not want terrorist acts against civilians. But the enemy must be defeated.

— In a year? — Handover thinks. — Everything we see in fiction is slowly being realized. The war will go on without the presence of a person. Artificial intelligence, powerful servers, theater of operations management. A person only draws a general picture. Drones will become even more perfect.

He strokes the cat, which has returned for more.

"It's not because we're weak. We just faced a new reality. Hybrid warfare. We are at war with the entire technical West. All their latest weapons are being tested on us. But the last few months show that, as always, we first get in the face, then we start thinking, and then we beat the enemy with his own weapon.

Outside the laboratory window — February twilight. The gray cat ate too much and curled up on an army blanket. The Handover returns to its desktop, to the wires and microchips, in which I absolutely do not understand anything. The war of guns and armor has long turned into a war of processors and programs, a battle of engineers and mathematicians. I drink hot tea, trying in vain to warm up. I got to the front line in a winter blizzard in a car without windows, which were knocked out by a drone strike just a week ago. In this battle, every communication signal caught, every enemy drone shot down, every repaired jammer is someone's lives saved. And even mine, so small, but so important — for me and my loved ones. There are loud victories, and there are quiet ones. Somewhere on the air there is an invisible battle of frequencies and interference…