International- Russia is deploying electronic-warfare systems to counter drone attacks.
- But it's being forced to disable mobile internet services to prevent interference, reports said.
Russia is deploying electronic-warfare units to counter Ukrainian drone strikes, but it's having to disable mobile internet across swaths of the country to do so, Russian media reported.
According to Russian business daily Kommersant, government authorities ordered 4G networks to be switched off at night between January 25-30 in Leningrad, Novgorod, and Pskov in northwestern Russia to enable anti-drone units.
The report, citing Russian telecommunications sources, said that LTE wireless broadband and electronic-warfare units both operate on the same frequencies. It added that electronic warfare can interfere with cellphone data.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank that tracks the Ukraine conflict, commented that it's "unclear" what impact the internet has on electronic warfare.
It said that Russia may have turned off internet services while it tested electronic-warfare systems, or redeployed its air defenses.
In recent weeks Ukraine has struck targets hundreds of miles from its border in the north of Russia using long-range drones.
On January 18, Ukraine struck an oil terminal near St Petersburg, Russia's second-biggest city. Then on January 21, it struck a gas terminal near the city.
Electronic-warfare units work by scrambling the systems used to navigate drones to their targets. It's unclear if they have been deployed in Russia before in areas with modern telecommunications systems.
According to reports, GPS data in Poland and the Baltic region was recently disabled as a result of possible Russian electronic-warfare exercises.
Russia has been forced to reorient its air defense systems to cope with the new threat from Ukraine's drones in the south, with its military previously focused on countering possible attacks from NATO in the west.