Russia's newest military satellites keep stalling short of orbit, and Ukraine's top technology adviser says that is exactly why no one should relax. Serhii Beskrestnov, the presidential adviser on defense technology known as Flash, warns that once Russia completes its "Rassvet" satellite network, Moscow could steer its Gerans and missiles from space, and that Ukraine has to build the jamming to stop it before that day comes.
A working Rassvet would hand Russia a permanent link to its long-range weapons, letting it control drones and missiles online through satellites, what Flash calls "a small catastrophe."
Russia is nowhere near that yet: it has launched around 32 satellites but needs 200 to 250 for stable, round-the-clock coverage, and its most recent batch stalled in low orbit. Flash's point is that the reprieve is temporary.
"Russia is a space power," he wrote, and one heavy Angara rocket could loft much of the constellation in a single launch once its engines are fixed.
Ukraine has tried to choke the program at its source, striking a Russian space-rocket plant in mid-August and reaching for the Plesetsk cosmodrome days later, though the effort has only slowed it.
The MESH failure sets the warning
His alarm rests on a mistake, he says, Ukraine already made. For a year, he wrote, no one in the armed forces systematically worked on countering the MESH radio networks Russia uses to fly its jet Gerans, and no one shielded the capital with electronic warfare, even as the enemy openly built out the technology.
Breaking what he called a lifelong rule against criticizing colleagues, he "thanked" the former commander-in-chief and his electronic-warfare chief for the lapse, he wrote a bit earlier.
The result, he said, is that Russian Geran-5 are now striking under MESH control while Ukrainian specialists scramble to catch up.
The jamming must come first
With Rassvet, Flash argues, Ukraine cannot afford the same delay. The counter-system must not only be designed but actually fielded before the constellation is up, with the country's key infrastructure shielded by the time Russia's satellites reach orbit.
"This electronic warfare must ALREADY have closed all key infrastructure sites," he wrote.
Building it, he cautioned, will be neither fast nor cheap.
