Russian forces have hit on a cheap way to foil US precision weapons in Ukraine

Ukrainian troops fire surface-to-surface rockets toward Russian positions in Donbas, Ukraine, in 2022. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images

• Another US precision-guided weapon is being foiled by Russian electronic warfare.
• The new weapon, rapidly delivered to Ukraine, has repeatedly failed in combat, a US official said.
• Several US weapons have repeatedly been beaten by electronic warfare.

Another US precision-guided weapon has apparently been foiled by Russian electronic warfare, a Pentagon official said.

The munition, which was rapidly developed and transported to Ukraine, is just the latest to fail in combat, highlighting the growing challenge of countering cheap Russian jamming tactics.

Last week, William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said a new version of a US precision weapon had failed to hit Russian targets partially because of Russian electronic warfare. LaPlante told a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel that the ground-launched weapon, a version of an air-to-ground system, had been quickly developed and deployed to Ukraine after relatively limited safety testing and little operational testing.

Once the weapon arrived in Ukraine, “it didn’t work for multiple reasons,” LaPlante said. Those included electromagnetic interference and complications from launching the weapon on the ground. “It just didn’t work,” he said.

He implied that Ukraine had lost interest in the experimental version, saying: “When you send something to people in the fight of their lives that just doesn’t work, they’ll try it three times and they’ll just throw it aside.”

While LaPlante didn’t confirm what the weapon was, experts told Defense One they suspected the weapon was the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, which Ukraine apparently began using in February.

Funding for the ground version of the air-to-air munition was approved in February 2023. The bomb has a reported range of up to 90 miles, ideal for targeting Russian logistics centers near the front lines, and relies on GPS as well as an internal system to keep locked onto its target. It’s unclear, though, if that’s what it was.

If this weapon did fail, it would not be the first US precision-guided weapon foiled by Russian electronic warfare. The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a valuable weapon for Ukraine that can be fired from its US-provided High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions have both been reported to repeatedly fail because of Russian jamming. US defense officials have noted these issues, adding that the US and Ukrainians were working on solutions and countermeasures.

In December, Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto said electronic warfare directed at some of “our most precise capabilities is a challenge.”

In March, Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Congress the GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells “had a 70% efficiency rate hitting targets when first used in Ukraine” but that “after six weeks, efficiency declined to only 6% as the Russians adapted their electronic-warfare systems to counter it.”

Patt said at the time that “the peak efficiency of a new weapon system is only about two weeks before countermeasures emerge.”

Electronic warfare has been a prominent feature on the battlefield in Ukraine, viewed as a cheap and effective method for both sides to jam GPS-guided weapons such as missiles and rockets and signal-driven systems including drones.

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