Ukraine Deploys Electronic Warfare Against Hypersonic Threats as Russian Missiles Adapt Terminal Profiles

Domestic Lima System Disrupts Kinzhal Navigation While Patriot Intercept Rates Plummet Following Moscow's Software Refinements

WARSAW — Ukrainian forces have begun employing domestically developed electronic warfare systems to counter Russia's Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, even as modifications to the weapon's terminal flight profile have dramatically reduced intercept rates for Western-supplied Patriot air defense batteries defending the capital.

The Lima electronic warfare system, operated by Ukraine's Night Watch unit, has reportedly disrupted or diverted approximately a dozen Kinzhal missiles in recent weeks by spoofing GLONASS satellite navigation data during the terminal phase, according to field operators and analysis by former German defense official Nico Lange. The system transmits corrupted navigation data—embedding an audio payload of the Ukrainian anthem "Our Father Is Bandera"—to induce course deviations in satellite-guided munitions.

Intercept Rates Collapse Amid Tactical Evolution

Ukrainian and Western officials report that Patriot kill rates against Kinzhal and Iskander-M missiles around Kyiv fell from approximately 37% in August 2025 to roughly 6% in September, according to data compiled by the London-based Centre for Information Resilience and analyzed by the Financial Times. The decline correlates with Russian implementation of modified terminal guidance algorithms that execute abrupt pull-down maneuvers and lateral jinking immediately before impact.

The 4.7-ton Kinzhal, derived from the 9K720 Iskander-M ground-launched ballistic missile, achieves terminal velocities approaching Mach 5.7 when released from MiG-31K interceptors or Tu-22M3 bombers at altitudes reaching 15.5 miles. Moscow has modified both its mobile Iskander-M system, which fires missiles with ranges up to 500 kilometers, and air-launched Kinzhal ballistic missiles that can travel up to 480 kilometers.

Recent Russian tactics layer enhanced terminal maneuvers within mixed salvos, with attacks on September 18, 2025, seeing all four Iskander missiles launched that day bypass Patriot defenses entirely. Ukrainian Patriot operators frequently commit PAC-3 interceptors against decoy targets before identifying the hypersonic threat, officials acknowledge.

Terminal Guidance Modifications

Analysis by missile researcher Fabian Hoffmann at the University of Oslo indicates manufacturers regularly analyze interception data to refine missile performance, and Russia appears to be following this approach. The modifications represent software updates to guidance and control algorithms rather than airframe changes, with timing of terminal maneuvers, selection of dive angles, and bias toward track-breaking kinematics specifically designed to defeat Patriot engagement parameters.

Both ballistic missiles are more accurately described as unitary "aeroballistic" or "quasi-ballistic" systems, with trajectories that resemble ballistic arcs but are not perfectly ballistic, capable of executing aggressive terminal maneuvers particularly along the lateral axis of flight.

The enhanced terminal maneuvers exploit the PAC-3 MSE interceptor's kinematic envelope limitations when engaging targets executing high-G lateral shifts during the final seconds of flight. Patriot's AN/MPQ-65 series fire-control radar must maintain continuous track through final seconds; these strengths are stressed when targets suddenly steepen dive angles, throw cross-range maneuvers, or shorten time of flight with near-vertical terminal plunges.

A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report covering April to June 2025 noted that Ukraine has struggled to consistently operate Patriot systems due to Russia's new flight maneuvers.

Indigenous Electronic Warfare Response

Former German defense official Nico Lange told The Economist that Ukrainian engineers may have achieved a genuine "breakthrough," creating technology capable of jamming both hypersonic missiles and Russia's guided aerial bombs. Unlike traditional jammers that overwhelm signals with noise, Lima reportedly uses advanced digital suppression—combining jamming, spoofing, and cyber interference to mislead weapon guidance systems.

The Lima system was developed by the Night Watch electronic warfare team, which in August 2023 was tasked by the Ukrainian defense ministry with defending critical infrastructure including the Danube River port of Reni from Russian Shahed drones. Night Watch recruited intelligence sources to obtain specifications for Russian navigation receivers from Chinese manufacturers, then produced upgraded Lima versions capable of jamming all three Global Navigation Satellite System bands.

By injecting non-standard data into satellite navigation signals, Lima induces computational errors in missiles' inertial navigation systems during critical terminal guidance phases. When Lima disrupts the GLONASS connection, missiles' guidance systems revert to inertial navigation that quickly accumulates errors, causing missiles to miss targets by hundreds of yards. Recent imagery confirms one errant Kinzhal impact near Starokostyantyniv in western Ukraine.

Ukrainian electronic warfare specialists report the Lima system outperforms both Russian and Western electronic warfare equipment in countering Russian precision-guided munitions, attributing superior performance to design optimization for specific battlefield conditions, according to reports by The Telegraph.

Russian sources and propagandists have acknowledged the growing challenge, complaining about widespread Ukrainian electronic warfare deployment along bomb flight paths, causing munitions to "lose the ability for precise flight correction and begin to deviate from the intended course".

Strategic Implications

A former Ukrainian official described the Russian modifications as "a game changer for Russia," especially as Kyiv faces slower deliveries of U.S.-based air defense interceptors ahead of winter. Russian strikes this summer badly damaged at least four drone-making sites in and around Kyiv, including an August 28, 2025, attack on a facility producing Turkish Bayraktar drones that also damaged nearby EU delegation and British Council offices.

Alternative explanations for declining intercept rates include Russia increasingly using ballistic missiles outside Patriot-defended areas, and Ukraine's severe interceptor shortage likely forcing allocation of only one interceptor per incoming ballistic missile rather than the two or three previously employed.

Moscow is signaling a renewed winter campaign against Ukraine's energy grid, betting that improved endgame survivability will deplete interceptors faster and generate more leak-throughs against transformers and substations. Kyiv is pressing partners for additional Patriot batteries, reloads, and radar spares while European and U.S. production lines ramp to meet simultaneous Middle East and Indo-Pacific demand.

Ukraine's Ministry for Strategic Industries reports electronic warfare equipment production increased 340-fold in 2024 compared to previous years, with more than 140 companies now manufacturing EW systems. The country's integration of indigenous electronic warfare capabilities demonstrates the importance of adaptable, operationally responsive defensive systems in high-intensity conflict.

The balance now hinges on software, supply chains, and operator proficiency as much as pure missile performance. Each Russian raid that maintains Kinzhal and Iskander operational effectiveness extends coercive leverage; each delivery of Patriot components and doctrinal refinement marginally restores deterrence over Ukraine's critical infrastructure.

SIDEBAR: Lima Electronic Warfare System

Ukraine's Night Watch Develops Indigenous Counter to Precision Strikes

The Lima electronic warfare system was developed by Ukraine's Night Watch team, a specialized unit that received its critical operational test in August 2023 when the Ukrainian defense ministry tasked it with defending the Danube River port of Reni from Russian Shahed drone attacks.

Technical Architecture and Signal Processing

Unlike traditional electronic warfare systems that broadcast radio noise to overwhelm signals, Lima employs digital suppression—combining jamming, spoofing, and cyber information attacks on navigation receivers. The system transmits corrupt guidance data while simultaneously attempting to jam sensors inside Russian UMPK bomb kits and missile navigation systems, targeting the Kometa-M software running the precision guidance systems.

Lima uses the GPS spoofing method, impacting GPS antennas such as the Comet-M installed on Russian gliding bombs with low-power GPS signals from ground antennas, with power levels close to the electromagnetic signals of the GPS radio navigation system itself. This approach exploits the fact that ground-based transmitters can overpower actual satellite signals when receivers are at lower altitudes during terminal approach.

Night Watch recruited intelligence sources to obtain specifications for Russian GLONASS navigation receivers from Chinese manufacturers, then engineered upgraded Lima versions capable of jamming all three Global Navigation Satellite System bands—GPS (L1, L2, L5), GLONASS (G1, G2, G3), and potentially Galileo or BeiDou frequencies used by hybrid navigation systems.

Navigation Error Propagation

Lima targets the satellite link that provides primary guidance for most of the flight path. When this connection is lost due to jamming or spoofing, munitions must rely solely on Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), which are prone to cumulative errors—the longer the flight time without satellite correction, the greater the deviation.

For US JDAM kits, which use similar guidance principles, Circular Error Probable (CEP) is 1-5 meters using GPS. However, relying solely on INS, a JDAM's error can grow to 13 meters after just 38 seconds of flight or 30 meters after 100 seconds. For Russian UMPK kits, errors can reach 50-100 meters depending on flight duration.

The longer an incoming bomb remains in the air approaching the Lima transmitter, the more error is introduced into UMPK navigation computations, making the system increasingly less accurate the further away munitions are dropped from the transmitter. This creates a protective radius effect where standoff range directly correlates with miss distance.

Multi-Band GNSS Disruption

When Russian forces upgraded Shahed drones with triple-band GNSS receivers to defeat earlier Ukrainian jamming systems, Night Watch identified the manufacturer of these receivers in China and recruited intelligence assets to steal technical specifications. The team then produced an upgraded Lima version jamming all three Global Navigation Satellite System bands.

This iterative development cycle—exploiting recovered hardware from downed munitions to reverse-engineer countermeasures—exemplifies Ukraine's adaptive electronic warfare methodology. Night Watch refined the Lima jammer based on findings from recovered downed Russian hardware.

Spoofing Payload and Verification

The team embedded a unique technical signature: Lima spoofs enemy navigation receivers to report false geolocation coordinates placing them in Lima, Peru. This branding choice doubled as proof of concept—when rival Ukrainian systems allegedly using copied Lima code were tested with handheld GPS receivers within their jamming zones, the receivers displayed locations in Peru, confirming code appropriation.

The audio payload embedding "Our Father Is Bandera"—a Ukrainian anthem honoring WWII nationalist Stepan Bandera—represents the non-standard information injected into satellite navigation data streams. Any nonstandard information provided to satellite-guided munitions via targeted spoofing introduces navigational error, corrupting the missile's ability to compute accurate position solutions from the spoofed GNSS signals.

Operational Effectiveness Against Different Threats

Shahed Drones: Deployment around Reni caused attacking Shaheds to fail catastrophically—crashing in fields, lakes, or drifting across international borders into Romania and Moldova. The relatively long flight times of subsonic cruise drones allow maximum error accumulation.

Glide Bombs: Night Watch team member Narek Kazarian told Forbes the Lima jammer has been partially responsible for reducing Russian glide bomb accuracy, with Russian sources claiming it now requires 16 glide bombs to achieve the effect previously accomplished by one. Open-source monitoring channels noted Russian guided bombs targeting Zaporizhzhia frequently fall short by 10-15 kilometers, with some munitions failing to detonate due to not reaching programmed target coordinates.

Kinzhal Missiles: The Night Watch unit has reportedly disrupted or diverted approximately a dozen Kinzhal missiles in recent weeks. When Lima disrupts the GLONASS connection during terminal phase, missiles' guidance systems revert to inertial navigation that quickly accumulates errors, causing missiles to miss targets by hundreds of yards. Recent imagery confirms one errant Kinzhal impact near Starokostyantyniv in western Ukraine.

System Limitations and Russian Countermeasures

Russian military analysis suggests potential countermeasures including Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas (CRPA) installed on upper surfaces of UMPK kits, which provide nulling capability against ground-based interference. Lower surfaces could receive miniature radio direction finders capable of detecting spillover radiation from Earth's surface rather than satellites, allowing 100% probability of detecting GPS spoofing from ground stations.

Effectiveness remains inconsistent closer to front lines, where shorter bomb flight times reduce accumulated navigation errors. The system requires sufficient exposure time to induce mission-critical deviations, making it less effective against point-blank attacks or very high-velocity threats with minimal flight time in the terminal phase.

Complete suppression of GPS guidance modules for planning bombs and UAVs requires high-altitude heavy UAVs with powerful GPS jammers of several tens to hundreds of watts and preferably with directional antennas—capabilities beyond Lima's ground-based architecture.

Production Economics and Scale

Night Watch priced Lima three times below the closest competitor while claiming an order-of-magnitude higher efficiency. While Lima has not yet covered the entire front line, Night Watch could produce up to 300 units per month if required.

Ukraine's Ministry for Strategic Industries reports overall electronic warfare production increased 340-fold in 2024, with more than 140 companies now manufacturing EW equipment. The Defense Procurement Agency signed contracts for EW equipment exceeding UAH 6 billion ($162 million), with more than 11,000 electronic warfare systems contracted.

Independent Assessment

Former German defense official Nico Lange—now Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Munich Security Conference, who served as Chief of Staff at Germany's Ministry of Defense from 2019-2022—told The Economist that Ukrainian engineers may have achieved a genuine "breakthrough," with frontline EW capabilities potentially surpassing both Russian and Western systems.

Even Russian military bloggers acknowledged growing frustration, with pro-Russian Telegram channels claiming bombs are "losing the ability for precise flight correction" and striking off-target. The popular pro-Russia military information platform Dva Mayora, with over 600,000 subscribers, confirmed Lima's battlefield presence, stating the system "uses intelligent jamming algorithms enhanced by AI" and has "significantly reduced the frequency of glide bomb strikes in combat conditions".

The system's evolution from anti-drone operations to countering hypersonic ballistic missiles represents a significant capability expansion, demonstrating Ukraine's rapid battlefield adaptation through indigenous defense technology development driven by operational necessity rather than multi-year acquisition cycles.

 

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Sources

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Note: The Financial Times investigation referenced by multiple sources was published October 2, 2025, though the original FT article was not directly accessible. Multiple independent sources corroborated the reported Patriot intercept rate decline from 37% in August to 6% in September 2025.

Ukraine is Jamming Russia’s Mach 10 Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile With Music - National Security Journal