The unique qualities of the newest electronic warfare system "Pole-21", which is deployed today on the basis of base stations and antenna-mast systems of cellular mobile operators in Russia, we examined in one of our August articles. Weakly directional radiating antennas of the R-340RP complexes, of which there can be up to 100 in one Pole system, form over various low-altitude sections of the airspace of the Russian Federation an echelon of barrage and noise interference of varying intensity, designed to completely disorganize the enemy's TFR reaching targets by suppressing them onboard modules of GPS, GLONASS and Galileo radio navigation systems. Due to the intelligent computerized and high-performance control system for each R-340RP from a separate and perfectly protected command post, the maximum power of the suppressive signal can be generated by the modules only in those areas where the flight paths of enemy air attack vehicles pass. This makes it possible to avoid the side effects of REP on the navigation devices of cars and devices (navigators, smartphones and tablet PCs) of the population of our country in other areas of the R-340RP installation.
But for the correct modeling of the radiation of radio-electronic interference, it is necessary that the command post of the Pole-21 system on a regular basis receive information about the coordinates of the elements of the enemy's high-precision weapons that have invaded our airspace. Absolutely any means of active and passive radar can be used as sources of such coordinates. Take, for example, the standard ground-based radar systems used in RTV and air defense: "Sky-SVU", "Protivnik-G", 96L6E all-altitude detector or 76N6 low-altitude detector of the S-300PS / PM1 / 2 complexes. They are capable of providing comprehensive information on enemy low-flying VCs, but only up to their radio horizon (no more than 25-50 km). Behind the terrain, cruise missiles outside the terrain can be missed. Logically, our videoconferencing systems can use airborne radars, AWACS aircraft or airships with powerful surveillance or multifunctional radars of decimeter and centimeter ranges to increase the coverage area. But this is not convenient, on the other hand. Regular flights of A-50U aircraft in the number of several sides in one strategic air direction is not a cheap pleasure, and their use in a relatively peaceful time is completely counterproductive. The situation is similar with the above ground radars: there is absolutely no point in "driving" them in the amount of several dozen units on different ONs, and neither from an economic nor from a military-technical point of view. Airships AWACS - the way out, of course, is a good one, but, as we can see, their turn in our state does not reach them in any way, which is a little sad.
At the same time, both for "Field-21" and for other electronic warfare and air defense / missile defense systems, a specialized radar system was required that would work stably in all operational directions without exception, covering the airspace not only over the plains, but also in difficult terrain. At the same time, such a system was needed, the failure of several elements of which would not lead to the "collapse" of its entire structure. An extensive and inexpensive radar network was required, the base of which would be represented by a ready-made infrastructure. Its deployment should take from several months to a couple of years. And the answer was eventually found fairly quickly.
As it became known on September 1, 2016, specialists of the Ruselectronics holding company, which is part of the Rostec Group of Companies, developed a specialized radar system for detecting, tracking and targeting ultra-small and low-altitude cruise missiles flying at speeds up to 1800 km / h and at altitudes up to 500 m. Based on the described design of the new product, Ruselectronics fully relied on the concept used by the Scientific and Technical Center for Electronic Warfare (STC REB) in the development of the Pole-21 system.
The new complex was named "Rubezh" and became the first radar station in the Russian Armed Forces to use the radiation of GSM antennas of cellular operators as an emitting signal, not its own APM. These radio waves have a length of 30 to 15 cm and a frequency of 1 to 2 GHz (L-band) and are consistently present over almost any low-altitude segment of the airspace of our country, based on the developed coverage. "Rubezh" represents several tens to hundreds of highly sensitive receiving antennas that capture GSM waves reflected from air objects and, according to their power and reference indicators loaded into the database of the "Rubezh" control software, determine the EPR of air attack weapons, and then produce them classification.
"Rubezh" refers to multi-position radar stations / systems (MPRS), in which the goniometric-total-rangefinder method of radar is used, where the distance to the radiolocated object is determined by solving the problem of mutual synchronization of positions or by calculating the starting point of the total time delay of the arrival of the radio wave reflected from the air target, which is emitted by a GSM antenna at a specific antenna mast structure. This method is a bit like the goniometric-differential-rangefinder method of radar, where the coordinates of the target are determined due to the already known distance between two or more passive radars (antenna posts), as well as the elevation and azimuth position of the target in space relative to each passive radar of the system. But this method, using the laws of triangulation, does not provide for the presence of an emitting station and is relevant exclusively for ground-based electronic reconnaissance systems such as "Vega", "Kolchuga", etc.
In the case of Rubezh, we have several emitting GSM posts at once, chaotically surrounding one receiving antenna; all the distances between the emitting posts and the receiving station are known, and it becomes much faster and easier to calculate the location of the object both by the elevation and azimuth position of the target relative to two or more receiving stations, and by the difference in time and power of the incoming signal.
The limitation of the speed of the aircraft to 1800 km / h in this case is associated with the limitations of the computing performance of the command post "Rubezh". The denser the location of GSM-stations of cellular operators, and hence the reception posts, the faster the air object overcomes several reception posts at once. And if several dozen cruise missiles flying at high supersonic speeds are in the coverage area at once, the command post will simply not have time to receive the elevation and azimuth coordinates of these targets and at the same time calculate the range to it - the system may simply be overloaded, or its effectiveness will sharply decrease. After all, let's not forget that in order to determine the moments of radiation by a GSM post of a wave that was reflected from the CC and came to the receiving station, information about this must also reach the control station via the radio channel and receive digitization, which takes precious seconds and megahertz of system performance management of "Rubezh". This is the whole logic of the speed limitation, which will undoubtedly be minimized with the advent of new superconductors and supercomputers.
The deployment of the Rubezh radar complex will be much cheaper than the Pole-21 electronic warfare system, since for the construction of the Field, the presence of R-340RP non-directional jamming antennas is necessary at almost every base station, and for one Rubezh receiving station »There should be up to 10 emitting base stations of cellular communication. In simpler terms, for 8000 emitting BS, only 800 receiving stations are enough, which will be much easier to maintain or replace than to work with thousands of devices that unify R-340RP antenna modules with backup GSM antennas of the Pole-21 system. The characteristics of the "Rubezh" complex are simply unique. First, they rely on an advanced system of spatial frequency planning (coverage) of GSM networks of mobile operators, where there can be from 50 to 110 base stations per 10 km2 of territory. Secondly, the functioning of the elements of the "Rubezh" will be regular and as tenacious as possible: it is not possible to destroy all base stations with cruise missiles, and it is a disastrous and thankless time to calculate receiving stations among them, during which our aerospace forces will have time to erase all the close command centers of NATO. and destroy a third of their tactical fighter fleet.
In addition, from various scientific works of domestic and foreign specialists concerning the use of base GSM-stations in the interests of radio-technical troops and air defense, it is known that one positional radar area of a complex similar to the "Rubezh" is a circle with a radius of up to 55 km, in the center of which there is receiving station, and along the generating line and within its limits up to 10 BS: the area of the territory of operation of the 1st receiving station can reach 9499 km2, which corresponds to almost 4 territories of our capital.
As you know, the first impetus to the development of the concept of a radar system based on emitting GSM-stations of cellular communication appeared about 13-15 years ago. For example, in 2003, an absolutely ordinary international scientific and technical conference on radar "Radar-2003" was held, where, nevertheless, the issue of using decimeter BS radio waves (base stations) in multi-position radar stations, as well as their accuracy parameters, was considered in detail, implemented by introducing into the software the module for controlling the receiving position of the correlation integral and the inverse image of the probing signal due to the separation of the transmitting and receiving positions.
The British company "Roke Manor Research", with the support of the "British Aerospace" corporation, went even further, developing the advanced technology CELLDAR (Cellular Phone Radar), which makes it possible to track ground, surface and air targets, pulling out all its useful qualities from the L-band. Undoubtedly, the CELLDAR technology continues its development both in the Russian Federation and abroad; information about its progress in the West is practically not disclosed, and, apparently, is at a similar level. The use of the decimeter GSM-band has its drawbacks. So, when used against sea targets and cruise missiles flying over the wave crest, L-band waves have the property of excellent re-reflection from the water surface, which creates numerous and intense natural interference that requires additional use of hardware and software filters attached to radar systems.
Also, 6 times longer than in the X-band (3.5 cm), the L-band wave (18-20 cm), used in weakly directional GSM emitters not intended for radar, does not allow achieving such a high resolution as to provide, for example, radio command guidance of an anti-missile at a target or to issue precise target designation for missiles with ARGSN for the next air target in a dense swarm. But there is also a plus: the propagation of the decimeter range in the atmosphere is much better than that of the shorter and higher frequency X, G or Ka-bands.
Summing up the results of the review of promising multi-position radar stations based on L-band GSM networks of the "Rubezh" type, we draw a conclusion about the economic and military-strategic productivity of their use in the armed forces for the timely detection in the country's airspace of highly intelligent, stealthy air attack weapons that circle around the radii actions of the AWACS radar of the Aerospace Forces, as well as the engagement lines of long-range air defense systems and military air defense systems. The maintenance costs of this complex will be several times less than that of standard radars such as "Gamma-C1" or "Protivnik-G", and the risks for the personnel of military units are minimal.
