The reconnaissance flight of the American strategic unmanned aerial vehicle RQ-4 "Global Hawk" along the Russian borders of the Republic of Crimea, as well as 217 km from the line of contact between the territories of Donbass controlled by the Armed Forces of Novorossiya and the Ukrainian paramilitary forces, did not cause us such surprise, which was observed in the case of similar incidents at least a couple of years ago. Reconnaissance operations by manned and unmanned aircraft of the US Air Force and Navy near the Russian border in the European theater of operations have become part of the range of daily tasks for US flight and operator personnel deployed at air bases in Western Europe and the Mediterranean. One of the "vigilant" regulars, now and then conducting optical-electronic and radio-technical reconnaissance on the Crimean coast, in the depths of its territory, as well as in the locations of strategically important objects of the fleet and aerospace forces of the entire Southern Military District (including the Krasnodar Territory), in recent months became the long-range anti-submarine aircraft of the US Navy P-8A "Poseidon". To intercept this intruder, the Su-27 of the Russian Aerospace Forces have already risen more than once.
Global Hawk, on the other hand, in the immediate vicinity of Russian airspace is a "phenomenon" more rare, but very "well-aimed". There are no pilots and operators of radio-technical and optoelectronic complexes on the strategic drone, and therefore it is not so scary for the European command of the US Armed Forces to send the car on very risky missions to the enemy's territory, saturated with the best ground and aviation air defense-missile defense systems, as in the case of “Poseidons "or AWACS E-3C / G" Sentry "aircraft. The trajectory of the stratospheric unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, which took off from the Sicilian air force Sigonella, first passed along the western air borders of the Crimea (over the western part of the Black Sea). Then, after entering the Ukrainian airspace over the Nikolaev region, the car at an altitude of 15,500 meters proceeded towards the Western Azov region and, having reached Melitopol, began to return to the base.
If you look at the map of Southern and Southeastern Ukraine, and then project onto it the maps of the current Donbass theater of operations, as well as the conditional Crimean theater of operations, it will become obvious that the purpose of such a daring rapprochement of the RQ-4B with our borders is to identify all recently deployed military objects. which play key roles in ensuring the defense capability of the Republic of Crimea, as well as the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, because we all know well that in the summer near Feodosia an anti-aircraft missile division S-400 "Triumph" was deployed, which may have attached radar systems (including RPN 92N6E) on the heights of the Crimean mountains to increase the radio horizon when intercepting low-altitude cruise missiles. Also, the Crimean air defense has a lot of auxiliary radar systems, electronic warfare systems and passive electronic reconnaissance, which may be of interest to the military departments of the leading NATO member states. There is another significant reason for the increased frequency of flights of American reconnaissance aircraft over the Mediterranean basin.
So, on November 7, a month after the high-altitude reconnaissance operation carried out by the RQ-4B "Global Hawk", the ministers of defense of Ukraine and Moldova made quite bold, bordering on greyhound, statements according to which the Russian Task Force of Russian Forces should be withdrawn from Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublika together with arsenals stored in military warehouses near N of the item. Sausage. According to S. Poltorak and A. Shalaru, the Ministry of Defense of Moldova and Ukraine are preparing a special "green corridor" and documents coordinating with the OSCE, according to which more than 1200 Russian servicemen with 26 thousand tons of ammunition for MBT, self-propelled guns should be withdrawn through the territory of Ukraine and multiple launch rocket systems.
Against the background of the fact that the Russian side under no pretext will leave the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, unrecognized by the West, and, in support of its firm policy, conducted anti-terrorist and large-scale military exercises in Pridnestrovie this summer, any "pearls" of Poltorak and Shalaru are a real insane ravings of the Pronatovskys. As a matter of fact, it is not surprising for us to hear about such "Napoleonic" plans on the part of Poltorak, because it was this "professional soldier and general" who, in a news report on Ukrainian TV channels in October 2014, found the "south-northern »Approaches to Lugansk. And these imbeciles are going to develop a "green corridor" for our OGRV! It looks more than funny, but it's not that simple.
Hidden in these plans is a very, very dangerous military operation for our Armed Forces, which is being worked out by the commands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Moldova and Romania together with the American officers, aimed at expelling or suppressing our contingent in the PMR with a further shift in the vector of hostilities towards Crimea and escalation combat operations along the entire length of the sea and land borders of the Southern Military District. This is evidenced by almost everything: from the transfer of Ukrainian S-300PS to the Kherson and Odessa regions to the "unpacking" of another large warehouse of Soviet armored vehicles and artillery in the Khmelnytsky region for sending to Donbass. Naturally, all these systems and units are preparing for a big confrontation. The appearance of the Global Hawk is another harbinger of war. Since any escalation in the Eastern European theater of operations will take place with the information and technical support of the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Alliance, their commands are currently trying to form for themselves the most clear strategic picture of this theater of military operations. They are trying to determine the location of the facilities of the Radio Technical Troops, the Black Sea Fleet, to find out the numerical and technical composition of the DPR Armed Forces, etc., since it is they who will take part in the continuation of the conflict in Transnistria, near the Crimean border and in the Donbass.
The RQ-4B avionics make it possible to do this, but only partially. "Global Hawk" is equipped with a multifunctional side-looking radar (BO) with an active HEADLIGHT AN / ZPY-2 "MP-RTIP", operating in the centimeter X-band. A high energy potential station has a variety of modes of operation, including a synthetic aperture (SAR) mode. The resolution of mapping the earth's surface and detecting ground targets in this mode can range from 30 cm to 1 meter. The radar has a range of up to 200 km. AN / ZPY-2 can clearly classify ground targets by their effective scattering surface, and if the target is radio-emitting, it can be identified by passive antennas of electronic reconnaissance equipment thanks to the electronic list of reference emissions loaded into the AN / ALR-89 RWR.
But in the case of reconnaissance of the deployment areas of Russian divisions and brigades of the S-300/400 air defense missile systems, as well as the surveillance radars attached to them, the Global Hawk has big problems: their on-board radars are suppressed by mobile wide-range electronic warfare stations 1RL257 Krasukha-4, and the approximation is determined in advance by RTR complexes of type 1L222 "Avtobaza" or "Valeria". The accuracy and range of effective reconnaissance of the RQ-4B "Global Hawk", subject to the operation of the above complexes, are ten times lower. This is also the reason for the increasingly frequent flights of these scouts at our borders. They are trying to find "gaps" in our electronic warfare and "enlighten" with their radars the territory with strategically important positions.
Ours do not sit still either. So, even on the night of June 17-18, 2015, the Russian Tu-214R strategic optical and electronic reconnaissance aircraft (RA-64514 board) flew along the northern and eastern borders of Ukraine in order to test and fine-tune the MRK-411 radio complex capable of conducting subsurface locating of targets located deep in the soil and sands. The car made its way from the air borders with the Chernihiv region to the Novoazovsky district, and then to the Crimea. When flying over Yeisk, MRK-411 without any problems assessed the tactical situation on the Ukrainian side of the contact line near Mariupol. The flight appeared on the online map of the information resource "Flightradar24.com", since then the transponder was turned on on the car, now there is no information about flights, but the cars with the "beacons" turned off probably continue to closely monitor the actions of the Ukrainian troops near the front line in Donbass …
A pair of Tu-214Rs also have "reinforcements" as the first flight prototype of the strategic unmanned reconnaissance vehicle "Altius-M", which was re-discovered at the KAPO airfield. Gorbunov at the beginning of October 20, 2016 with a European satellite. Machine with 2 economical RED A03 / V12 diesel engines with 480 hp each. can be in the air for 48 hours and move 5,000 km from the air base. Under the radio-transparent nose cone, it is also planned to place a side-looking radar with AFAR, with the help of which our UAV will be able to conduct a similar RTR, but from significantly shorter distances. This device is devoid of a crew, and therefore can be sent to the most unpredictable parts of the airspace, just like the Global Hawk.
