Russia blamed for jamming GPS signals to British military jets I Ukraine: The Latest, podcast

Russia blamed for jamming GPS signals to British military jets I Ukraine: The Latest, podcast

I’m Dom Nichols and this is Ukraine the latest today we bring you the latest news from Ukraine look at how Russia has been blamed for jamming GPS signals on British military jets and ask quite why bellarus a country hosting Russian nuclear missiles is rattling the nuclear saber once more braing takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you With Victory if we give president zilinski the tools the ukrainians will finish the job Slava ukraini nobody’s going to break us we’re strong we’re ukrainians it’s Monday the 1st of July 2 years and 133 days since the fullscale invasion began today I’m joined by transport correspondent Gareth corfield data editor Ben Butcher and former tank commander turn chemical and biological weapons expert heish de Breton Gordon I started with the latest news from Ukraine and firstly president zalinski has demanded the West lift weapon restrictions on targeting Russia after accusing moscow’s forces of dropping more than 800 Glide bombs in a single week speaking on X on Twitter he said this week alone Russia has used more than 800 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine against our cities and communities against our people against everything that makes life normal he said Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs including Russian combat aircraft wherever they are this step is essential now on Sunday yesterday Russia hit Ukraine’s two largest cities with glide bombs killing one injuring I think I seen a dozen but anyway killing others including an 8mon injuring others an including an 8-month-old baby in harke that was after a postal Depot was targeted in ke missile fragments damaged an apartment building but there were no deaths reported M zeny obviously you will know he he’s repeated his appeal for for permission to strike further into Russian into Russia he’s speaking after seven were killed and at least 38 injured strike on the southern Ukrainian town of vilans on Saturday evening speaking last night he said longrange strikes and modern air defenses are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian Terror now also over the weekend a Russian ballistic missile attack on the southern city of Deno injured seven damaged scores of residential buildings this comes from Regional Governor Sur lisak speaking earlier today the Drone and artillery attack on the Nicolle District late last night also damaged power and gas lines as well as other infrastructure starting off the weekend after we were on air there was a Russian strike on the city on Friday evening that destroyed the top four floors of an apartment building killing at least one and wounding at least a dozen including a seven-month old girl the images you’ll see of that the photographs in the social media there’s a large apartment block with just a chunk a whole chunk just bitten out of it now the Ukrainian military said this morning it had repelled Russian attacks near SP and novali sandrika in the Eastern donx region this was a day after Russian forces claimed to have taken control of both Villages they are to the Northeast and southwest of bmot just to to put us on the map back moot picture back moot about 60 K north of Donette City itself I’ll be talking more about this area in a moment now the Eastern procross Front which is around this area including these Villages Remains the site of the fiercest fighting apparently Ukraine’s general staff said 42 assaults have been repelled out of a total of 142 battles across the entire country just on Sunday alone they said heavy fighting was taking place in the area around the village villages yesterday elsewhere across the country and I looked to today’s UK defense intelligence tweet which has given more information there they say invol chance so up the North and nor north of Han itself fighting is reportedly focused on the aggregate plant there Ukrainian forces said to be attempting to dislodge Russian troops from the strong point that’s in the southeast of the town the town remains contested we do know that that Ukraine has made advances in the south and west of the town over the last couple of weeks elsewhere in the country down around chivar in in donx in the dbass there had been no confirmed Russian advances over the last three days over the weekend combat is reportedly most intense in yanisa and kischka to the south of chivar uh Ukrainian forces have reportedly counterattacked into kkea making tactical gains now in the in the hurk area west of donet City Russian forces have made further advances with the town of Crash noriva around the town of RKA and are now likely in control of most of the town this is about 10 K’s du west of Donette City itself um Ukrainian forces now already thought to be present in the extreme north of the settlement UK defense intelligence say that area kind of a div Kerper CR so Northwest of Donette City itself that sector Remains the probable Russian main effort and continues to see the highest Russian operational Tempo there have been minor advances across a broad front there but UK British intelligence thinking that this area is going to be uh likely to remain the area of significant operational Focus that’s where they seem to be putting most of their effort in next one an interesting point here from the isw The Institute for the study of War they’re saying the Russian military command appears to be separating some limited elements of the vdv so these are the Airborne forces before the war they would have been considered Elite however they’ve all been mostly been written down so they are not the force they were how however we know that Russia’s been trying to build up the vdv again if not actually on in reality but certainly on paper but what they’ve done is the Russian military command appears to be separating them into smaller units smaller components and putting those across different sectors of the front isw say the Russian military command may still view the vdvs as relatively Elite obviously compared to other Russian units and formations now this comes from analysis of announcements made by the Russian and Analysis of other ozin so open source intelligence and mil blogger accounts Russian and Ukrainian for example yesterday Russian mod said the elements of the 106th Airborne division’s 137th regiment are operating in the haon area which is so they put these notices out and isw are able to scrunch the numbers and try and work out the or the order of battle where each unit was or is and was and therefore if there are elements well out of place they’ve been subdivided now isw say the deployment of limited elements of the same vdv units and formations across different areas is at odds with standard military practice and probably only possible by the direct order of General valer gasimov who’s the head of the whole Russian armed forces or possibly the vdv commander General mikard tolinski we know the vdv have been very heavily worn down over the last couple of years now uses little more than um mechanized infantry but they may still isws say they may still retain some elements of higher quality particularly if the if some of generally higher quality officer CER that started the war are still alive so they’d be able to teach and train and try and rebuild basically however I would say from my you know limited Military experience and heish feel free to mention this later on the tactic of of using small numbers of high quality troops in order to stiffen the resolve or Mentor lower quality units is a gamble um you often lose a lot by Penny packeting larger forces um by diluting their effectiveness basically I remember we used to have in the British army we used to put tank troops so a troop of tanks about three or four tanks depending on the on the role but generally three tanks down to um down to a battalion of five or 600 infantry soldiers and the result result was just too much dilution that just didn’t give the oomph of the armor to the Battalion as was hoped so that that that tactic was written off couple of decades ago and now you very rare as a tank Squadron of about 12 tanks three or four troops very rarely broken down further because you just do you just lose too much by by spreading out too thinly okay a couple more for me Ukraine Security Service say they have rounded up a group of what they call provocators accused of plotting to spark riots in ke and seize Ukraine’s Parliament building so the sbu the security service said according to their investigation the group was led by the co-founder of a public organization that has been known for its anti-ukrainian action since 2015 the attack has plan to announce the removal from power of the current military political leadership of Ukraine then they then hope to seize the building of the vov NADA that’s the parliament of Ukraine and block its work the sbu said they these this organization planned to spread disturbances that would shake up the social and political situation within our country which would work in favor of the Russian Federation the detainees are said to face up to 10 years in prison so still The Insider threat in Ukraine now then president zalinski he was he’s given an interview to the Philadelphia inquir he said the White House is not yet prepared to invite Ukraine into NATO speaking to the Philadelphia inquir he said unfortunately this is the policy of one step forward two steps back and he said that the US and I think the the tacit um criticism went elsewhere as well but he specifically mentioned the US was afraid to in his words annoy Vladimir Putin and if NATO is not ready to protect us and to take us into the alliance then we asked NATO to give us everything so that we can protect ourselves and then just finally for me interesting one here a document obtained by The Washington Post suggests Russia has dropped Glide bombs on its own territory dozens of times in the year up to 2024 April 2024 most likely due to malfunctioning guidance systems so according to this document that’s believed to have been written by the belgorod City emergency department department they say 40 bombs have hit belgrod in the last year at least four on the city itself quite a large city 400,000 people seven in the surrounding suburbs and dozens more in the across the The Wider belgrod oblast now the Washington Post site Astra that’s an independent Russian media outlet and they say they have verified that many of the incidents in the document did match those that have been collected from local governments and reports in the local news media Astra estimates that Russia has accidentally dropped more than a 100 bombs on its own territory as well as occupied areas in eastern Ukraine over the past 4 months alone so I mean we have seen this occasionally they are if they are reported on a to and Russian authorities don’t often remark on them they are written off as Ukrainian drone strikes or or other such provocations but I don’t think I’ve ever seen and there was I think what was it sorry a mig29 that piled in so you couldn’t really hide that but otherwise I don’t think I can remember any when the Russian authorities have actually admitted say that they did have dropped something on their own territory this is usually on the way to firing them into Ukraine now then enough of me the D Frances are away after a very busy sort of weekend and stuff on the road with the Pod but I’m delighted that we’ve got G back Gareth corfield and equally delighted for the first time on the Pod we have data editor Ben butcher so guys you’ve written this amazing story youve said Russia has jammed the GPS signal global positioning signal global positioning satellite signal sorry on hundreds of Royal Air Force flights over Eastern Europe just this year undoubtly happening elsewhere but the data you’ve looked at this year including and I see on the map that you’ve put with your article there’s a very heavy blob of activity of jamming around Syria and Israel and in the North Sea between I and and Norway which I thought was quite interesting but anyway start off at 10 guys what’s going on there thank you Dom it’s always a pleasure to be back on especially when there’s something technologically ner to dig into as we have here so yes the story which ran in the Sunday telegraphs also online um is that Russia has been um jamming the GPS of hundreds of RAF Air transport flights and the the interesting thing here is that we’ve focused specifically on the Air transport Fleet we’re not looking at Frontline combat aircraft we’re not looking at little training airplanes doing their thing miles away we’re looking at the big Transporters we’re looking at the air buses the A330 stroke voyages the a 400s we’ve also included just to give us a bit of interesting Control Data in there the RC 135 rivet joint surveillance Fleet but before I go off into too much nerdy Aviation detail here what we’re looking at is the extent to which GPS jamming has been taking place and the extent to which we can attribute that to Russia and also to the other countries who are involved in carrying it out now as the map in the article suggests and I know Ben will come on to this in in Greater depth in a moment the map does suggest that the greatest extent of jamming experienced by the RAF when they’re flying the transport Fleet over over the med and over Europe as broadly as you like to Define Europe is that we’re seeing most of the jamming occurring up around the baltics up around the well-known CL kaliningrad Jammer I will I Third Time Lucky there but also yes we do see elements of jamming around the coast of Norway there’s a particular hot spot just off the Western tip of Norway as well according to the map and there’s all the areas you’d expect to see around Eastern Europe the borders with Ukraine and with Russia particularly around the Estonia region and also down towards the Black Sea the data we have for the Black Sea is not as comprehensive as you might hope for there’s something about a war being on down there but also tracking the map down further into the Eastern Mediterranean we’re seeing substantial amounts of jamming activity from the Syria region right the way down through Israel through Syria and down through the C Canal into the Red Sea Beyond so the we’re seeing is that this is a substantial amount of GPS jamming going on most of it but not all of it most of it is linked to Russia and to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine at the moment and I think having skated over that I shall now pass across to Ben butcher our data editor who’s going to go to a little more detail about what we found yeah absolutely so this kind of project is is a data journalist dream we’re given tens no hundreds of thousands of rows of data from the people at fly radar and we basically asked them for the information for 63 individual planes and together that was around 4,700 flights so with this to get to the number which was about 28% of all planes flying in Eastern Europe we need to start by taking out the planes which don’t actually go into that region and that left us with around 500 people we did that by looking at the latitude and longitudes of each flight and give in mind that you have a long flight that’s going to be thousands of rows of data for each one because every minute or so they’re transmitting a location on the map which helps us put it into those blocks then we took those flights and we created little grids which if you read the article you’ll see those grids in the map below and at that point we just took two numbers we took the number of flights which flew through each of those grids and we looked at the number of flights which received which had data which corresponded with jamming and as you said the highest areas in that part of the world are up in Finland we had 10 flights that had flown through direct very close to border Riv Russia up there and 60% of them were uh received some form of jamming and if you go down to clining grad as well we had around 30% of flights going through that region as well so the numbers are very clear we obviously also look at um Western Europe to give us a bit of a comparison and there are some flights that still get jammed there I believe that is to do with um some sometimes I think National governments and guy probably knows do also do practice their own jamming systems as well which might explain why numbers are actually not zero in areas you consider to be friendly but it certainly shows that there definitely is something going on there and also down in the Middle East thanks guys so if I could jump in for a moment there please Gaz so what how serious is this can you situate this for us what does the GPS do for the aircraft and how how significant is its loss what other systems are available to compensate sure thing Don so the GPS aboard the RF Air transport fleets it’s essentially the same as you get in an airliner so when the and me are jetting off to the the sun soaked beaches of Mala or wherever these are exactly the same systems that are fitted to the raf’s Airbus Transporters to the c17s the sort of longrange heavy lift cargo dedicated aircraft and so on these systems are used to tell the airplane and its Pilots where you are and where you’re going so typical accuracy you’re looking at here is probably T of a mile or so and what happens when these systems are jammed is funny enough they stop working but the failure modes can actually be quite impactful now number one you jam it fair enough it stops working in the cockpit typically you get lots of red flashing warnings coming up saying GPS lost or GPS accuracy degraded or some such that when you’re up in the cruise when you’re at 30,000 ft Meandering along is an annoyance it’s not necessarily safety critical there where it becomes safety critical and we saw this earlier in the year with Grant shaps when his flight had its GPS jammed by Russia somewhere up near the Clinton grad jamama Northeastern Poland what happens when you’re in lower airspace and you’re reliant on GPS signal for precisely locating where your airplane is that is a safety critical problem because when that happens you can no longer guarantee where you are you might think oh right well well I’m I’m on the precise approach path for the airport but suddenly it’s gone off I’ve got to make three more turns I I got to do those at a precise distance and and height and time from the airport and now I can’t do that because the main system I was relying on has been lost now Aviation fol tell me that GPS is part of a jigsaw that there are actually many interleaved interlayered systems which provide a redundancy and fallback for the instances when GPS jamming happens now this is correct this is true we absolutely must not OV egg the pudding here there are certainly fallback systems not least of which is the ability for the p let’s look out of the window and see I’ve got ground above I’ve got correction I’ve got ground below and I’ve got sky above if those are the other way around then there is a problem definitely now there there are groundbased radio beacons as well uh airports typically have systems called the instrument Landing system or ILS which is a a great big radio beam broadcast from the airport to say Runway here land along this line but Aviation at the moment is is very much getting on board with gps-based location Technologies so in the instance of the shaps flight which has also come up in our 4 months of data analysis the the 40,000 flights we’ve looked through the airport he was flying from its approach procedes are actually designed purely with reference to GPS which is to say there is no groundbased radio Beacon nearby it’s GPS or n or looking out the window the oldfashioned way if you’re flying an airplane small enough and slow enough to do that safely so the safety impact there is considerable Aviation as as i’ briefly mentioned already is moving towards getting rid of groundbased radio beacons which are expensive to buy and costly to run and maintain in favor of the GPS signal because not to put too far the point on it GPS and indeed other Global navigation satellite systems or gnsss as the as the technical acronym has it are in fact free to use you just get a receiver that can tune it in and bingo there you are you might need an expensive receiver that’s certified to a certain level of accuracy and all the rest of it but it doesn’t cost you anything other than buying that and maintaining it to whatever standard needs to be maintained the actual satellites system which everybody’s relying on is paid for by the US taxpayer so yes the safety implications here are quite I wouldn’t say severe but they are concerning and if the impact of jamming gets worse we could potentially see so I’m told a move back towards groundbased radio beacons for navigation we could see you know which in a way is a move backwards as a move to sort of 20th century grade technology again mean there was an airport in eastern Estonia I its Name Escapes me and I’ll look it up after afterwards and put it on Twitter so everybody can can check this one out also written about on the telegraph by the way um airport in eastern Estonia where finair had to withdraw all of its flights for a month because of a new Russian GPS Jammer set up across the way over the border and the result for that was well the airport’s approach procedes were purely GPS Reliant there was no groundbased radio Beacon so when the Jammer started up just like well we can’t safely land here our navigation systems cannot tell us to within miles Where We Are we’ve got to abort we got to go back home sorry everybody in the back and yes until the airport builds and installs a radio Beacon we won’t be going back there again said finair and that was in May so yes at this point I’m having nated on for a bit I shall pass it back to Ben who who doubt has more to add I mean I think one thing that is quite interesting which showed up in the data is we’re talking about this from the Eastern European point of view we’re talking about it from the point of view of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine but there is also the other thing to add that actually when you look at the figures jamming is obviously very synonymous with conflict if you go down to the Middle East which is Rec clarified as the period um the location just south of turkey down to Egypt you had there around 45% of all flights being jammed in that area compared to the 28% that we saw in Eastern Europe so the jamming is higher there but I imagine there is an element of that is something that is known by the RAF and is something that they factor into their navigation when they’re flying over the region as opposed to up in Finland or in Eastern Europe and it might be more predictable cuz it isn’t an ally doing the jamming I don’t know if that’s something that you’d be uh familiar with is that something rich well no not very familiar but I was going to ask as I said at the start what is going on in that area around the North Sea on your map you’ve got a sector there between Norway and Iceland that is also noted a very great spike in GPS jamming incident so wonder if you could explain that please yeah I mean within the numbers we had 33 flights flying over that one ction there which has come up particularly dark on the map that’s just off the coast of of Norway so we had 33 fers throwing that area and 11 of them came back as being jammed the numbers are high obviously with this kind of stuff when you have a slightly lower number of flights flying in area it might be it might small anomalies might impact the data and it is fair to point out that Within These numbers there are going to be anomalies which because we’re looking at Trends which are associated with jamming which is a Precision within the data which is below six so we’re looking at that and so it might be that there’s anomalies was gone there but it’s also possible as well that you have some form of exercises going on NATO Naval exercises because some some of those Jammers will be located on ships and on on other kind of um equipment as well so that could be part of it that this is actually jamming which is done and tested by allies and I think that is why we also see some numbers happening across Western Europe as Allies try their systems against friendly equipment sorry G I thought you you wanted to jump in and mention something about the area there and the Norway exercises on the back of what Ben was just saying yes indeed Dom so obviously the coast off Norway is a fairly common area that NATO uses for Naval exercises bringing large numbers of Warships together to go through drills and rehearse responses to scenarios and different things and so on as part of that a large amount of it does consist of operating in what the military calls on the Navy called GPS denied environment or gnss denied environments so what we’re seeing on the map showing up off the western coast of Norway there obviously we need to go back and slice and dice data again I can see Ben already looking delighted at that idea is cross reference those dates with NATO exercises in the area now a critically important thing to note is that although the the story We we’ve written is about the impact of Russian jamming which is blanket indiscriminate and to to an extent broadly targeted but not specifically at anyone the NATO Naval exercises off Norway and indeed elsewhere in in the North Sea and out in the Atlantic and and so on always well notified to aviators in particular the global notam system Noti to air missions is the acronym does actually contain notifications good few weeks in advance saying GPS jamming within 20 mi of this particular latitude longitude this particular location take caution stay away whatever the the caution may be and the capabilities of jamming equipment used by what call Friendly navies is well known typically those navigation warnings will have jamming within 20 mi of radius such or jamming of up to 40,000 ft or jamming North or Northwest of a particular area it’s controlled it’s specified we know where it’s going to happen we take the appropriate action to notify civil Airlines and Civil Authorities ahead of time and that way it’s a controlled and a responsible exercise which I emphasizes completely different from the blanket jamming we’re seeing from the Russian border from kingr and indeed down in the mid down towards Israel and Syria and all those conflict hotspot areas down there I hope that’s slightly illustrative of the point there Dom it was thanks guys thank you and Ben so much for for joining us today I would now like to turn to heish dbg heish Bron Gordon I’m just going to mute you there yes going to turn to heish De Bron Gordon now I note HH good morning welcome welcome I noticed Ukraine’s Border guard has dismissed reports suggesting it was reinforcing troop deployments along its border with bellarus calling the rumors an information operation by Minsk with moscow’s support bellarus claimed last week that keev was bolstering its forces along the country’s shared border and this morning the Kremlin said that report was a cause for concern which makes me think it was all tied in together however Border guard spokesperson Andre demchenko told Ukrainian national TV today it’s not the first time Belarus offers information about Ukraine presenting a threat and strengthening itself this is another part of the information operation conducted by Belarus with support by Russia now this comes after yesterday speaking to state run news Outlet Belta belarus’s chief of the general staff pavl Maro said that the country would use tactical nuclear weapons that Russia has deployed on its territory if the sovereignty or independence of Belarus was threatened now no one’s been talking about that so there suddenly bellarus has suddenly come out the blocks pretty quick with talking about nuclear stuff and talking about heave building up on the for On The Border hey M I know you think that story about the nuclear talk about nuclear stuff was rubbish but you suggest it could be a false flag and you’re saying that it could mean that Britain’s new prime minister on Friday whoever that is May well be dealing with a nuclear standoff on day one Hees good afternoon what do you think’s going on yeah hi hi good afternoon Dom guys good good to be with you I the whole nuclear piece which we’ve discussed often I I think it’s no surprise that this week with I’m not sure political turmoil is the right word but in France and in the UK that again the the nuclear peace is being wafted around again and as you say Ukraine said this is a psychological operation to stir up mass panic which generally is nuclear piece but I I think it’s worth unpacking it a little bit so as you said chief of the general staff in belus is saying I think he actually said something like we we are quite happy to use these tactical nuclear weapons we know how to do it we know everything around it so if we unpack this firstly I am not convinced that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons with unlikely missiles are actually in bellarus for a whole host of reasons first of all we know the escanda missiles that fire these wars heads are incredibly short supply and we know that the Russians have been taking the nuclear warheads off and putting conventional ones on um it’s very unlikely that Russian nuclear bombers would be stationed in in bar belus and when we come to what we call the kill chain or the shooting chain I’m absolutely certain that Belarus in any format is involved in the Russian nuclear kill chain or shooting chain they Russians might decide to put some of these tactical nuclear weapons in in friendly countries but no way will they have any say on how they use so so that to me is immediately to dismiss this again as false flag or Again part of the psychological operations as we say so but again it does create this Panic it does create some uncertainty around the place so I think that that’s what it is but one again restating for for everybody who’s listening who does a tactical nuclear weapon is it’s called battlefield they say a small Weapon It’s still 10 to 15 kilotons 10,000 tons of conventional explos it still a massive bomb and of course with the radiation that would ensue from that I think also there is an inference in this and in the KE independent also suggestion that if NATO threatened bellus they would alsoo use these weapons which again I think is it just cannot happen so it’s part of the bluff and Bluster at the moment that that one’s expecting and it would be naive not to expect the Russians and the belarusians and others trying to exploit any potential political issues in the west we had the Biden Trump debacle at the end of last week and of course we we’ve got elections at the moment so I think it’s all bit and I expect to see a lot more of this sort of stuff over the next couple of weeks because you as you mentioned we will probably have a new red button Pusher come Friday and although we as ex-military people know that these things are incredibly tightly controlled and no doubt the first thing the new prime minister will be doing on Friday morning is being briefed on our nuclear deterrent so yeah it’s just a chance to exploit things in that guys thanks heish now another thing that we’ve been looking at today that I know as across your desk there are reports that Russian tank Crews T90 crews are receiving a new tank round the telic which uh appears to be a smart mition designed for fragmentation and specifically for attacking infantry now you’ve said that you think that this new round is probably not the game Cher Russian Bots would have us believe why do you hold that opinion absolutely and it’s I suppose rather ironic that that you and I and general Richard shareif were were discussing you the development of tank warfare at the chalk history Festival just a couple of days ago and I think it’s interesting that the the Russians are obviously looking at these things and I hope those people in the ministry of Defense who are looking at the new British Challenger three uh are also looking at other elements to it the T90 which yeah is has not really performed terribly well in Ukraine it’s got a lot of vulnerabilities but actually it’s got some good stuff as well 120 mm main gun which not only are they this new sort of dispersion round will go through they also F anti-tank guided weapons through it so in principle I I think it’s quite good but when you look at the detail they’re saying you need a very sophisticated far controlled computer that will have some chip in this this round that will make it detonate wherever you want I can’t quite see the sort of the operating procedure for it it strikes me it’s similar to what you and I know as a a heshan high explosive squash head which basically blows up either on a fuse or when it hits something and sends fragments all around I mean they’re saying that it is only a 5 kg sort of Warhead to do this so and the other thing that we’ve discussed a great deal is one of the challenges that that the Russians are having because they’re getting through so many tanks and so many tank Crews the crews are literally new Crews people have never been in the tank before allegedly getting two or three weeks training and then shoved into these things and that’s why they’re performing so badly because in two or three weeks you might be able to just about train how to drive a tank maybe far it although you know a British tank crewman would do a year or so’s training to get proficient but then to use tanks as they should be and going back to your point earlier on about concentration of force I think you’re absolutely right so I’m jumping back to a story half an hour ago where the great military Strat strategist clits said clout don’t dribble in otherwise concentrate your force and use it there but in order to do that you need to not only train to on how you use your tank and all these various new rounds that they’re going going to have but also how to use them on mass as troops as squadrons as re regiments so three together 14 together 50 odd together and that’s just not going to happen so again I I I think this is just part of the narrative that we see all the time coming out of Russia to try and try and give the impression that they’re getting some sort of significant Advantage here whereas this to me is really part of that but another element to it but you know my final Point here is going back our discussions on where we go we talked last week about the Frankenstein tank the leopard one Hull with a sky ranger 35 35 mm cannon on it for shooting down drones actually if you put maybe put an anti-tank guided weapon on that you’re now getting a very sort of capable armored platform that can not only knock down drones but can knock down other tanks so yeah I it’s not something that I think people are pting down the mod defense laboratory where they look at how to do all these sort of counter measures we’ll probably be worrying about too much this is just part of again the noise coming out of Russian propaganda thanks heish and yeah you ABS WR a note that you and I are joined by retired General Sir Richard sheref former deputy Supreme Ally Commander Europe and also joined by John Buckley professor of military history at the University of wolver Hampton he’s in the department of History politics and War Stories sorry War studies we were on stage at the chalk history Festival On th tag Thursday discussing the future of the tank I think you’ll be able to watch them back I think chalk do put them all online correct me if I’m wrong heish but if they’re not online then just stay where you are for a year and hopefully we’ll be invited back talk you’re right Tom I think though and certainly speaking to David noes who’s don’t know if he’s on holiday or elsewhere but the digital whiz of the telegraph he I think he was expecting to get a copy of the the voice recording from that and hopefully the telegraph will put it up at some stage yeah we only got the recording that that’ll be out I think in the next couple of weeks but there’ll be there’s lots more on that was on at chalk well well worth a look if they if their their website covers it covers that sort of stuff while you’re on I mentioned earlier on that analysis from The Institute of the study of War suggesting that Russian Airborne forces might be Penny packeting out trying to take smaller units to to as I I suggest either to resolve or train and Mentor other units and I I made the point that I remember when they we tried that with tanks in the British army what’s your view on taking a specialized force and pulling it apart hoping that they can spread the love Vice it just become it becomes too diluted where where do you stand on that one no I think Dom I stand the same as you it doing this sort of thing on the hoof in combat if you like is yeah I can’t think of an example where it’s worked particularly well if these airborne troops are taking sort of bog standard line troops out of the line to train them over a couple of months then then fair enough and certainly when we used to send training teams all over the world of Specialists perhaps Special Forces guys and others yeah but to use them to bolster come on follow me chaps I’m an Airborne Warrior I yeah I don’t think I think that’s that’s dissipating your quality rather than reinforcing and these things generally people tend to degrade to the the lowest common nominator rather than the other way so again I think it’s part of part of the sort of noise coming out of as you said earlier the Bots I I I can’t see that it were I mean you put a troop of SAS in a normal sort of regimen as it were and it’s not going to turn that regiment into a regiment of Special Forces soldiers certainly not not without a couple of years training so I agree with your view on that one thanks let’s move to final thoughts now I noticed Gaz and Ben have had to dash back to the digi desk so they’ve they’ve already legged it but I’ll go first if I may heish I note that today it’s one year ago today that writer poet and friend of ours friend of the Pod Victoria amalina was killed in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant in kator now the London Ukrainian review has published a special issue dedicated to Victoria and the book that she was writing when she was killed which is a collection of testimonies about Russian war crimes in Ukraine going to be published early next year we note your passing and remember you Victoria and we’ll put links to the London Ukrainian review piece and the link to where you can pre-order her book if you so wish in the episode notes today hey Mish final thought if you have one please yeah absolutely and and thanks to that it’s a very good piece in the financial times today by an xmod civil servant about the state of the British Military and the fact that although we agree I think or certainly my view is the British military is still pound-for-pound the best in the world it it does require a really good Lookout to make sure that we can meet the current threats that we’ve been to we talk about every day on the Pod and all the rest of it and I a slight nod to my earlier piece on the nuclear side sometime on Friday morning we are in effect going to have a new commander-in-chief I know that we don’t call it like that but the prime minister of this country generally is the Arbiter of how we react not only politically but also militarily and I we are in such challenging times at the moment you know we have never been closer to war in Europe than perhaps we were before the second world war we’ve been talking about the nuclear peace and everything else it is a very challenging place but and the new government are really going to have to get to grips of that I would suggest almost before anything else because one thing we know about um Putin and he is the person that we must defend ourselves against um he exploits weakness and he he is impressed by strength the reason that one of the reasons he invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 he looked West and he didn’t see a conventional deterrent that he thought would affect him and our new government on Friday need to be absolutely all over that and expect a lot more of this sort of disinformation and propaganda coming out of the Kremlin and bellus and other Russian supporters over the next few weeks but I am sure that there is enough corporate knowledge and there is enough advice that’s going be given to the new government to make sure that we don’t slip up but I think people just need to keep their nerve keep above their eye on all of these things because it is a challenging time it certainly is thanks heh and yes if anybody has has not noticed we’ve got a general election here in the UK on Thursday I’m going to be working through the night I’m going up to going to be covering the constituency seat of Grant shaps who’s our current defense secretary the numbers there his majority suggests he may be vulnerable although quite frankly all the polling at the moment is so unusual and a little bit all over the place that nobody can really tell well what’s going to happen but there’s a chance that the defense secretary might not I mean it’s looking like labor is going to form the next government in that in which case Grant chaps will no longer be our defense secretary but he he may not even have a seat he might be booted out of Parliament that that’s how first part of the post work so I’m going to be covering his his constituency expecting the result there about 3:30 in the morning so yeah pod the day before pod the day after feeling a bit shabby but I’ll be reporting from there through the night as all my colleagues elsewhere because we’re expecting some big beasts to fall but that all that to come thank you so much for joining us today Ukraine the latest is an original podcast from the telegraph to support our work and to stay on top of all our Ukraine news analysis and dispatches from the ground please subscribe to the telegraph you can get your first three months for just1 at www. telgraph .co.uk Ukraine thee latest or sign up to dispatches our Foreign Affairs newsletter bringing stories from our award-winning foreign correspondents straight to your inbox we also have a Ukraine live blog on our website where you can follow updates as they come in throughout the day including insights from regular contributors to this podcast we also do the same for other breaking International stories you can listen to this conversation live at 1:00 p.m. London time each weekday on Twitter spaces follow the telegraph on Twitter so that you don’t miss it to our listeners on YouTube please note that due to issues 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executive producers are David nolles and Louisa Wells

Day 860.

Today, we bring you the latest news from Ukraine, look at how Russia has been blamed for jamming GPS signals on British military jets and ask quite why Belarus – a country hosting Russian nuclear missiles – is rattling the nuclear sabre once more.

Contributors:

Dominic Nicholls (Host). @DomNicholls on X.

Gareth Corfield (Transport Correspondent). @GazTheJourno on X.

Ben Butcher (Data Editor). @bienbutcher on X.

Hamish De Bretton-Gordon (Former Tank Commander, Chemical and Biological Weapons Expert). @HamishDBG on X.

Articles referenced:

London Ukrainian Review

https://x.com/ukrlondonreview/status/1807698342840869075

Pre-order for Victoria Amelina’s book:

https://x.com/olgatokariuk/status/1807724459677114612

Subscribe to The Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk/ukrainethelatest

Email: ukrainepod@telegraph.co.uk

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