Above the Law

WASHINGTON: As the world waits on Russia’s next move in its slow-rolling invasion of Ukraine, US military aircraft continue flights over Eastern Europe, searching for changes in Russia’s posture along Ukraine’s border that could give clues about its next moves.

Flying in the region among the US military’s submarine hunting planes and surveillance drones is a novel intelligence-gathering aircraft prototype known as ARTEMIS — a Bombardier Challenger 650 that’s been souped up with military-grade sensors for tracking ground troops, flown on behalf of the US Army by defense contractor Leidos.

ARTEMIS, which stands for Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-Mission System, has been conducting operations over Eastern Europe since the beginning of the month, logging 14 sorties between Feb. 1 until Feb. 21, according to Amelia Smith, a hobbyist plane-spotter who has been using flight data to track ISR missions over Europe.

And although the crisis in Ukraine appears to be worsening, it doesn’t seem like ARTEMIS flights will be slowing down anytime soon, as open-source flight tracking sources showed the aircraft flying near Poland’s eastern border earlier today, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian forces would be moving into Ukrainian territory claimed by two would-be independent republics.

Flight data shows that ARTEMIS tends to make the same flight path every day, first taking off from Romania and flying through Slovakia and Hungary, where it can get a quick glimpse of Ukraine. From there, it moves along Poland’s eastern and northern borders — a route that allows ARTEMIS to project its sensors into Belarus, where Russia has staged troops, as well as Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

ARTEMIS “has both electronic collection and ground scanning radar so it could for example see the movement of tanks in real time, and collect RF [radio frequency] signals emitted by adversaries,”  said Tom Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s center for national defense.

“Its sensors can go hundreds of miles out, so with the route it is flying it can see well into Belarus, Kaliningrad, and perhaps even into the Donbas region. The route is probably the closest that the US would want to take this plane to Russia and Belarus, while keeping the plane safely in NATO airspace.”

In a statement to Breaking Defense that did not specifically reference ARTEMIS, US European Command acknowledged that it routinely operates aircraft in the region in support of US intelligence objectives.

“We conduct these types of flights with allies and partners routinely, and only with prior approval from and full coordination with respective host nations. These missions demonstrate our continued commitment to safety and security in the region,” a EUCOM spokesperson said. “In accordance with longstanding DOD policy, we will not comment on capabilities, further operational details or possible future operations.”

The US Army also declined to comment on ARTEMIS operations in Eastern Europe.

ARTEMIS Takes To The Skies, But Its ‘Ultimate Enemy’ Still Awaits

ARTEMIS is a high-speed, ISR-gathering demonstrator built by Leidos in response to a nascent US Army requirement to replace its aging RC-12X Guardrail planes used to provide signals intelligence. The service is evaluating a number of fixed-wing ISR prototypes, and could announce a program of record further in the future.

Currently, the sole ARTEMIS aircraft in existence is owned and operated by Leidos, with contractors both flying the aircraft and managing the sensor suite, with data transferred in real time to the Army.

ARTEMIS was first deployed in July 2020, just 18 months after Leidos pitched the concept to the Army. It was sent to Europe in summer 2021 ahead of the Army’s Defender exercise and was supposed to head back stateside for a Project Convergence demonstration that fall, Defense News reported last year.

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However, ARTEMIS ended up staying in Europe to monitor Russian troop movements near the border, reported National Defense Magazine in November.

One major advantage of ARTEMIS compared to the turboprop RC-12X is added range and endurance at high altitudes. It can fly 4,000 nautical miles or loiter for more than 10 hours with an operational altitude of 41,000 feet, giving it time for its sensors to penetrate into enemy territory over a significant amount of time.

Depending on what kind of mission the Army wants to fly, it can be configured with different sensors, including payloads for electronic intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery intelligence or radar.

According to previous press reports, the ARTEMIS aircraft carries a potential future sensor payload called the High-Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), which is a research and development program under the service’s Multi-Domain Sensing System program. Fiscal 2022 Army budget books show HADES sensors include signals intelligence capabilities, including electronic intelligence and communications intelligence, as well as synthetic aperture radar (SAR)/moving target indicator in its first increment. Future plans include cyber/electronic warfare (EW) systems as well as air-launched effects (ALE) to extend sensing ranges, enabling ground commanders to detect, locate and target enemy assets on the ground, with an eye toward enabling long-range fires.

Experts were mixed on whether ARTEMIS’s operations in Eastern Europe could pave the way for a program of record.

“The Army has what I call this ‘primordial soup’ of potential technologies across the board, including ISR, and they are trying to figure out which of those technologies to pull forward as programs of record,” said Mark Cancian, a defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is one of those technologies that they’re looking at.”

Although ARTEMIS is not yet a program of record, Cancian said that it’s a positive sign that the Army is operating it on a near-daily basis in Eastern Europe. And with the Pentagon’s FY23 budget topline expected to be more than $770 billion, Cancian said it’s possible that the service could have the funds necessary to invest in ISR aircraft procurement this upcoming budget cycle.

But Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace expert with AeroDynamic Advisory, joked that the Army would have to beat out “the ultimate enemy, which of course is the US Air Force” before it gets the chance to buy ARTEMIS or any other fixed-wing, jet-powered ISR aircraft.

Historically, the Army has flown propeller driven aircraft — such as the Beechcraft RC-12 Guardrail — to conduct ISR and pick up signals intelligence. Meanwhile, the Air Force has dominated the realm of jet-powered ISR, operating a suite of special mission aircraft like the E-8C JSTARS aircraft that collects information about ground targets or the RC-135V/W Rivet Joint signals intelligence plane.

In the past, the Air Force has rebuffed Army attempts to field jet-powered ISR platforms, arguing that collecting tactical intelligence from the air is the job of the Air Force, and the Army could face similar pushback during this go-around, Aboulafia said.

“No service has ever voluntarily relinquished a mission,” Aboulafia said. But if the Army gets serious about buying jet-powered ISR aircraft, it could force the Air Force to get serious about replacing aging platforms like JSTARS, he added.

Other ISR planes still flying 

Over the past two months, the United States ramped up ISR flights over Eastern Europe, seeking answers to questions about Russia’s intentions as it gathered forces around Ukraine’s border.

From Feb. 9 to Feb. 16, the US, NATO and key partner countries such as Ukraine and Sweden flew ISR sorties in the double digits, according to Smith’s data. So far, operations peaked on Feb. 10, when at least 22 NATO and Swedish ISR assets took to the skies, according to Smith’s data.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine reached a high on Monday, when Putin announced that Russia would recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk — two territories in Ukraine’s Donbas region, which have been under control by Russian-backed separatists. This morning, Russia’s upper house of parliament granted Putin the permission to use military force outside of Russia — increasing fears that a wholesale invasion of Ukraine could be imminent.

Despite worries about an escalating conflict, the US military has carried on with surveillance flights in Eastern Europe, and ARTEMIS isn’t the only US military ISR plane continuing to patrol the skies.

In recent days, the Air Force has often tasked its RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones to fly over Ukraine for long periods of time, sometimes upwards of 20 hours, allowing the US military a view of developments on the ground in Ukraine’s disputed territories. This appeared to be the case even this morning, when a Global Hawk circled just west of Donetsk.

Another plane has that been frequently dispatched to the region over the past several months, the  Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint, was sighted over the skies of Poland this morning. The Rivet Joint is used to locate and identify electromagnetic signals, which could provide information about how Russia is positioning equipment like air defense systems.

Meanwhile, a WC-135 Constant Phoenix “sniffer” plane, which collects radioactive particles and debris from the atmosphere, flew a path over the Baltic Sea this morning.

Although not yet spotted over Eastern Europe today, Navy P-8s have flown daily missions this month, with the exception of Feb. 19. Depending on the day, they can be found over the North Sea, Norwegian Sea or Black Sea searching for submarines and tracking other activity. The Army’s RC-12X has also been active in recent weeks, collecting signals intelligence during flights over Lithuania and Latvia.