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A prototype spy plane is tracking Russian force movements for the US Army – Breaking Defense Breaking Defense

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The Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting & Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System aircraft, known as ARTEMIS. (US Army)

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.

RELATED: Biden orders forces to Baltics, warns Russia plans further invasion of Ukraine

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.

US Air Force would face tough choices in Russian air assault on Ukraine

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Military experts in the U.S. are urging Western nations to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, fearing that Russia will swiftly take over its former territory’s airspace in the opening moves of a possible invasion.

An air assault on Ukraine would test the limits of the U.S. and NATO’s willingness to remain active over a country they have scrambled to militarily assist in the past few months, they say. The outcome of a decision to fly into a worsening or expanding Russian offensive could reshape the military relationship between the Cold War adversaries and their allies for the first time in over three decades.

An initial onslaught of cyberattacks would likely be followed by air and missile strikes as an opening physical assault to control the skies, Seth Jones, who directs the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Jan. 13.

Senior Airman Josiah Goodman, 934th Maintenance Squadron aerospace propulsion technician, texts his girlfriend “goodbye” as he waits for his C-130 to take off at Minneapolis-St. Paul Air Reserve Station on Feb. 16, 2022. (Chris Farley/Air Force)

That would challenge Ukraine’s air defenses, a particularly weak point in a military aviation enterprise already outmatched by Russian capabilities.

“The Russian forces staging or available to be used against Ukraine … are wholly modernized and capable of dominating Ukraine’s defenses,” including through airstrikes and their own anti-aircraft weapons, wrote Wesley Clark, a retired four-star Army general who served as NATO’s supreme allied commander from 1997 to 2000, in a Jan. 14 Washington Post op-ed.

Ukraine’s sizable stockpile of anti-aircraft missiles are largely outdated and are Russian-built weapons, which that military knows how to evade, said Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star Air Force general who served as head of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2013 to 2016.

Breedlove was also the Air Force’s vice chief of staff in 2011-2012 before commanding U.S. Air Forces in Europe until May 2013. He now works as a Europe expert with the Middle East Institute.

Foreign nations have provided Ukraine with shoulder-fired Stinger missiles that can shoot down aircraft but are typically only useful against helicopters or certain drones. That solves only a small part of the air power problem, Breedlove said.

Airmen assigned to the 86th Airlift Wing load supplies onto a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Feb. 4, 2022. U.S. Air Forces in Europe are prepared and strategically positioned to rapidly surge forces across the region to support the alliance and defend against any aggression. (Senior Airman Thomas Karol/Air Force)

Clark and Jones both urged the U.S. and NATO countries to send more air defense equipment to Ukraine without delay.

“Nations have a legitimate right to self-defense, and the United States and our allies have every right to provide such means now,” Clark wrote. “We should expedite the delivery of defensive means and insist that our NATO allies do likewise. No other act now can show more resolve to Putin.”

Another issue: a vulnerable air command-and-control enterprise that is geared to look west at the former Soviet Union’s foes, rather than east to modern-day Russia.

Ukraine owns Russian-made command-and-control systems, which makes them particularly susceptible to electronic jamming and attack by their creator, Breedlove said in an interview Thursday.

“I take you back to 2014, when the Russians invaded and occupied Crimea. When they flipped that switch to take over Crimea, they completely, absolutely, 100% disconnected the military garrisons in Crimea from Kyiv,” he said. “Some of that was electronic warfare.”

Ukraine still lacks the ability to move through each step of air operations, from sensing a threat and identifying what it is, to targeting and shooting at it, Breedlove added.

“In the face of a dedicated Russian attack, with Russian air forces bringing their full force down to bear on Ukraine, they would not be able to defend their sovereign airspace,” he said.

Airman 1st Class Stephen Knotts, 436th Aerial Port Squadron ramp services apprentice, positions a cargo loader to an aircraft during a foreign military sales mission with Ukraine at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Feb. 10, 2022. (Roland Balik/Air Force)

U.S. Air Force and allied tanker and transport planes continue to help move people and equipment into Ukraine and the wider region.

The service on Friday referred questions on the specifics of their activities to Pentagon headquarters, and Air Mobility Command spokesperson Lindsey Wilkinson declined to comment on any considerations for a last-minute evacuation effort.

“Air Mobility Command — like any military unit — plans and prepares for a wide array of contingencies and humanitarian events,” she said in an email.

Lessons learned from Operation Allies Refuge, the frantic effort to fly more than 124,000 evacuees out of Afghanistan as the country fell to Taliban extremists last summer, will inform the Air Force’s planning going forward, Wilkinson added.

The White House has warned Americans in Ukraine it would not rescue them if war breaks out before they leave. The State Department estimated that about 6,600 U.S. citizens wete in the country as of October, plus additional American travelers.

If an invasion does unfold, Breedlove doubts U.S. planes will offer much direct support, like airborne transport for the Ukrainian military. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support is more likely to last throughout a conflict, he said.

A screenshot capture at around 9 p.m. EST Feb. 18, 2022, shows a U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone flying over Ukraine. (Courtesy of Flightradar24.com)

American spy planes, including RQ-4 Global Hawk drones and RC-135V/W Rivet Joints, have routinely patrolled Ukrainian airspace and nearby areas like the Black Sea for several weeks. Still, it’s unclear how much intelligence data the U.S. and NATO countries send to Ukraine.

The issue has raised concerns on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of Senate Intelligence Committee members wrote to President Joe Biden on Feb. 9 and pushed him to share as much information as possible with Kyiv.

The intent to gather useful data would remain, and possibly intensify, in an invasion, Breedlove said.

“The things I would be thinking about are, how do I adequately surveil such that I can help the Ukrainians?” Breedlove said. “That would begin to not only talk about Ukraine, but Belarus and the north part of the Black Sea.”

Intelligence-collection satellites may prove particularly important in an invasion, though Russia could try to jam their signals and blind their cameras. Breedlove believes drones and manned aircraft could still collect helpful information from a distance as well.

“We have often thought about how and where we could fly in a way that gives us coverage of international airspace and would make it an act of war for Russia to come out there and get them,” he added.

RELATED

The U.S. and NATO have begun reinforcing their attack aircraft in Eastern Europe, from American F-35A Lightning II fighter jets at Germany’s Spangdahlem Air Base to F-15E Strike Eagles at Poland’s Łask Air Base. But their role in what may come next is murky.

Clark recommended dispatching NATO air assets to Romania, Bulgaria and Poland as a precaution. Though some Eurofighters and foreign F-15 and F-16 fighter jet models are nearby to police NATO airspace — ideally to deter Russian military planes — he believes further air power would “reassure these allies and contain any spillover of Russian military action” into NATO territory.

“The time for this is now, before any action begins, rather than rushing forward in the face of Russian action, when the risks of accidental hostile encounters would be much higher,” he said.

Breedlove also suggested activating NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, its most responsive military force that can mobilize within days in case conditions go south.

Experts differ on whether Russia would gamble with taking on U.S. or NATO aircraft in various scenarios.

Senior military fellows at the Atlantic Council argued Feb. 16 that Russia’s air-dominance training has signaled its willingness to engage outside aircraft if they try to intervene in Ukraine.

RELATED
U.S. airmen from the 60th Aerial Port Squadron load cargo on to a Boeing 757 Jan. 22, 2022 at Travis Air Force Base, California. Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $5.4 billion in total assistance to Ukraine, including security and non-security assistance. The United States reaffirms its steadfast commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in support of a secure and prosperous Ukraine. (Nicholas Pilch/Air Force)

Russian Tu-22 nuclear-capable bombers have recently patrolled the skies over Belarus, they noted. Training exercises can also shed light on possible moves in the future, including ground-attack practice with Su-25 planes on Feb. 10 and scrambling Su-35S fighters to capture and destroy an unresponsive air target seen as a stand-in for American or NATO jets.

“Advanced fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missiles Russia has deployed to Belarus provide the anti-access … “bubble” that covers much of the Ukrainian airspace — a further warning against any NATO nation entering Ukrainian airspace in the event of further hostilities,” the Atlantic Council fellows wrote.

Breedlove questions whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would give the U.S. a reason to return fire, inside Ukrainian borders or in broader Europe. The decision to shoot back would be left up to Biden, the commander in chief, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, he said.

“[Putin] knows where he can go and stay below the line of NATO’s response. I think that tripping the NATO wire is not something he wants to do,” Breedlove said, declining to speculate further.

An F-15C Eagle assigned to the 493rd Fighter Squadron sits ready to perform a NATO Enhanced Air Policing mission at Łask Air Base, Poland, Feb. 11, 2022. During enhanced air policing, jets and aircrew are ready to respond to any airborne threat at a moment’s notice. (Tech. Sgt. Jacob Albers/Air Force)

To keep Russia on its toes, the retired Air Force general favors turning the regional air policing mission into one of air defense. He believes the rules of engagement governing what pilots can do during air policing are “wholly inadequate” outside of peacetime.

Fighter jets are tasked with identifying and addressing renegade aircraft, such as when American and European fighters intercepted Russian military jets that veered near their airspace over the Baltic Sea and in the High North on Feb. 3. Yet they can’t fire unless fired upon when flying over a foreign country, he said.

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For now, experts want to see more firepower — like F-35s, F-22 Raptor jets and naval cruisers or destroyers — spread across Europe.

“[Putin is] most afraid of NATO forces, capabilities and weapons in the forward area, so that’s what I’d give him,” Breedlove said. “I would send him a message: ‘Your bad behavior is going to cost you what you most did not want.’”

Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.

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