Russia’s Orlan family of tactical reconnaissance UAVs has been a persistent targeting sensor for Russian fires, and Ukrainian forces have invested heavily in electronic measures to blunt that threat. The fight is now a layered contest: wide-area detection and strategic jammers higher in the depth, tactical short-range jammers and direction finding near the line, and a steady mix of kinetic strikes against high-value EW nodes. Below I lay out what the Orlan brings to the fight, how Ukrainian jamming has adapted up to now, and practical lessons for EW operators in contested environments.

What the Orlan brings to the battlefield

Orlan-class UAVs are multi-role reconnaissance platforms widely used by Russian forces to locate targets and rapidly adjust artillery fire. They are built with a modular avionics stack that—despite sanctions—has continued to incorporate a significant number of foreign-made components, earning them reliability and upgradeability that matter in the EW contest. That supply-chain reality helps explain why Orlans remain abundant on the front and why their sensor and comms signatures are relatively well understood.

How Ukrainian EW has responded

1) Systems and posture. Ukraine fields layered counter-UAS systems that combine passive detection, direction finding, and active jamming. Indigenous anti-drone complexes such as Bukovel-AD are intended to detect medium-range reconnaissance UAS at tens of kilometers and to suppress control and GNSS links in the tactical zone. These systems are designed to operate as a coordinated layer: detect, classify, then engage with narrow-beam or targeted jamming to avoid blowing friendly CNPC and navigation in large areas.

2) Tactical jamming and spectrum hygiene. On the frontline the practical approach has been to use short-range, targeted jammers and radio direction finders colocated with maneuver units and artillery. Tactical jamming that is brief, directional, and coordinated reduces collateral impact on friendly systems and makes it harder for the opponent to correlate jamming emissions with friendly positions. Relying on indiscriminate, high-power jamming is often counterproductive because big emitters are easy to geolocate and strike.

3) Intelligence-driven frequency targeting. Captured and crashed Orlan airframes have been a rich source of electronic signatures and parts intelligence. Technical exploitation of recovered modules lets EW teams map which transceivers, GNSS modules, and video links are in use, and then program jammers and DF systems to defeat those exact links. That cycle of capture, lab analysis, and tailored jamming has accelerated the tactical adaption rate.

4) Integration of EW with fires. A critical part of the counter-EW playbook is to pair electronic attack with kinetic targeting of high-value jammers. The operational logic is simple: a jammer is both an enabler and a target. Striking or degrading a fixed or high-signature EW node reduces enemy jamming for a period and creates windows when precision munitions and GNSS-dependent systems regain effectiveness. There are documented instances where jamming arrays were mapped and then attacked to reopen GNSS-dependent effects.

How Russia has adapted (and what that means)

Russia has not been static. Placing EW assets deeper in depth, adopting more mobile or distributed jammers, and switching comms and nav modes complicate countermeasures. Key adaptations include moving away from a single GNSS reliance, hardening receivers, experimenting with frequency hopping in datalinks, and fielding smaller, lower-signature jammers closer to the front. The overall effect has been to push the contest toward more tailored, intelligence-driven jamming rather than blunt-spectrum denial. The scale of Russian EW deployment along the front has also meant high attrition of small UAVs; independent analyses warned of very large UAV losses attributable to jamming and interception during 2022–23.

Practical takeaways and tactics

  • Build the kill chain: detection, classification, identification, and tailored attack. Passive and DF first, then narrow-beam jamming, then kinetic if the node is high value. Avoid throwing wide-spectrum jamming into a crowded RF environment without coordination.

  • Exploit captured hardware fast. Recovering an Orlan or its modules shortens the adaptation cycle. Reverse engineering gives both signature databases for DF and the exact frequencies and waveform characteristics to emulate or jam. Prioritize secure, repeatable lab workstreams so field EW teams receive usable profiles quickly.

  • Use selective GNSS denial, not blanket blackout. A blanket GNSS denial is tempting but costly if it degrades friendly weapons and comms. Where possible, create temporally and spatially limited GNSS suppression that opens windows for friendly precision fires. That requires careful deconfliction and timing with maneuver and fires units.

  • Harden command nodes and comms. EW is most effective when the adversary can find and fix C2. Use emission control, frequency diversity, optical back-ups, and short, low-probability-of-intercept links where feasible. When jamming density is high, simple non-RF tricks such as mobility, concealment, and short burst comms become force multipliers.

Open problems and the near-term outlook

The contest remains a cat-and-mouse cycle. Russia’s investment in EW density and capability forces Ukraine to rely on numbers, rapid exploitation, and a mix of technical and tactical measures. Ukrainian jammers and CUAS systems are improving, but state-level strategic EW and deep jamming remain a hard problem to defeat at scale. The successful approach on the ground will remain multi-domain: unlink the Orlan from the kill chain with jammers and DF, then use precision strikes to punish high-value EW infrastructure when those windows open.

A final operational note for practitioners: when you plan jamming, plan the full effects cascade. Jamming will change sensor coverage, friendly comms reliability, the enemy’s behavior, and the targeting picture. Coordinate with infantry, artillery, and air components ahead of time and build triggers for when to switch from electronic attack to kinetic suppression. The unit that thinks in terms of effects, not just emissions, will win more often.