RIA Novosti: Supply of U.S. artillery-locator radars to Kiev will have major effect – pundit

(RIA Novosti – July 23, 2015)

The possible supply of artillery-locator radar systems by the United States to Ukraine could treble the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Army in artillery battles with the separatist militias, but will require direct involvement in the war by US troops, the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Konstantin Sivkov, has said, RIA Novosti (part of the state-owned International News Agency Rossiya Segodnya) reported on 23 July.

The RIA Novosti report follows reports in the US Wall Street Journal saying that the Pentagon was ready to supply Ukraine with AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder artillery-locator radars.

“If these stations are delivered, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Army’s counter-battery fire will increase not less than three times,” Sivkov said, according to the report.

He noted, however, that the Ukrainians probably do not have specialists capable of operating the systems and the military did not have the will to fight.

“So there wi! ll have to be advisers taking part throughout the command chain, that is, ensuring the arrival of signals, their transmission to the artillery batteries, and with this data, fire-control data is worked out (for subsequent destruction of the enemy batteries). In sum, this would imply direct involvement of American military personnel in the war in Ukraine,” he said.

Location of artillery can be worked out using sound, rather than the radar stations, but accuracy may be reduced to within a few kilometres, Sivkov said.

“As far as is known, the militias also carry out counter-battery warfare, but like the Ukrainian Army, by the look of it, they do not have many effective systems for providing counter-battery fire,” he said.