Background: The United States on Wednesday announced it had ordered Ukraine cut off from intelligence-sharing on Russia. The ban was invoked because, in the view of the US government as led by President Donald J. Trump, Kyiv isn’t sufficiently supportive of his American plan to end the Russo-Ukraine war on terms, according to Washington public statements, supported by the US and Russia, but not Ukraine.
Kyiv Post looked into the Trump administration’s decision to lock Ukraine out of access to data collected by the US worldwide intelligence network
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The lock-out probably won’t harm Kyiv’s knowledge about the Russian military order of battle or the Kremlin too much
According to most analysts, the main intelligence streams provided by the US to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion have been data collected by US satellites and then processed, primarily by the NSA and to a lesser extent by other US agencies and then turned over to Kyiv as intelligence. A typical example was the location, size, equipment, and activity of columns of Russian combat vehicles on roads heading toward Kyiv at the outset of the war.
More recently, Ukrainian deep strikes against high-value hidden targets behind Russian lines, particularly high-level headquarters, very likely benefited from US satellite-based intelligence collection because radio and radar transmissions the Ukrainians probably can’t pick up with their monitoring equipment are readily visible to the US worldwide satellite surveillance network.
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Although US intelligence collected by satellites can in some cases be sent to a strike aircraft or commando team in real time, the US has never offered Ukraine real-time satellite data feeds for “servicing” Russian targets, two sources familiar with Ukrainian long-range targeting told Kyiv Post.
Ukraine certainly has a far better picture of the fighting capability and tactics of the Russian ground forces than the US, or any other state, because the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have fought the regular Russian military for three years and in the process captured hundreds of prisoners of war and masses of Russian weapons. Thousands of Ukrainian drones fly over Russian military positions in Ukraine 24/7, and Ukrainian special forces and surrogate agents have operated inside Russia and Russian-occupied territory since the outset of the full-scale war.
A critical Ukrainian advantage over the US in intelligence collection against Russia is that a Ukrainian agent faces no language barrier in Russia and, further, probably faces very few restrictions on operating inside Russia. In Ukrainian regions recently occupied by Russia, partisan groups operate freely – these are not intelligence collection means available to the United States.
The Trump order shut down at least one brutally effective US-made munitions in Ukrainian hands
At least one US-made battlefield strike weapon Ukraine has operated to great effect, and that Russia has struggled to defend against may no longer work because of the intelligence cut off.
Major Western media citing Pentagon sources have reported that the US shut-down of Ukrainian access to strategic intelligence feeds made US precision-guided weapons designed to use that data unable to hit targets. The munitions are ATACMS artillery.
ATACMS missiles provided by the US to Ukraine are not America’s latest model, but older versions with a reported maximum range of 300 kilometers (186 miles). The missiles use US military crypto key-protected GPS data for navigation and flight to target. The Trump order banned Ukrainian access to that crypto key GPS data.
Aside from ATACMS, a second precision-guided munition, called the M30/31 rocket, may also have been rendered less effective by the US intelligence cut off. A tactical weapon with a shorter range than ATACMS, the M30/31 rocket according to sources does not adjust its course en route to the target and does not need GPS data to make the flight.
However, for the rocket to strike accurately, the grid location of the target and the launch system must be extremely precise, and the best battlefield GPS location-determination system is widely acknowledged to be US military GPS data, to which the US has blocked Ukrainian access.
It’s not clear if the M30/31 rocket might be fired accurately enough for many targets when using non-US GPS data. Coordinate data accuracy would be highly dependent on various factors, including satellite photograph quality and corresponding datum alignment, use of grids normally used by GPS-based systems (GPS uses the WGS84 coordinate grid) and accurate conversion of source coordinates to that used by the weapon.
The M30/21 missile, based on battlefield reports, has typically been fired at ranges of 70-150 kilometers (44-93 miles). Warheads used include big-blast “unitary” munitions (think exploding rifle bullet) and area-effect cluster munitions warheads (functioning more like a shotgun load, with explosive shot pellets), and Coriolis effect (from the Earth’s rotation) during the time of flight of the projectile. Ukrainian gunners have used the unitary warheads most often for point strikes on high-value targets behind Russian lines like air defense radars.
When first fielded in the latter half of 2022, the Russian military struggled to adjust to an enemy able to hit point targets like a bridge deep behind Russian lines, or in 2023 to avoid a cluster munition warhead designed to cut down any soldier standing in an area the size of two football fields. However, by mid-2024, Russian GPS-jamming has made M30/31 and ATAMCS less effective.
Critical European – not American – military assistance to Ukraine may have been turned into junk also
The Trump decision to switch off intelligence feeds to Ukraine turned 25 Europe-supplied launch systems bought by European taxpayers for about $60 million to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia into useless scrap metal.
Further, it is somewhere between possible and probable that the Trump decision to turn off intelligence feeds to Ukraine turned key cruise missiles developed by Britain, France, and Germany and used with devastating effect by Ukraine’s military into far less useful dumb munitions unable to hit anything with the accuracy weaponeering planners need.
According to open sources, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) operates two launchers capable of firing M72 artillery M30/31 artillery projectiles and ATACMS missiles: 40-43 HIMARS M142 wheeled launchers and 25 M270 tracked launchers.
The M142 HIMARS is the lighter system capable of firing eight artillery projectiles or one (bigger) missile in a salvo. According to the arms supply tracking group Oryx, the US has transferred 40 HIMARS systems to Ukraine, and Germany has sent Ukraine three systems.
The M270 is the heavier system capable of firing sixteen artillery projectiles or two ATACMS missiles in a salvo. According to the arms supply tracking group Oryx, the UK sent Ukraine 11 M270 systems, Germany sent 5, Italy sent 2, and France sent 4. None were provided by the US. Since they fire only made-in-USA M30/31 artillery projectiles and ATACMS, those systems sent by European states to Ukraine to defend itself are no longer capable of what was promised.
The US move emasculated a deadly missile developed and paid for by Europe and used by Ukraine
The most advanced Western-delivered long-range strike weapon in Ukraine’s hands is a cruise missile called SCALP by France and Storm Shadow by Britain. These missiles, which have a reported range of 250 kilometers (155 miles), high-precision guidance, and warheads designed to break into bunkers and sink ships, were a key component in Ukraine’s defeat of Russia’s Black Sea fleet formerly based in Crimea.
Most analysts estimate the total number of SCALP/Storm Shadows delivered to Ukraine at 100-200 missiles. Germany has not provided Ukraine its version of the missile, called the Taurus, but leaders of Germany’s incoming CDU government have said that once in power, they want to transfer Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
No matter the European manufacturer, this missile by design uses encrypted US military GPS data for navigation. The Trump order cut Ukraine off from that data feed, theoretically rendering the cruise missiles useless.
It’s not clear if or how well the SCALP/Storm Shadow/Taurus might function using non-crypto key non-US GPS data. Ukrainian engineers have repeatedly been skillful and innovative in filling tech gaps in weapons systems; a key piece of Ukrainian air defenses is Soviet-era anti-aircraft systems modified to launch NATO-standard anti-aircraft missiles. However, even these were an alternate source of navigation data to be found and implemented, at minimum, that would not be how the cruise missile was designed to be used.
Estimates of the total number of Scalp/Storm Shadow missiles delivered to Ukraine usually are around 100 missiles at $1 million each. Until the US intelligence-sharing ban is reversed or Ukrainian engineers develop a workaround, whatever missiles the Ukrainians have left in stock won’t meet the required performance, and thus, additional deliveries would be almost pointless.
European states have filled some gaps – Great Britain, France, Turkey, Italy, and Finland + NATO
In mid-January Kyiv Post and other agencies tracking military aircraft operations over the Black Sea noted a distinct spike in the total number of NATO spy plane fights in the area, and the replacement of relatively rare US aircraft missions, usually by Global Hawk long-range drones, with more frequent reconnaissance flights by manned aircraft from other countries.
The Royal Air Force, already a constant operator in the area, stepped up flight frequency of Britain-based Rivet Joint aircraft in airspace west and south of the Crimea peninsula. The plane is designed primarily to locate ground radars and radio emitters by triangulation. On some sorties, British fighters based in Romania have escorted the Rivet Joints.
The French Air Force in late January kicked off repeated flights with its own fighters into the same airspace and, about once or twice a week, so far has flown fighter jets almost the length of the Black Sea along flight paths and altitudes similar to those typically used by reconnaissance aircraft. Open source flight tracking platforms have confirmed the reports.
Some Ukrainian military media has reported, without offering evidence, that at least one of the French fighters has been equipped with electronic data sniffers like a smaller-scale version of the British Rivet Joints. No Russian interference with the manned flights has been reported.
Along with the intensified British and French air reconnaissance over east Romania and the Black Sea, Turkish and Italian surveillance aircraft, along with NATO-flagged AWACS airspace monitoring aircraft, have flown repeated missions into the area as well. The AWACS flights, mostly absent over Romania except at intervals of more than once or twice a month, are now, since mid-January, taking place almost daily, have particularly raised eyebrows.
Kyiv Post and other information platforms have identified a seeming link between spikes of this non-US NATO ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) aircraft activity and Ukrainian long-range drone strikes against Crimea and Russia’s Krasnodar region. Russian milbloggers have repeatedly accused NATO of transferring Ukraine targeting data.
Ukrainian media in February reported that the US satellite imaging blackout to Ukraine was being compensated for, partially, by the Finnish company ICEYE, which signed an agreement in July to provide synthetic aperture radar global surveillance data to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Yury Yusov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR, singled out ICEYE as critical for Ukrainian intelligence collection on Russian forces and credited it for filling in gaps left by the switch off of US satellite imagery.
French Defense Minister Setbastian Lecru on Thursday told local Inter Radio that Paris would continue intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
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