REB-fight over Kaliningrad: the mysterious "Samarkand" against EC-130H

Kaliningrad Oblast is the westernmost bastion of the Russian Federation and its very unpleasant “splinter” in NATO defense. The Alliance is conducting numerous military exercises that are clearly directed against this Russian enclave. As you know, the air defense system in Kaliningrad is the densest of all our regions. Currently, near the Kaliningrad borders, regular block maneuvers are taking place, during which a certain incident occurred that cast doubt on the safety of our air borders.

On June 10, two NATO reconnaissance aircraft, one American and one Swedish, approached our borders. Immediately, a Su-27 fighter took off into the sky, which accompanied them for some time, and then drove them away. However, the next day, according to some reports, the airborne border of the Kaliningrad region could be violated by a specialized EW EC-130H Compass Call aircraft of the US Air Force. Also, under its cover, the RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV and the Swedish Gulfstream IV reconnaissance could have gone unnoticed by our radars.




If this information is correct, then what could it mean? Is the American military really Technology can “perforate” and dazzle our most advanced air defense / missile defense systems?

First of all, what is the EC-130H Compass Call, and is there any reason to worry? This is a means of offensive war, created on the basis of the military transport aircraft S-130 Hercules. They are equipped with electronic warfare and electronic reconnaissance systems used to suppress enemy air defense systems. The EC-130H was used in business in Yugoslavia, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan before the start of massive strikes by American interventionists.


The Pentagon has 14 such aircraft, and on the eve of the incident, one of them was flown to neighboring Poland with Kaliningrad to participate in the exercises. In an extremely negative scenario, a special US Air Force aircraft was able to blind and stun the air defense / missile defense systems of our most protected region. However, there is just the opposite view of this situation.

Domestic arms developers also did not sit idly by. Information on the use of EC-130H around the world was carefully collected and analyzed, which was reflected in modern air defense systems, such as, for example, S-400. The air lines of Kaliningrad are guarded by six S-400 divisions. In addition, at the westernmost frontier of defense is the Voronezh radar system, at a distance of 4 thousand kilometers, signaling the beginning of a missile attack.

This is an extremely serious defensive weapon, not like the air defense shield of Yugoslavia or Iraq. Even senior US military officials pay tribute to Russian EW developments. Ben Hodges, commander of NATO forces in Europe, admitted:



But the Russian Defense Ministry has a couple of unpleasant surprises in its sleeve. For example, the strictly classified complex "Samarkand", which stands on the defense of the Kaliningrad region. There is a high probability that it was not the “American” who blinded the Russian air defense, but our electronic warfare systems stunned the EC-130H, which, due to this, flew into the airspace of Kaliningrad.