PUTIN’S “invincible” hypersonic missiles are being foiled by Ukraine’s latest defence strategy: music.
A crack team of techies known as Night Watch are jamming signals on the Russian weapons using a parody of a Kremlin propaganda tune.
The group claims to have brought down 19 Kinzhal missiles – described by Putin himself as “invincible” – in the past two weeks.
The team told tech website 404 Media they are using the song and a redirection command to send the missiles – which go at five times the speed of sound – crashing down into empty fields.
The “next-generation” missiles carry a whopping 480kg payload and cost around £7.7m each.
They are one of Russia‘s top weapons and until recently were very effective at evading interception efforts.
In August, they were being downed at a rate of 37 per cent, but after some modifications just six per cent were being stopped by September.
Now, however, using a technique known as “spoofing”, Ukraine is once again getting the better of the weapons.
Kinzhals and other guided weapons use Russia‘s GPS-style network of satellites to find their targets.
Night Watch has developed its own “Lima” jamming system that replaces the missiles’ navigation signals with the Ukrainian song “Our Father is Bandera”.
This was chosen as a dig at Russian propaganda, which likes to suggest all Ukrainians are supporters of the 20th-century Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera.
When the song begins, the system feeds the incoming missiles a false navigation signal, tricking them into believing that they are flying over Lima, in Peru, so that they try to change their trajectory.
Travelling at a speed of more than 4,000mph, the missiles are destabilised by the sudden change of course.
Night Watch said they designed the system after finding out that Kinzhals’ defence against jamming and spoofing relied on outdated technology.
The team told 404: “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have.
“The airframe cannot withstand the excessive stress, and the missile naturally fails.
When the Kinzhal tried to quickly change navigation, the fuselage of this missile was unable to handle the speed… and, yeah, it was just cut into two parts.
“The biggest advantage of those missiles, speed, was used against them.”
A Night Watch source told Forbes that on another occasion a missile had been lured 200km off course from its target airfield.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15530218/putin-hypersonic-missiles-downed-ukraine-music/
