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CENTENARY OF AN INVISIBLE WAR
Military-industrial courier. July 14-20, 2004. By Alexander Victorov
Today the abbreviation EW is well known to any person, more or less familiar
with modern art of war, evolution of armies and navies, history of local wars
and military conflicts during last decades. Because the Electronic Warfare is
considered at the present time as an immanent component of any battle of any
scale. And it has been approved on practice that the result of EW facilities
usage is compatible or even exceeds the result when weapons were used directly.
It should be stressed that the electronic warfare does not begin at a first
shot, at a first shell burst or missile explosion. And it does not end at an
official fire cease. This invisible war goes continuously since long time ago.
The title of the book being presented means that this book does not cover the
EW in general. But, due to some reasons, it was the Navy where the Radio-Electronic
Warfare appeared and began to evolve. Yes, the Electronic Warfare became a separate
military branch during the period 1950-1970 from scientific, organizational
and technical points of view. Of course, its basic as well as modern terms were
established in the second half of XX century. Nevertheless, as it is noticed
in the book, when learning archive materials about the EW history, it is easy
to find parallels with the present. Even the term "Radio-Electronic Warfare",
which became common in '60s, is of a venerable age. It is a fact that the term
"fight for radio-communications" appeared in documents of the Russian Navy in
1911. Specialists used it assuming "actions to destroy enemy's radio-communications"
on one hand, and "efforts to keep own radio-communications" at the conditions
of enemy's interference - on the other hand.
However, the same archive materials are indicative of the fact that the possibility
of military fighting in the sphere of radio was in the field of view of Russian
Naval commanders practically from first days when this invention was used by
the Navy. The report of the Naval Technical Committee written in January 1902
is an example. The decisive step, finally introduced Radio-Electronic Warfare
concepts into military practice, was made by Vice-Admiral V. O. Makarov during
first months of the Russian-Japanese war in 1904-1905. He took command of Pacific
Navy in February 1904 and issued the historical Order 27, dated by March 7,
which became the first official document in the sphere of Radio-Electronic Warfare.
The radio reconnaissance, organized on ships in short time according to the
Order, allowed monitoring Japanese radio communications. Very soon the next
step, obvious within the Radio-Electronic Warfare logic, was made - methods
to destroy enemy's radio communications were successfully applied during a battle.
This happened on April 2 (15), 1904.
One century has passed since that time. The Radio-Electronic Warfare lived
and improved during this period. The book shows this process in the Russian
Navy.
No doubt, a huge leap forward has been made at the end of the last century.
The book describes details of what was done in order to provide the Navy with
EW facilities able to support reliably its activities at seas and in oceans.
It is stressed that the EW equipment designed and manufactured for the USSR
Navy in '80s was not second to the best achievements in the level of design
and manufacturing, and exceeded them in a number of parameters. It is very good
that the authors did not forget to tell us names of admirals, generals, officers,
scientists, workers and leaders of enterprises and scientific institutes who
allowed reaching all of this.
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