Electronic Warfare

Trit e Unv eil s Mobil e Ver sion of it s Sys em Not a T ritel LLC continues effort to help Ukraine’s military improve and bolster its ability to counter the growing threat from air drones and other advanced military technologies deployed by Russian intervention forces in the Donbas conflict area. The Ukrainian company has recently demonstrated an improved iteration to its counter-UAV system "Nota", offering new features added for increased functionality.

Since its first public appearance at the 2018 Arms & Security Expo held in Kyiv, Nota has gained great renown in Ukraine and become a real threat to Russian use of drones in Donbas.

Development of the Nota technology was driven by the onset of Russian military incursion into Ukraine in 2014 and by the impunity with which separatist rebels had been using Russian supplied UAVs and Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities against Ukrainian forces. So Nota has been developed as a solution to the challenges brought by drone and EW threats and to interfere with and frustrate the operation of hostile counter-battery radars and cellular communications of all currently existing standards.

Nota can use directional and non-directional arrays in a single mode of operation, which allows it to provide anti-drone perimeter protection to permanent facilities while scanning a sector of interest.

The Nota can detect hostile drones at ranges out to 20 km and intercept them at ranges of at least 15 km away. Cellular communications can be jammed from distances up to 1,000 m. The full set of the Nota equipment weighs 250 kg and is served by a crew of two. The system does not emit while on standby, which effectively makes it "stealthy" to enemy surveillance radars. Once a threat is detected, the Nota immediately turns active to direct its jammer and neutralize the threat.

In addition to anti-drone protection, Nota has the capabilities to identify targets and transmit relevant data to friendly batteries or for further processing and analysis. The system has now been fielded in quantity with Ukrainian forces; it has proved its worth both in combat settings and in providing anti-drone protection to facilities located in the depth of Ukrainian territory.

At the 2019 Arms & Security Expo, Tritel unveiled a mobile version of Nota, offering expanded combat functionality and permitting the system to quickly move to a new position to avoid detection and destruction by the adversary. In this new version, Nota would scan the defined sector of interest to search, detect and identify drone threats before neutralizing them by jamming remote control and data links. This thus makes it suitable to provide anti-drone protection to high-value targets such as munitions depots, command and control centers, power generation plants, bridges, airports, checkpoints etc. With new capabilities added, mobile Nota will be able to perform SIGINT missions and to support the operation of multiple networked systems controlled from a single command center and sharing data online. Mobile Nota features an antenna mounted on a telescopic mast.

Mobile Nota system has been designed mounted on the armored military vehicle "Kozak" that is being produced by Practika, a privately-run Ukrainian company. An all-terrain vehicle, Kozak has robust protections against small arms fire and impacts of shell and mine blast fragments.

Deploying mobile systems like Nota along the "line of contact" would significantly reduce the adversary’s use of drones and capabilities for command and control, communication and radio location.