Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) confirmed on Monday that its special operations unit has seized a modern Russian radar system at the Russian-occupied offshore drilling platform in the northwestern Black Sea.
In a Telegram post, GUR said that Ukrainian forces had retaken the drilling platforms known as the ‘Boiko Towers’ in a “unique operation”.
It said the platforms had been occupied since 2015 by Russia, which seized and annexed Crimea in 2014, and had been used by Moscow for military purposes since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Several Russian Telegram channels claim that in a video message posted to social media on Monday, GUR showed how Soldiers had seized a modern NEVA-B surface search radar (with an inscription on the antenna Morskiye Kompleksy i Sistemy) installed on top of an offshore drilling platform.
“As a result, the GUR’s spoils were several boxes of NARs [unguided rockets] and the NEVA-B radar previously installed by the Russian Armed Forces on the maritime control tower, which means that we temporarily lost this observation post,” the Russian Military Informant Telegram channel posited.
Russia’s state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport said that NEVA-B is designed by Morskiye Kompleksy i Sistemy, Saint Petersburg, for round-the-clock radar monitoring of wide flat land sites and detecting and tracking land-borne targets.
“NEVA-B features incoherent moving targets discrimination (MTD) for precise detection of moving targets against clutter background. The active thermo-electric cooling system ensures flawless operation in hot climates.” said on its website.
The Neva-B radar installed on offshore platforms reportedly can automatically capture and track up to 200 targets at the same time. The detection range for large targets like cruisers or tankers is up to 55 km, for medium targets like patrol and missile boats – up to 35 km, for small targets like small boats and boats – up to 15 km.
Editor’s Note: Some experts noted that the sensor is visually similar to the Chinese-made CY-1013 radar system, a copy of the Furuno maritime survey radar.
