The Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on Monday announced that the Ukrainian army is upgrading its advanced passive detection systems called “Kolchuga”.
The details were given in a 7 February media release, to announce that the upgrade should greatly increase the sensitivity of the passive detection system.
Militarnyi also quoted the source saying that “Target” scientific and production company was awarded a contract from the Ukrainian army for the repair and modernization of the Kolchuga system.
The Kolchuga is a unique Ukrainian-made passive electronic detection system that makes it possible to spot ground and surface targets and trace their movement within a radius of 600 km and air targets at the 10 km altitude – up to 800 km, which makes an effective early warning air defense system.
The Kolchuga station is equipped with five-meter-, decimeter-, and centimeter-range aerials, which provide for high radio sensitivity within a 110dB/W – 155 dB/W swath, depending on the frequency.
According to GlobalSecurity.org, the 800-km detection range has been achieved only by the Ukrainian Kolchuga. The best the U.S. AWACS can do is 600 km, while the ground-based complexes Vera (Czech Republic) and Vega (Russia) can reach out up to 400 km – half what the Ukrainian complex can reach. Kolchuga’s lower limit of the working frequency range is 130MHz and is the lowest of all analogs. For the AWACS it is 2,000 MHz, for the Vera it is 850MHz, for the Vega it is 200MHz.
