We are somewhere in Central Sweden with a unit we have never been allowed to film before; The telewar battalion. Parts of the surveillance and jamming equipment are so secret that it has been removed.
It is about telewar; electronic warfare for advanced reconnaissance and jamming against various targets and ways that adversaries communicate, something that Sweden has been good at for a long time.
But the war in Ukraine has changed modern warfare – now they need to be twice as many, and deal with new threats. Today, a company is practicing disrupting drones.
– Drones have gone from being an exclusive resource in a few places in a military organization, to something that exists en masse, says Henrik Kasesalu, head of the war unit.
“Used to knock out a single soldier”
It is not highly advanced drones that are being mass-produced right now. Some sources state that in Ukraine alone it is about 10,000, and in Russia 100,000, every month. But they have deadly and devastating power.
– Currently, they are so cheap that they are even used to knock out a single soldier, says Henrik Kasesalu.
The front in Ukraine is long and the forces have been stalled for a long time. And with thousands of drones in the air every day, no one can move – without the enemy seeing you.
Then the ability to interfere as the unit shows becomes extremely important – the strongest signal wins. In the long term, you also need to be able to manage swarms of drones, perhaps autonomously with the help of AI.
The soldiers have identified a drone and are using jammers. The drone pilot immediately loses contact with the craft, it becomes impossible to maneuver and sails down towards the ground. At the same time, the telewar company is exposed and the unit must act quickly in order not to be discovered by the enemy
This capability will be widely deployed in defense in the future.
– It is not enough that we have a few units that can do this. It needs to be everywhere, so that we can deal with the threat, says Henrik Kasesalu.