Kolchuga passive sensor

The Kolchuga (Кольчуга Chainmail) passive sensor is an electronic-warfare support measures (ESM) system developed in the Soviet Union and manufactured in Ukraine.

It took eight years (1993–2000) to conduct research, develop algorithms, test solutions on experimental specimens, and launch production.

The relatively low-cost Ukrainian Kolchuga-M passive radar station is able to detect and identify practically all known active radio devices mounted on ground, airborne, or marine objects.

[citation needed] Kolchuga is an electronic support measures system that employs two or more sites to locate emitters by triangulation.

The system is vehicle mounted and comprises a large vertical meshed reflector, with two smaller circular parabolic dishes beneath and a pair of VHF-to-microwave log periodic antennas above.

A Kolchuga complex can detect and locate air and surface targets and trace their movement to a range generally limited only by the common line-of-sight of the stations.

According to the manufacturer's brochure (from AIDEX 1997), the upgraded Kolchuga-M is equipped: The brochure also claims that the system provides: Special inhibitory sorters omit up to 24 interfering signals, and tracking sorters make it possible to synchronously sort out and track signals from 32 targets; Kolchuga is able to detect and identify many types of radio devices mounted on ground, airborne, or marine objects.

[2] In 2002 the U.S. State Department accused Ukraine of selling Kolchuga to Iraq, based on recordings of the then Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma supposedly made by Mykola Mel'nychenko.