Interview with Kalinin, 5 Jul. 2024
Kalinin is director of Infozahyst, one of the most advanced firms in terms of radio reconnaissance devices.
I would not be transcribing this interview, as it has closed captions and you can switch on auto-translate which is quite good quality.
A small overview of what I saw.
No Gekata
First of all no mention of Gekata: https://infozahyst.com/en/product/gekata_eng/
Instead he mentioned in terms of future developments need to launch satellite based radio reconnaissance. So his focus was somehow towards longer ranged targets then actual front line. Maybe Gekata is already out in production, and that is why no focus on it, but otherwise disappointing. As that could be an important part of “Permanent Reconnaissance, Interdiction and Strike Contour” (PRISC). Of which more in the next publication.
Digital camo
Another trend that he mentions is digital camo, means ways to make artificial vision to take wrong decisions. Like for example using stroboscope in certain patterns. Which is a kind of narrow for my current understanding. Because there is also laser blinding possible and some other ways. Quite beside which if proper “large” models are applied instead of algorithmic “small” models, then it would be quite difficult to apply the method he describes.
Like for example using one of many foundational zero-shot vision models from here, with further fine-tuning for war datasets.
Luckily data for vision domain is quite widespread and thus available for building large foundational zero-shot models.
Unlike some other domains, that would require specialised approaches.
No anti-UAV EW awareness on the West
He mentions here and in some other interview that Western partners are not yet there to understand current state of EW.
Visiting various exhibition he notes a growing interest in radio reconnaissance solutions they provide. But zero interest in what is called REB (EW in English).
And briefly describes status of it, with small range “trench” EW is widely available. And then less and less available towards strategic level. Even enemy strategic EW is not applied, either to high losses during Kyiv campaign or because of some other obstacles. From the sound of it, he sees perspective in strategic level EW, including anti-radar EW, though not easy to produce a solution.
China could become a part in the war eventually
Not the first time from UA interviews one could hear belief that China could become a continuation of this war, not some other war. In other interviews with some battle commanders some beliefs that the war would continue for at least 10 years were expressed.
From other comments it seems he expressed a belief that UA will win this war.
It was mentioned that China may become a source of innovation for this war, including producing advanced computer models of battle AI.
AI would not be a deciding factor in the current war
He does not see fast AI implementation by UA engineers, besides limited computer vision applications. And does not expect advanced targeting to be implemented during this war.
Means where drone identifies the target and strikes it with high precision.
Conclusions
First assumption is that this person is highly involved in the current UA mil-tech. So expressed views are either result of certain experiences or general expectations in that community.
Basically current efforts seems to be focused on more classical concepts, enhanced by advances in drone technologies. Classical warfare remains the core of the action.
This coincides with vision expressed by Gen. Zaluzhny in his recent public address:
At the same time, I absolutely agree that the Russian-Ukrainian war is not yet a war of the future. It is only a war of transitional period.