10 | New Scientist | 16 April 2022MOBILE phones have captured
much revealing and distressing
footage of how the war is
unfolding in Ukraine, but the
technology is also being utilised
by both Russia and Ukraine
to eke out a military advantage.
The devices, whether they are
the latest smartphone or older
phones capable only of calls and
texts, will be in the pockets ofmany Russian and Ukrainian
soldiers, allowing each side
to track the movements
of opposition troops.
Mobile phones broadcast
signals to nearby communications
towers, establishing a connection
that allows people to make a
call or go online. The pinging
of these towers is frequently used
by police forces in missing-person
cases, with signals from three
towers used to triangulate a
phone’s location to within an
area of about 1 square kilometre.
That principle is now being
used by Ukrainian and Russian
soldiers to track opposition
forces. “You may as well
paint a target on your back,”
says Alan Woodward at the
University of Surrey, UK.
A Russian system, called Leer-3,
launches two drones that mimic
mobile phone towers, picking
up the location of more than
2000 phones within a 6-kilometre
range. When it comes to the
Ukrainian side, US officials
told The New York Times in
March that at least one Russian
general has been killed after
Ukrainian intelligence picked
up one of his outgoing calls.
“Anyone who has access to the
tower information can obviouslytriangulate positions, and with
integration ISTAR [intelligence,
surveillance, target acquisition,
and reconnaissance] systems
today, it can be a matter of
moments from detection
to launching a missile or firing
a shell,” says Woodward.
Communication breakdowns
and flawed plans mean the
Russian army’s secure
communication systems have
been unreliable since its invasion
on 24 February, forcing it to rely
on mobile phones, believe
military analysts. And many
members of the Ukrainian army,
which is made up of a considerable
number of volunteers, may be
unaware of the dangers of having
phones in a combat situation.
“The bottom line is that
personal mobile phones have
no place on the battlefield,” says
Woodward. Complex military
radio systems use encryption
and spread spectrum techniques,
which alter the frequency ofa radio signal by injecting
random packets of noise,
helping to avoid detection.
Mobile phone technology,
however, is easy to exploit.
Smartphones, in particular, use
sophisticated global positioning
systems (GPS). “Anything that
transmits radio waves can be used
to track people, and smart devices
are dripping with metadata that
can be used to target groups or
individuals,” says Woodward.
That same metadata, such as
a caller’s and recipient’s phone
numbers, can also be used to
bombard troops with propaganda.
“We’ve seen many examples of
soldiers from both sides getting
calls and threatening messages,”
says Yevgeniy Golovchenko at
the University of Copenhagen,
Denmark. “We’ve also seen
family members getting callsas a way of intimidating and
demoralising the other side.”
A similar method was used
against NATO troops stationed
in the Baltic states, according
to Golovchenko, as well as against
coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Relatives of members of Danish
forces stationed in Afghanistan
received messages incorrectly
telling them that their relatives
were dead, waging psychological
warfare designed to turn public
opinion against the occupation
of Afghanistan, he says.Propaganda war
On 1 April, Ukraine’s intelligence
service announced that 5000 text
messages had been sent by Russia
to the mobile phones of Ukrainian
army officers and state security
members in the north-eastern
city of Kharkiv, urging them to
give up their arms and surrender.
The intelligence service claimed
that Russia’s propaganda project
cost $2000 a month.
Such strategies aren’t exclusive
to Russia. An adviser to Ukraine’s
minister of interior affairs has
said the country is “regularly”
sending similar messages to
Russian soldiers, exhorting
them to give up their military
equipment in exchange for a
cash reward. One Russian soldier,
known as “Mischa”, has been
promised $10,000 at the end of
the war and the opportunity to
apply for Ukrainian citizenship,
according to the adviser.
These developments show
just how important mobile
phones can be in modern warfare.
“Each soldier with a phone
is a data point and generates
data about themselves,” says
Golovchenko. “All of a sudden,
we have a lot of data you wouldn’t
have otherwise, and this data
can be used to kill people.” ❚“We have a lot of data you
wouldn’t have otherwise,
and this data can be
used to kill people”
Russia-Ukraine warRODRIGOABD/AP/SHUTT
ER
ST
OCKMobile phones as weapons
The way phones ping signals to communications towers is allowing Ukrainian and Russian
soldiers to track the movements of opposition forces, finds Chris Stokel-WalkerA Ukrainian soldier
checks their phone in the
outskirts of Kyiv, UkraineNews