Vladimir Putin’s machismo rhetoric is well-documented. Shows of strength and tough-talk are part and parcel of an anti-Western Russian foreign policy premised on Cold War-era sentiments. In a recent propaganda video released by the Russian state-run media, this aggressive posturing was on full-display. Claiming that it could realistically disable America’s entire military with a single “electronic bomb,” the Kremlin’s news “reporters” boasted about the Russian military’s ability to de-weaponize U.S. missiles, warplanes, and ships with electronic jamming signals.
“Today, our Russian Electronic Warfare (REW) troops can detect and neutralize any target from a ship’s system and a radar, to a satellite,” said a state-sponsored newscaster.
Citing an ambiguous incident several years ago, the newscaster insisted that Russia had used this technology against U.S. naval vessels in the past.
“The news report claim[ed] a single Russian war plane flew several times around American destroyer the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea several years ago, disabling its systems and leaving it helpless,” reports The Sun. “The report also claim[ed] they are capable to creating electronic jamming domes over their bases that make them invisible on radar screens.”
It’s worth noting that it’s unclear whether Russia possesses this sort of technology or not. State-run media is hardly a reliable source to fall back on. If the Russian Federation does have the ability to jam U.S. naval equipment (an unlikely feat), then the Pentagon a) knows about it and, b) has likely developed defensive or counter-offensive methods for disrupting such an attack.
The North-Korean style rhetoric comes as the United States takes an increasingly assertive stance against the genocidal regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia.
NATO military exercises along Russia’s western border with Europe have also been cause for consternation in Moscow as Putin begins to see that his military excursions in Ukraine cannot be repeated in states allied with NATO, including Latvia and Estonia.