Ukraine war: downed Russian fighter jets found with basic GPS ‘taped to dashboards’, UK defence minister says
- Su-34 pilots are relying on the rudimentary receivers to navigate because their inbuilt systems are so bad, says British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace
- He added there was evidence suggesting Russian military hardware was being pushed to breaking point in the invasion of Ukraine
Wrecked Russian fighter planes are being found with rudimentary GPS receivers “taped to the dashboards” in Ukraine because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad, the UK defence minister said.
Speaking at the National Army Museum in London on Monday, Ben Wallace commemorated those who died in World War II and called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “senseless and self-defeating”.
He also said there was evidence suggesting Russian military hardware was being pushed to breaking point by the invasion of Ukraine.
“GPS receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian Su-34s so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems,” he said.
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“The result is that whilst Russia have large amounts of artillery and armour that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms manoeuvre and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages.”
The Su-34 was first manufactured during the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, but is still one of Russia’s leading fighter aircraft.
Ukraine has shared abundant evidence of what it says are Russia’s attempts to patch over issues with old military equipment and bypass equipment shortages.
Last month, Ukrainian troops paraded a Russian drone that had been covered in duct tape and fitted with a generic plastic bottle top for a fuel cap. In late March, Ukrainian troops found Russian army bandages dating back to 1978 discarded on a battlefield.
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In his Monday speech, Wallace also said Russian vehicles “are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them” and that soldiers are using “pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks” and attaching “overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks”.
Russia held its annual May 9 “Victory Day” military parade in Moscow on Monday, but cancelled the air force fly-by due to what it said was bad weather.
During his speech, President Vladimir Putin did not declare all-out war on Ukraine as Western officials including Wallace had expected, instead praising the valour of Russian troops fighting in the eastern Donbas region and slamming Nato and the US.
