{"id":82038,"date":"2017-11-22T20:47:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T20:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/11\/22\/lessons-from-zapad-jamming-nato-and-the-future-of-belarus\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:00:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:00:56","slug":"lessons-from-zapad-jamming-nato-and-the-future-of-belarus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/flashpoints\/2017\/11\/22\/lessons-from-zapad-jamming-nato-and-the-future-of-belarus\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Zapad \u2014 jamming, NATO and the future of Belarus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The biannual Zapad military exercise, jointly run by Russia and Belarus, was closely watched this September by Western nations. And while there were some concerns that the movement could be a cover for aggressive action from Moscow, the exercise was completed without incident \u2014 and for those outside the region, largely faded from memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for close NATO watchers, and especially the Baltic nations and Poland, seeing Russian forces operating up close provided some interesting threads to follow in the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we gained some insight into things we knew they could do, but it just largely refreshed us in terms of knowing this is something that we have to work on,\u201d said Jim Townsend, a longtime Pentagon Europe expert now with the Center for a New American Security think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, \u201cI don\u2019t think we saw something that was shocking,\u201d Townsend said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see a new capability, we just saw a lot of things that we\u2019ve always known about and we worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Col. Kaupo Rosin, Estonia\u2019s head of military intelligence, agreed that there was nothing truly shocking to come out of Zapad, but highlighted a few key takeaways from the event that his nation would be thinking through going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first big takeaway, Rosin told Defense News in a November interview, was what Russia was doing in the electronic warfare space, and specifically how Zapad was done in a largely EW-hostile environment, apparently reflecting how Russia excepts to have to deal with a Western assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe amount of jamming of their own troops surprised me. It was at a level we haven\u2019t seen. And they did it in the different branches, so land force, air force. That definitely surprised us,\u201d Rosin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t