A Penicillin Cure for Ukraine:

Russia’s 1B75 Penicillin Counter-Battery Radar System

It is widely acknowledged that the conflict in Ukraine has become a war of attrition fought to a very great degree with artillery, the proverbial “king of the battlefield”, returned to prominence.
Throughout the conflict Russia has enjoyed a large artillery arsenal overmatch, sometimes 9 to 1 over the Kiev regime.
At times up to 80-90% of Ukrainian casualties have resulted from artillery blasts and shrapnel.

A big part of an artillery war are static positional battles and artillery duels, with big artillery gun crews playing a cat and mouse game of firing at great distance, moving position, hunting each other down and slugging it out with thunderous detonations across the trench and corpse-littered battlefield wastelands.

The principle means for artillery crews to hunt each other down are drone reconnaissance and counter-battery radar systems, which primarily use active radar to detect incoming artillery fire, triangulate the opposition gun’s positions and direct return artillery fire, rocket or drone strikes at that location before they can move again.

Both sides of the conflict use upgraded Soviet-legacy artillery counter-battery radar systems, which of course themselves become primary targets of this deadly cat and mouse artillery duel game. As the Kiev regime’s existing counter-battery systems have been attritted away in combat, US & other NATO countries have been supplying it with their own counter-battery radar systems.

In mid-December last year Russian media reported that Russia’s new 1B75 “Penicillin” Counter-Battery Radar system had deployed in numbers to the theatre. Rather than the active electro-magnetic radar used by conventional such systems, the Penicillin utilizes passive thermal-acoustic sensors to detect and triangulate the position of the enemies artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, ballistic missile launchers, mortars, air defense systems, and opposing counter-battery radar systems from 25-38 kilometers distance.

It’s optic sensor module has six infrared cameras and thermal imaging systems that allow the ‘Penicillin’ to see bursts of gunfire and shell explosions.

The system is also equipped with an acoustic reconnaissance device. Noise and deployed seismic sensors receive ground vibrations from outgoing artillery gun fire and the kinetic energy of incoming detonations to triangulate the target’s position.
It’s the Penicillin’s combination of both seismic and thermal imaging devices that so drastically increases the speed and accuracy of the determination of enemy positions. It can detect, triangulate the position of, and direct pinpoint automated counter-battery artillery fire on the target in 5 seconds or less, far too short a time for it to “shoot and scoot”.

Although the thermal-acoustic Penicillin has a shorter range than a conventional counter-battery artillery system using radar, it has several advantages over them.

First, it can more easily detect smaller incoming projectiles like mortars than conventional radar-using counter battery radar systems can.
Second, because the passive Penicillin system does not rely on electromagnetic waves like radar technology does, it is undetectable by opposing radar systems.
Third, it Is therefore immune to jamming by electronic warfare countermeasures.

Meanwhile Russia’s formidable electronic warfare defenses shield the Penicillin from visual detection by opposition reconnaissance and strike drones.
The Penicillin becomes all but invisible on the battlefield to opposing artillery, the Kiev regime’s artillery units effectively shooting at their opponent’s guns blind, making artillery duels very very lopsided affairs.

Since the deployment of the Penicillin to the battlefield in mid-December the Russian Ministry of Defense has reported vastly increased rates of destruction of the Kiev regime’s artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, ballistic missile launchers, mortars, air defense systems, and opposing counter-battery radar systems – both Soviet legacy and Western alike. The recorded kills of M777s, Krabs, Caesars, HIMARS and other such Western weapons on the Defense Ministry’s daily clobber list have skyrocketed.

In one recent week,  the Russian MOD claims to have destroyed a total of 40 towed artillery pieces, 32 self propelled howitzers, 8 Multiple Rocked Launcher Systems (MRLS), 15 opposing counter artillery radars and 23 local artillery ammunition depots.

Artillery duels have since become assassinations… slaughters. The Kiev regime’s artillery guns are falling silent,  a couple dozen or more by the day. The already serious Russian artillery overmatch has become total. The Penicillin has been used to devastating effect.

Notice that the most recently announced Western military aid packages suddenly contain a large number of artillery not seen since the initial packages last spring, some 200 pieces. Multiple countries, including Denmark, the UK and Estonia, are sending Ukraine literally ALL of their own howitzers, stripping their own armies bare.  It is unlikely that NATO states would empty out their own entire inventory of artillery pieces were the Kiev regime not facing crisis levels of artillery losses in an artillery war. Nothing like throwing good after bad….

Considering the predominance of artillery on the east Ukrainian battlefield it is almost certain that the introduction of the Penicillin to the battlefield has been one of the principle reasons for the recent Russian breakthroughs in Soledar, and around Bakhmut and Ugledar -  and of the horrific high Ukrainian causalities and resulting general collapse across the frontlines.
Penicillin is the cure that Ukraine has been looking for…