testing

According to reports, UkrArmoTech has begun factory testing a prototype of the Skif, which has apparently been developed in direct response to the requirements of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, drawing from lessons learned since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

UkrArmoTech is among the leading developers and manufacturers of armored vehicles for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but has, to date, focused on wheeled models such as the Desna, Gyurza, and Tisa. With that in mind, the Skif marks a new direction for the company.

“First and foremost, we relied on our contacts with the military, our understanding of their needs, and our experience with the use of wheeled vehicles on the battlefield,” UkrArmoTech CEO Hennadii Khirhii told the Ukrainian Defense Express website. “Active combat operations in Ukraine have demonstrated the need for a significant number of armored vehicles to ensure and maintain the mobility of units and formations of the Armed Forces and Defense Forces.”

The design of the Skif is heavily influenced by the U.S.-developed M113, a Cold War-era tracked APC, many hundreds of which have been supplied to Ukraine since February 2022.

Despite its age, it seems the M113 has been a success in Ukrainian hands, offering a useful combination of reliability, maintainability, troop-carrying capacity, and off-road mobility.

The designers of the Skif were therefore instructed to produce a vehicle that matched the M113’s mobility while improving on its levels of protection and firepower.

According to reports, the Skif makes use of off-the-shelf components and assemblies from foreign manufacturers involved in the production of armored vehicles that are “descendants” of the M113.

It’s unclear if this implies that the Skif uses components from Western manufacturers that have built the M113 and its derivatives, or if the Ukrainian vehicle employs parts from other Western-made APCs. Noteworthy is the fact that members of the broader M113 family have been built under license in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, as well as several other countries outside Europe.

Reportedly, 60 percent of the vehicle’s components will initially be imported, and these will include the engine, transmission, suspension components, transfer case, and tracks. If production is launched, an increasing proportion of the components will be made locally.

In its basic form, the Skif is intended to transport soldiers from mechanized units across the battlefield and to provide them with fire support. As well as three crew (driver, commander, and gunner), located in the front section behind the power module, the Skif can accommodate eight soldiers in the rear troop compartment. The troops enter and exit via a rear ramp, as on the M113.

The prototype of the Skif has an aluminum hull, reportedly the first time this has been used on a Ukrainian combat vehicle. However, a series-production version will likely feature an armored steel. While steel offers better ballistic resistance and is easier to repair in the field, it comes with a significant weight penalty.

With the aluminum hull, the Skif weighs around 15 tons and is driven by a 360-horsepower diesel engine. The modular design means that different engines can be installed, for example, if more power is needed for a steel hull, or when fitted with heavier weapons.

In its basic form, the Skif has a Ukrainian-made remotely controlled combat module on the hull roof. This can be armed either with a 12.7mm or 14.5mm heavy machine gun paired with a 7.62mm auxiliary machine gun. As seen in the photos, the prototype does not currently have the combat module fitted.

Armor protection is in line with NATO STANAG 4569 Level 4 over the frontal section (withstanding, for example, 14.5mm machine gun fire, or a 155mm artillery projectile detonating at 25 meters), and Level 3 on the sides and rear (resistant to 7.62mm gunfire, or a 155mm artillery projectile detonating at 60 meters). Mine protection below the hull is rated at Levels 3a and 3b. The vehicle is expected to withstand the detonation of around 13 pounds of explosives under the hull or tracks.

It’s unclear what kinds of protection are provided against the threat of attack drones, but some type of electronic warfare gear is included; it would also be expected that the vehicle receives a purpose-designed ‘cope cage’ of the kind that has appeared on most Ukrainian and Russian combat vehicle types during the conflict. Otherwise, the Skif is equipped with communications, navigation, situational awareness, and fire-control systems of Ukrainian origin. A bank of smoke grenade launchers is fitted across the front of the hull on the Skif prototype.

The modular design means that the Skif can be adapted for other missions. These are likely to include vehicles equipped for command and control, reconnaissance, anti-armor, mortar carrier, medical evacuation, and more.

With the continued debate over wheeled versus tracked combat vehicles, it is interesting to note that Ukraine, after focusing on the local production of wheeled fighting vehicles, continues to see the necessity for tracked APCs. While heavier, more complex, and more costly, they are better able to deal with the brutal mud that is a feature of Ukrainian winters. They are also generally better in terms of armor protection.

For that reason, the aging M113 and the Soviet-era MT-LB remain popular choices for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to the Oryx open-source tracking group, since the start of the current conflict, more than 500 Ukrainian M113s and more than 150 MT-LBs have been confirmed destroyed or damaged. The actual figures are certainly higher, as Oryx only tallies losses that are confirmed with visual evidence.

Despite the need for a vehicle in this class, there remain significant challenges in getting it into production. Very likely, Ukraine will have to rely heavily on foreign funds and expertise if it is to put the Skif into quantity production. Should that prove realistic, Ukraine will likely also seek to sell the Skif to foreign customers, too.

Continued factory testing of the Skif prototype should provide a practical assessment of the new platform’s design maturity, including whether its mobility and running performance meet local requirements. Certainly, the new tracked APC is a bold venture for Ukraine’s war-ravaged industry, but it represents a class of vehicle for which there is a near-insatiable local demand.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

During Bamboo Eagle, “AATC’s primary evaluation centered on the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod integrated aboard a HC-130J Combat King II. The force development evaluation built directly on an operational assessment completed the previous year, which found the system potentially effective and suitable on the platform,” according to a press release that the center put out last week. “Testers incorporated recommendations from that assessment while the 130th Rescue Squadron flew the pod against simulated ship-based and ground-based threats during exercise vulnerability periods, evaluating both survivability and the system’s broader electronic attack capability.”

The 130th Rescue Squadron is part of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing.

“Running alongside that effort, AATC continued maturing the Ka/Ku-band communications suite, which enables over-the-horizon communications and near-real-time electronic warfare reprogramming via satellite link,” the release adds. “The suite compresses what was previously a multi-day technique development and distribution process to near-real-time between sorties.”

AATC has previously disclosed that it has been working on this capability, which looks to be unique to the integration of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J, at least currently. The Combat King II has the benefit of a wide-band satellite communication system, which is also found on U.S. special operations C-130 variants and other aircraft. The HC-130J carries the pod using a Special Airborne Mission Installation and Response (SABIR) system installed in place of its left rear paratrooper door.

“The C-130 testing features innovative real-time updates to electronic warfare techniques,” AATC said in a previous press release in March 2025. “Unlike the F-16 tests, where pre-programmed mission data files were used, the C-130 testing includes development engineers aboard the aircraft who can modify jamming techniques mid-mission based on feedback from range control.”

As can be seen above, to date, AATC has largely framed the benefits of this reprogramming capability within the context of accelerating continuing test and evaluation of Angry Kitten. At that same time, this would also be extremely valuable in an operational context.

In general, electronic warfare systems use built-in threat libraries to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to waveforms. In turn, their effectiveness is inherently determined by the breadth of data in that library. Specialists, often working in purpose-built reprogramming laboratories far from the front lines, have to work tirelessly to keep these systems up to date. Historically, this has been a very lengthy process, and one that has increasingly had trouble keeping pace with the rate at which threats are evolving.

As noted, Angry Kitten was developed first as a training and testing tool. It is a direct outgrowth of the AN/ALQ-167 electronic warfare pod, variants of which have been used in those contexts for decades to mimic hostile electronic warfare threats. However, Angry Kitten was designed from the start to be more readily updatable and modifiable in order to make it easier to adapt it to new and evolving threats.

“At the core of that technology is Angry Kitten’s Technique Description Language architecture. Georgia Tech designed TDL as a hybrid that pairs dedicated hardware modules for speed and bandwidth with software for complex decision-making,” according to a press release Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) put out last month. “The practical result: government programmers can reprogram the jammer to counter new threats without sending it back to the contractor for expensive, time-consuming code changes. When an adversary adapts its radar tactics, NAWCWD’s team can update the jammer’s response in days instead of waiting months for a contract modification.”

Angry Kitten is also known to make use of advanced Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology. Using DRFM, radio frequency (RF) signals can be detected and ‘captured.’ Those same signals can then be manipulated and retransmitted. As an example of what this means in practice, signals from enemy air defense radars or radar seekers on incoming missiles can be recorded and pumped back in a way that creates false or otherwise confusing tracks. That same data can also be used as part of the reprogramming process to improve the stability capabilities, as well as be further exploited for general intelligence-gathering purposes.

This all already contributed to the evolution of Angry Kitten into an operational system.

“We had a jammer called ‘Angry Kitten.’ It was built to be an adversary air jamming tool,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, then commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), told TWZ and other outlets back in 2022. “And all of a sudden, the blue team said, ‘you know, hey, we kind of need that, can we have that for us?’ And so I see this iterating and testing our way into this.”

When it comes to near-real-time updates for Angry Kitten, even if the communications suite used on the HC-130J won’t fit on smaller tactical jets, it could potentially be ported over into a capability that is readily deployable to forward locations. Another possibility is that an aircraft with a wide-band satellite communications system could then pass updates for Angry Kitten to other aircraft within line of sight using other datalink capabilities.

The underlying developments have further implications when it comes to developing so-called cognitive electronic warfare capabilities. Cognitive electronic warfare is a broad area of development focused on new technologies to further automate or otherwise accelerate the reprogramming process. The absolute ‘holy grail’ of the overall concept is an electronic warfare system that can adapt autonomously in real time to new threat waveforms, or known ones being modulated in unexpected ways, even right in the middle of a mission. You can read more about all of this here.

Ongoing work to expand and improve Angry Kitten’s capabilities will also now benefit from lessons learned from the employment of the pods in combat sorties over and around Iran.

The multi-day effort to recover the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle downed in that country earlier this month also highlighted the immense risks involved in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, and the importance of adding new self-protection capabilities to the HC-130J, specifically. Air Force Combat King IIs can expect to face far greater threats while conducting CSAR missions during a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China. This has prompted questions about the utility of HC-130Js and other traditional CSAR assets in the context of any future high-end fight.

In the meantime, Angry Kitten continues to evolve in significant ways, including its growing ability to receive key updated data remotely in near-real-time when paired with the HC-130J.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com