A Sputnik correspondent snooping through abandoned Ukrainian positions at the Ilyich Steel and Iron Works plant in Mariupol has discovered manuals for advanced US-made military communications equipment.
The soldier-worn antenna equipment, manufactured by the Harris Corporation in 2010, prior to its merger with L3 Technologies, requires special approval from the US government to be sent abroad.
L3Harris’s promotional brochures boast that highly portable omnidirectional, vertically polarised antennas, allow for a 1 kg standard handheld radio to “achieve similar range performance as a traditional 3-5 kg manpack radio with integrated blade antenna”.
The RF-3162-AT001 featured in the manual has an impressive frequency range of between 30-512 MHZ, and is equipped with an elevation kit that allows it “to be hoisted into trees or up in masts to increase antenna height and extend line-of-sight communications”.
The manuals are the latest documentation discovered by Russian and Donbass troops and journalists in liberated areas of Mariupol. Late last month, a collection of US Army manuals was found at an abandoned Azov Regiment base. The documents provided a broad range of useful information, such as instructions on how to conduct counter-insurgency and reconnaissance operations.
Mariupol has been almost completely cleared of Ukrainian Army troops, neo-Nazi National Guard units, and foreign mercenary forces, with the exception of Azovstal – the city’s massive Soviet-era steelworks, where hundreds of troops, including up to 400 foreign mercenaries, are thought to be holed up.
Last month, the Russian Defence Ministry reported that radio communications intercepted in Mariupol had picked up at least six foreign languages being used in the city alongside Russian and Ukrainian.
The documents from Mariupol are just a small addition to information discovered so far in Ukraine by Russian and Donbass forces and journalists. In March, the Russian military showed seized documents which detailed suspected plans by Kiev to launch a large-scale military offensive against the Donbass. The same month, the MoD released a series of documents on US activities supporting military biological research at dozens of Ukrainian biolabs – in contravention of the Biological Weapons Convention.
On Monday, citing MoD documents detailing plans to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory, Russian deputy permanent representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy said it has become “obvious” that NATO is “waging proxy war with Russia” in Ukraine.