America's GPS jammers are flying off the battlefield
Even if you check every box before downing a drone, there haven’t been enough court cases to know how this action would actually play out in court. According to one court argument dismissed without a ruling: jamming or downing a drone would only be legal if “…the harm inflicted is not unreasonable as compared with the harm threatened.” So, even if you do down a drone, you can’t do so with undue or disproportional force, it would seem.
The US Navy owns the only operational tactical jamming fighters in the world, but the AN/ALQ-99 pods they depend on use analog technologies, are hard to maintain, and have reliability issues. All-digital technologies and modern transmit/receive electronics offer huge leaps ahead in capability and availability, which is why the US military is working on a Next-Generation gps jammer (NGJ) replacement for the pods on its tactical strike aircraft.
The Calspan Gulfstream G-III Airborne Testbed is supporting the U.S. Navy's Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) Program. The NGJ is a pod carried by a tactical aircraft that prevents any type of electro-magnetic communication (e.g., cell phone, radio, etc.) by our enemies.
Yet Sun Valley, Idaho is in the heartland of North America, far from any international conflict zone. It is presumably under the firm control of domestic authorities with an interest in keeping GPS and other GNSS signals clear and uninterrupted. Whether the cause of the near-miss was a poorly communicated military exercise, a citizen with a drone jammer, or some other reason, has yet to be made clear.
The Navy awarded contract modifications to two companies under existing awards to expand their analysis and design of the Next Generation Jammer Low Band (NGJ LB) controller, receiver, exciter, and power generation subsystems. In addition, the companies will provide NGJ LB technique development, incorporation of updated goals documents, and environmental testing of the transmitter group. L3 Technologies Inc. of Salt Lake City was awarded $13,686,773 for modification P00004 to a previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee contract (N0001919C0014).