The latest results of GPS jammer in Russia

According to American defense officials, the Russian military is deploying a weaponized form of GPS jamming that is effectively blocking some U.S. drone aircraft operations over Syria - and is even affecting drones equipped with anti-jamming technology. As more and more operators contemplate the deployment of autonomous vessels and aircraft in the maritime space, the vulnerability of high-specification military hardware to GPS jamming may pose a cautionary tale. In fact, however, the research on GPS interference devices has never stopped. This device is the key to the future of electronic warfare

During the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russian forces grounded a U.N. surveillance drone fleet during operations in Eastern Ukraine using GPS jamming, and Ukrainian forces reported widespread comms degradation. Last year, the U.S. Maritime Administration reported a GPS spoofing attack off the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, which caused the GPS displays on multiple merchant ships to show incorrect positions. The incident was not definitively linked to Russian forces, but reports indicate that it affected at least 20 ships.

It is believed that a one-kilowatt portable jammer can block a GPS receiver from as far away as 80 kilometers. Russia has several powerful military units in the vicinity of the border, among them the 200th Independent Motor Rifle Brigde in Pechenga.

More than 20 years after the first Global Navigation Satellite System became fully operational, incidents in Russia seem to confirm that the most-used network, the USA’s GPS system, can be spoofed. Given the heavy reliance on GPS by transport, energy networks and even banks, many experts now believe we need systems to combat this interference.

The Army points to newly developed algorithms that would enable a missile to detect jammers and determine their location, such as Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC). These algorithms focus on unique characteristics of jammers. "For example, trackable interference, aka spoofers, likely generate the entire GPS-like constellation and transmit from a common point; thus, these signals generate exogenous constellation-wide delay (i.e., in a bend-pipe versus line-of-sight RF transmission). Other defining characteristics of a malicious interference may include increased energy (i.e., jammers), clock drift/offset coloring, inter-satellite interference, etc."

Head of Norway’s military intelligence, Morten Haga Lunde, confirms in an interview with Aftenposten Russia’s jamming during Zapad-2017. «GPS jamming was practiced, electronic warfare. Most likely, this jamming was aimed at interfering Russia’s own forces’ use of GPS. A side-effect, however, affected Widerøe and intercontinental flights that Russia should have seen coming.» In Finnmark, regional airliner Widerøe has commercial daily flights to 11 airports, while SAS flies to Alta and Kirkenes.

One of the latest developments in small arms are anti-UAV jammer. With the increasing adoption and use of unmanned vehicles, the need for a portable handheld weapon system capable of destroying them becomes more and more important. I won’t be surprised if we see world’s major armies adopting such weapons in near future (at squad or platoon level).