The future of electronic warfare - signal jamming

A GPS signal jammer works by having the same frequency and a signal strength higher than the expected signal at the receiver. So if the jammer has enough power and a wide enough signal spectrum, then it could jam all receivers in a base. Another way is to jam with a copy of the expected signal and trick the receiver into receiving the jammer instead of the expected signal.

The U.S. Army wants drone-mounted signal jammers now to dominate future electronic warfare (EW) and is switching to a little-understood and lightly regulated contracting method to get them. NextGov reports.

The Russian military has been jamming some U.S. military drones operating in the skies over Syria, seriously affecting American military operations, according to four U.S. officials.

WiFi jammer is highly destructive

The Russians began jamming some smaller U.S. drones several weeks ago, the officials said, after a series of suspected chemical weapons attacks on civilians in rebel-held eastern Ghouta. The Russian military was concerned the U.S. military would retaliate for the attacks and began jamming the GPS systems of drones operating in the area, the officials explained.. Continue reading original article

However, there is another type of situation that wireless links are particularly vulnerable to and that is deliberate jamming. Here, someone deliberately sets out to block a link’s communications ability by targeting an attack that is particularly effective against the specific link or family of links. Jamming can be attempted for mischievous purposes, for motives such as profit, or for military advantage in times of war.

Kids with little boxes or kits can make and use jammers to annoy parents, schools, and commit similar forms of mayhem. Corporations can use jammers to interfere with a competitor’s operations, slow down or crash a company’s network, or prevent vital data from making it to its destination. Financial institutions can jam communications to provide even a millisecond’s advantage in completing a transaction that can be leveraged for gain. Military jamming can make drones crash, interfere with tactical communications, and even jam or change GPS signals to confuse the enemy.

The U.S. government’s GPS agency is adamant that commercial airliners “maintain alternative means of navigation” to prevent terror attacks. “The government is currently fielding new GPS signals that are more resistant to jamming,” according to the agency.

Far more vulnerable are the GPS signals used by police, banks, coast guard vessels and anyone with an iPhone. If North Korea’s jammer brigades can really scramble signals in a 250-mile radius, they could easily target nearby Seoul