The Importance and Versatility of GPS Jammers in Modern Warfare

Gleason Arliss 2022/08/03

　　During the first Gulf War, many states recognized the importance and versatility of GPS in modern warfare, and in later years the potential of jammer gps was becoming more marketable.

　　During the second Gulf War, Iraqi forces placed Russian-sourced jamming devices on buildings on or near important strategic targets.

　　These jammers were intended to confuse cruise missile guidance systems, such as Boeing JDAM, and Raytheon's BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missile.

　　There have been mixed messages with regards to the effectiveness of Iraq’s jamming. The UK and US forces argued that the jammers proved ineffective.In the short term, however, it prompted coalition forces to target the jammers with force and place more reliance on their laser-guided capabilities.

　　(1) identify the specific contexts jamming is typically used;

　　(2) to identify the outcomes of the jammings

　　(3) based on these examples, it seeks to better comprehend the geographical and geopolitical implications based on likely users, their intentions, and the known ranges of jammers. It considers the proliferation of more oft-used low-power jamming devices and the use of high-powered military jammers.

　　In the long term, more investment went into anti-spoofing and anti-jamming capabilities in JDAM kits, as well as guided weapons specifically developed to locate and target jamming locations.

　　Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Defense sought more significant investment into counter-space capabilities as a consequence of Iraq’s jammings.Indeed, the method of placing jammers on key infrastructures remains a contemporary mode of defense.

　　Russia’s defense initiative Pole-21, for example, involves placing jammers on key domestic infrastructures as a precaution for possible conventional war.22 Therefore, whilst the effectiveness of jamming smart weapons is not entirely clear from open-access sources, it certainly affected military strategy and had a political and financial impact in years that followed.

　　For military strategists, precision bombings are simply more likely to be successful in locations where jammers are not situated, hence the geographical and geopolitical factors are influenced by strategic alliances, defense acquisitions, end-user intentions, and owners of jammers.