While the U.S. military is unlikely to intentionally attack Russian forces in Syria, the situation highlights the importance of suppressing enemy air defenses—one major tactic U.S. flyers have long relied upon is radar jamming, or saturating enemy radars with “noise” and false signals so that they can’t track and fire upon friendly airplanes. The U.S. Navy has relied on the ALQ-99 jamming system for nearly half a century, even as opposing radars grew in ability. However, by the beginning of the next decade it will begin fielding the superior Next Generation cell phone jammer, boasting significant electronic-attack and signal-intelligence capabilities.
Enter the Next Generation Jammer program, the first documents for which were released by the Pentagon in 2004, with the aim of bringing jamming into the digital age. The NGJ had originally been envisioned as an automated pod for use on single-seat F-35 Lightning stealth fighters, which would serve in all three branches of the military. However, this concept proved much more expensive and time-consuming than expected—which could summarize be the F-35 program in a nutshell. Instead, the Pentagon eventually decided to focus on re-equipping the Navy Growlers with the new jamming system, and in 2013 chose the design proposed by Raytheon over three major competitors.
Common use of civil jammers
If there is an urgent meeting going on and you want no one to attend any unwanted calls or messages during that important meeting, you can avail the benefits of cell phone jammer technology. This technology makes it possible for a person to avoid calls as well as messages without switching off the mobile phone. Enabling this technology blocks the signal from the base stations directly and makes it impossible for the person to communicate with the other person via a mobile phone.
While many feel installing signal jammer in schools is not a solution as children have access to internet at several other places including at their homes and in open wi-fi zones across the city, some feel it as a good initiative. Children in adolescent years do not have enough maturity to make proper use of internet. Sometimes out of curiosity or under peer pressure they may get exposed to content which they should not. It is a very good initiative to install jammers so that even unintentionally anyone cannot commit such a mistake.
To catch drones, police and militaries are experimenting with everything from eagles to lasers. Yet in battlefields like northern Iraq, the answer is neither avian capture nor directed light: it’s radio frequencies generated by antennas and pointed at the drones.
According to the brief description provided by Tasnim, the drone jammer can lock onto an enemy drone, and then “disrupt its operation or even hack the aircraft and force it to land safely.” More pictures of the weapon are available at a Tasnim gallery.