China is actively preparing electronic jamming weapons

Le Thi Thu Hang told the press that the establishment of China’s electronic warfare equipment to cause radio jamming on Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross on Truong Sa goes against international conventions and Vietnam requested the northern neighbor to remove the system.

A jamming pod is essentially filled with antennae and radar transmitters. This equipment is vital for a warplane to survive modern combat. The first fight of every mission — a bombing run, surveillance or dogfighting — is waged across invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radar can overpower other radar, sensors can be spoofed with “ghost airplanes.” Having a fast fighter that carries this equipment on strike missions is at the core of what the Navy does.

Analysis of aggregate signal jammer emissions at prison facilities is beyond the scope of the report, as aggregate analysis would require detailed knowledge of specific facilities’ physical characteristics, the exact placement of individual jamming transmitters within such facilities, and the exact electronic characteristics of the jamming transmitters.

Billed as the only operational tactical jamming fighter in the world, the Growler is a specialised version of the F/A18-F Super Hornet, and since achieving initial operational capability in September 2009, it has been equipped with the AN/ALQ-99 airborne EW system. The AN/ALQ-99 itself, however, can claim much older ancestry, having been designed in the late 1960s, and first fielded in 1971with the introduction of the EA-6 Prowler, the EW variant of the A-6 Intruder, in time to see combat service in Vietnam.

The jamming incidents over Syria have been happening for several weeks, according to NBC News. The time period and the location of the cell phone jammer overlap with the latest series of suspected chemical weapons attacks on civilians in rebel-held eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, and U.S. officials told NBC that they believed that Russian forces used the jamming to impede aerial surveillance after the incidents. The U.S. is currently considering retaliatory measures for the use of chemical weapons on a civilian population; Russia, which backs the Syrian government regime of Bashar al-Assad, has denied that the attacks occurred.

North Korea started “aggressively” jamming the BBC’s new Korean language service on the same day it began, according to a report. It said during radio jamming, a loud noise is transmitted over stations so that listeners can’t hear the content. South Korean officials have previously said that North Korea used radio waves to jam GPS systems, affecting planes and ships. The BBC broadcasts are carried on shortwave frequencies from Taiwan and Uzbekistan, and on medium wave from Mongolia, 38 North reported. It said it wasn’t possible to determine if the medium wave frequency was also targeted by jamming.