Raytheon’s NGJ will provide airborne electronic attack and jamming capabilities, and will include cyber-attack capabilities that use the aircraft’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar to insert tailored data streams into enemy systems.
Perfectjammer could help US forces to power through electronic interference. Radio signals lose power over distance, making them progressively more vulnerable to jamming. Two jet fighters flying a couple hundred of miles apart and trying to directly exchange data via, for example; a Link-16 network could be particularly susceptible to enemy cell phone jammer targeting the Link-16 signal.
But if the first fighter instead communicated with a TUNA buoy a mere 25 miles away and that buoy relayed the data via fiber-optic cable to a second buoy just 25 miles from the second plane, then the distance between emitter and receiver—for both fighters—would be much shorter. The network would be less vulnerable to jamming.
Now that the cable and generator buoy are both ready, DARPA announced in January 2017 that TUNA is ready for at-sea testing. American forces are one step closer to communicating through the water and defeating enemy jamming.
The jamming problem has been getting worse in recent years. Russian and Chinese forces have deployed increasingly powerful electronic warfare gear in the air, on the ground, and at sea—all aimed at denying the radio frequency, or RF, to the US military.
The Americans are uniquely vulnerable to RF signal jammer, as many US war-fighting concepts rely on the ability of ground forces, aircraft and warships to exchange information via radio networks.
Battlefield gps blocker is becoming common, which can make communications difficult. One iProTxS system can work with as many radios within an ECM system area of operation. The system integrates with narrowband FM and AM VHF and UHF combat radio networks, as well as digital 4-FSK frequency hopping, TETRA and professional mobile radio frequencies.