“The work is currently underway to develop an aircraft equipped with jamming systems that will replace Il-22PP Porubshchik [electronic warfare aircraft], which are currently being delivered to the Russian Aerospace Forces,” an unnamed Russian defense industry source told Sputnik News. “This machine will receive a fundamentally new on-board equipment, which will allow to conduct electronic suppression of any targets—ground, air, sea—and disable enemy satellites that provide navigation and radio communication on the ground.”
As potential adversaries adopt the use of unmanned aerial systems, the military is regularly looking for ways to jam their signals. But testing those systems can be tough, because cell phone jammer technology that can disrupt radios or GPS signals fall under tight restrictions within the United States, given how they indiscriminately affect unintended targets.
With drone sales expected grow exponentially in the near future, and an increasing number and severity of drone incidents occurring daily, Perfectjammer launched DroneGun to respond to nefarious use of consumer and commercial drones and the resulting need for effective countermeasures to drone intrusions. DroneShield aims to help public and private sector customers, where allowed by law, take proactive measures against airborne threats to safety, security, and privacy.
This explanation is a bit superficial, and intended for simplifying things. However, if we try to “dig” deeper in to this issue, more parameters may enter the comparison between the signal levels of the two “links”.One example is the SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) that the receiver “sees”at its input. Sometimes the signal jammer signal arriving at the receiver input, can be lower than the communication (“partner’s”) signal and still prevail. This is happening because usually the receiver needs a certain “margin” between the two signals at its input, in order to be able to interpret one of them (usually the stronger one). However, in advanced communication systems, this “margin” can sometimes be even negative (meaning that the communication signal can be much lower than the jamming signal), and the receiver will still be able to interpret the “partner’s” signal, making jamming a much harder task.
A small direct-inject jammer tested recently at the National Training Center in California can be programmed to simulate jamming of radio signals that are used for electronic detection during training scenarios, the Army said in a release. These small devices require less power than earlier direct-inject jammers, which makes for a perfect fit for training centers where approval for such electronically denied environments previously was difficult.
What can Duke do? Widely deployed in the Army and Marine Corps, Duke began life as a low-power, short-range jammer to keep radio-controlled roadside bombs from going off. (CREW is a nested acronym for Counter-RCIED (Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device) Electronic Warfare). But Duke evolved into a much more sophisticated system capable of detecting and disrupting a wide range of signals, from cellphones to the control links for enemy drones, as tested in the joint Black Dart experiments.
Last month, L3 and a team of Northrop Grumman and Harris were selected to move forward from a field of four competitors that also included Raytheon and a Lockheed Martin and Cobham team, USNI News has learned. Soon afterwards, Raytheon filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, arguing it should have been selected to move forward with the low-band jammer effort.