Jammers can shut down data transmission networks

Rather than jamming a drone, the Army Cyber Institute at West Point built an antenna-and-computer rifle that fed information into an open channel of an unlocked Parrot drone. This allowed the cyber rifle to send an override code to the Parrot drone, crashing it, without violating FCC and FAA rules on jammers. At a training exercise this summer, West Point cadets encountered a drone on a simulated raid, and had to use the cyber-rifle to knock it out of the sky. The consequence, for a team that failed to plan around the drone blocker, was an artillery strike that took out the entire machine gun section of the platoon.

Observers note that Russia is using its EW capabilities as a tool of asymmetric warfare, countering expensive weapons like a U.S. Navy destroyer with cost-effective jammers and other EW systems. According to an unconfirmed account published in a Russian newspaper, a Russian SU-24 fighter using the new Khibiny EW system was able to turn off key elements of the U.S. destroyer’s Aegis Combat System, including its radar and data transmission network.

Among the bodies allowed to procure jammers include state police forces, jail authorities and central government agencies like Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).There’s no question that in most offices, email and the Internet are absolute necessities. But are cell phones? In a survey by Pew Research, only 24 percent of adults with full- or part-time jobs listed a cell or smartphone as “very important” to getting their work done. In other research, 50 percent of bosses think a cell phone is a negative to workplace productivity.

Jamming devices overpower the cell phone by transmitting a signal on the same frequency and at a high enough power that the two signals collide and cancel each other out. Cell phones are designed to add power if they experience low-level interference, so the jammer must recognize and match the power increase from the phone.