The Raytheon Company, manufacturer of the low-cost flight vehicle, spent the last two years upgrading the jammer version of the platform, known as MALD-J, to include electronic warfare capabilities, as part of the $34.8 million MALD-X demonstration effort.L3 Technologies (NYSE: LLL) and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) have received $35.8M and $35.2M contracts, respectively, to test and demonstrate radio frequency jamming technologies under the U.S. Navy‘s Next Generation jammer Low Band program.
US department of Homeland Security (DHS) operates autonomous drones patrolling over the USA-Mexico border, which suffer gps jammer attacks by border smugglers, mainly the drug cartels,” said Gai Mar-Chaim, Senior Partner at the management consulting firm POC. “The DHS gives high priority for lightweight anti-jamming solutions for this challenge, and GPSdome is the only commercially available solution that weighs less than 150 gram and consumes power less than 0.75 Watt.
Creating a field that makes the drones drop is more likely the work of a jammer that works on either radio frequency or global positioning satellite signal receivers, or a combination of the two. Spoofing, the non-projectile, non-jamming form of drone interdiction, works by feeding the drone new directional information and directing that drone elsewhere, which doesn’t quite match a drone flying into a jammed area and then dropping.
Jamming GPS and other satellite navigation systems is the classic asymmetric threat. It’s inexpensive, equipment is readily available and easy to use, and its effects are scalable from targeted local impacts to wide area strategic disruptions. At the same time it is very, very difficult to detect, especially when operated intermittently and/or from a moving platform, and its impacts are often attributed to other causes.Navy officials say they want to develop and field a SWaP-optimized low-band tactical airborne jammer as soon as feasibly possible. L-3 won a $35.8 million contract and Northrop Grumman won a $35.2 million contract. The Navy announced the two-year contracts last Thursday.