- the main force in electronic warfare
Russian-made jammers reportedly have been successful in forcing down drones in the recent past. But that doesn't mean America's huge fleet of military UAVs is defenseless.
The US military has declined to confirm whether any of their drones have crashed as a result of the Russian citing operational security.
Despite US drones being equipped with anti-jamming technology, NBC quoted US officials stating that Russian disruption technology was "very sophisticated, proving effective even against some encrypted signals and anti-jamming receivers."
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 jamming 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.
Russia's weapons have shown their value
That's why Russia's jammers, and the new counter-drone "special forces" that operate them, don't necessarily pose an existential risk to the US military's UAVs. The Russian drone-hunters could struggle to pinpoint targets. "It would seem to be hard to do unless you knew where they were going to be and when," one former US drone-developer explained on condition of anonymity.
The situation was similarly serious in September 2017, when airliners from companies SAS and Widerøe in periods had to navigate with the help of radio signals due to loss of GPS when they entered the East Finnmark airspace. The jamming coincided with the major Russian military exercise «Zapad».
While Ukraine is the most glaring example of the danger, "Those dilemmas can be seen in any theater," Piatt acknowledged. But focus on one threat, instead of "trying to solve the entire Army at one time," lets the Rapid Capabilities Office get something into service as soon as possible, without waiting on official programs of record which, among other things, won't get the Army a new offensive until 2023. Once a solution has been prototyped, fielded on a small scale, and shown to work, he said, "then we can inform a fielding solution for the entire Army."
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