Posted by EditorDavid from the space-jamming dept.
In April the U.S. Space Force began testing “a new ground-based satellite jamming weapon to help keep U.S. military personnel safe from potential ‘space-enabled’ attacks” (according to a report from Space.com). The weapon was “designed to deny, degrade, or disrupt communications with satellites overhead, typically through overloading specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum with interference,” according to the article, with the miitary describing it as a small form-factor system “designed to be fielded in large numbers at low-cost and operated remotely” and “provide counterspace electronic warfare capability to all of the new Space Force components globally.”
And now, Bloomberg reports that the U.S. is about to deploy them: The devices aren’t meant to protect U.S. satellites from Chinese or Russian jamming but “to responsibly counter adversary satellite communications capabilities that enable attacks,” the Space Force said in a statement to Bloomberg News. The Pentagon strives — on the rare occasions when it discusses such space capabilities — to distinguish its emerging satellite-jamming technology as purely defensive and narrowly focused. That’s as opposed to a nuclear weapon the U.S. says Russia is developing that could create high-altitude electromagnetic pulses that would take out satellites and disrupt entire communications networks.
The first 11 of 24 Remote Modular Terminal jammers will be deployed in several months, and all of them could be in place by Dec. 31 at undisclosed locations, according to the Space Force statement… The new terminals augment a much larger jamming weapon called the Counter Communications System that’s already deployed and a mid-sized one called Meadowlands “by providing the ability to have a proliferated, remotely controlled and relatively relocatable capability,” the Space Force said. The Meadowlands system has encountered technical challenges that have delayed its delivery until at least October, about two years later than planned.
China has “hundreds and hundreds of satellites on orbit designed to find, fix, track, target and yes, potentially engage, US and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific,” General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, said Wednesday at the annual Aspen Security Forum. “So we’ve got to understand that and know what it means for our forces.”
Bloomberg also got this comment from the chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation (which produces reports on counterspace weapons). The new U.S. Space Force jamming weapons are “reversible, temporary, non-escalatory and allow for plausible deniability in terms of who the instigator is.”
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