Raytheon to build defensive microwave antenna systems

Give me a break Frank, it is Christmas!

Dr Frank Ledgewidge on Times Radio – sombre listening; NATO countries must step up and he mentioned the circa 300 USMC Abrams in storage that could create a UKR tank army… if gassed properly.

Ukraine is our front line and we need to support it in full.

I think they are Multi Fuel powered…. having 300 trained crew might take some time though….

And that point should become a major learning point for the West.

This conflict did not start yesterday, it started in 2014 – do you think several years would have been enough to train a Division?

This is just not attritional warfare, in truth, it must become regime change and the deletion of one Putin. Simples.

Yup I’ve been saying this for years….”We” tend to react seriously only when it’s a fore gone conclusion…. To be honest, before the obvious was properly Recognised in the mid 1930’s only a few forward thinking people seemed to realise what might lay ahead…. RJ Mitchell , Sydney Camm and Winnie saved this Country from an otherwise catastrophic invasion…… You need the tools to be able to defend and overcome adversity….. Meanwhile we are down to perhaps 130 possible Airworthy Fighters, 9 Frigates, 4 at most Destroyers and sadly probably maybe only 3 SSN’s….. This is after 10 years of Russian Aggression, not to mention Invasion, North Korean threats of Nuclear War, Chinese Military Expansion of incredible proportions, Trumps threat to withdraw support for EU protection and the whole Cluster F–k that is the Middle East…… Anyone who thinks that the UK is correct and justified to keep on cutting Defence just has to be Blind. ……. Rant over, hope to heck I’m wrong.

Various threads depicting the uptick in conflicts across the globe and I wonder whether it is existential fight now engaged between Democracy and authoritarian regimes.

I’m off for some tinfoil, do you need any?

Nope mate…. I’ve been Prepping now for years mate….. Got a huge store of Bog Roll and enough stores to last about a year in my Bunker…… It’s always good to think about the future…..

Rearmament actually started in 1934 with an increase in the size and modernisation of the RAF. Stanley Baldwin was reviled by Churchill but the truth is he went through an epiphany moment in 1933 and started the build up after the General Election. Part of that was the programme for building Shadow Factories.
He also did us one huge favour as he effectively got rid of Edward VIII, who would never have agreed to war with Germany.
After he left office he actually foretold that war would come and Churchill was the best choice for Wartime PM.

Yes, Mid 30’s, and the Spitfire and Hurricane were the result of this. Churchill was the right man for the job…. shame it’s all gone downhill since.

I agree we need to pull out the stops. Putin is building a full on wartime economy and we need to respond adequately. The only sign of this is the development of the Tempest and the national ship building scheme but it needs to go further faster.

Do we have any EW SMEs on this site?

Nope…. They have all been Jammed !!!! 😂

Strawberry or apricot?

Well if in Devon, It would be Strawberry….. but only after the Scones have been Creamed first….

Bloomin wannabe Cornishman, try learning to do it properly first, jam then cream! Heathens everywhere these days.

You know, in South Cumberland, they are off comers… had to walk from Hest Bank over the Sands to Ulverston, that’s why we is pure bred and likes our sheep reet proper close an all on a dark, cold, winters night.

You Cornish carrot a tattie pasty eating cornips no nowt about pure blood…

A fine part of the country Good Food, walking, bird watching and diving at Capernwray. I was actually in Hest Bank last month as I was up there for my Birthday, “The Crossing” is a superb Micropub 😉
But isn’t it in Lancashire ?

Hest Bank is Lancashire, Ulverston WAS Lancashire, now it is, f£ck knows, Westmorland and Furness or some such with Barrow in Furness and Millom having a certain Michelle Scrogham standing as Labour Candidate.

The same M Scrogham who got me banned from the CLP because she didn’t know the difference between an SSN “There’s always one on patrol,” M Scrogham and an SSBN. “My husband works in the shipyard and he doesn’t know the difference.” M. Scrogham and denied ever saying such and accussed me of bullying her for pointing out the difference.

AND then stated she never said anything. New Labour? Seems to me she has the morals of Boris Johnson, but will never be held to account.

Chill go and have a beer 🍺 Thing about Politicians is the nasty ones always come a cropper.

Never ever tell a Cornishman that carrot belongs in a Pasty…. It’s Beef skirt, potato, onion and Swede/Turnip (Swedish Turnip-“swede”).

Yeah Blooming cheek us Devonians doing it this way to our Devon cream Tea !!! Would you like us to tell you how to make a Pasty ? 😂

So long as it’s not like one of those so called Ulster Pasties”!

Yes

You’re serving, emcon zero.

5 by 5

There is one I suspect, who mentions EW often, in a limited way.
Will remain nameless.

This is likely white noise jamming, i.e. transmitting on the same frequency as the drone uses. However, the jammer antenna seen on Ukrainian tanks are omni-directional (transmit in all directions). So the jammer’s output power is averaged out. Which means the effective power targeting the drone is a lot less. However, there is no easy solution to this apart from ramping up the transmitter power.

The reason is how does the tank for example, detect the drone in the first place? If the drone is smaller than a Lancet, the bod with their head out of the hatch, scanning for threats, is very unlikely to see, let alone hear the drone, until it is right on top of them.

If the tank had a means of detecting drones from say a 0.5 to 1km away, but also could continuously track it. Then it might be able to use a more directed form of jamming. Either through a turreted Yagi antenna or via a electronic antenna array.

Using a directed beam you can envelop the drone and block out both its video and control data-link. But your transmission must several orders of magnitude greater. To make sure even if the data-link is encrypted your signal swamps the drone’s receiver.

The next stage after this is as per Raytheon’s delivery of the DEFEND project. Where you have a dedicated vehicle that generates a sufficiently large RF signal to not only jam the drone, but also to induce electromagnetic interference (EMI) in the hope of damaging the drone’s circuitry. Again the vehicle will need either its own means of detect and tracking drones. or be networked with another system of sensors.

I suspect it’s more advanced than white noise, as that alone wouldn’t cause all sorts of error messages being shown or at least you wouldn’t expect white noise to do so.

Initially, I doubt it’s more than white noise. If the drone’s signal is encrypted, it can provide a modicum of anti-jamming capability. But if the jammer has the power, it can basically wall off any transmissions from the controller. If Ukraine has captured some relatively intact Russian drones. Then not only can they work out the operating frequency, but also the operating code. So they may be able hack the drone as well.

Most modern drones have a return to sender mode. Where a drone that has lost contact with the controller back tracks along its path to a point where it can receive the controller’s instructions again. This is more prevalent in large drones like the Reaper, but the technology has migrated down to the smaller drones.

It does seem that the jamming transmission may be more than white noise. But without knowing how the drone is programmed it is speculative on how it is going to react to a jammer.

This is not remotely close to white noise jamming which would be disappointing to be honest as even though is still affective is considered old tech by today’s standard. This is actually a microwave weapon which physically fries the electronics on a targeted device. This US is investing heavily in this tech (look up the Leonidas system which is a counter drone weapon that is currently undergoing operational testing). There are also rumors going back over a decade of a classified cruise missile armed with a microwave weapon that fries the electronics of an adversary’s system over a large area.

The initial point I was making was the use of vehicle based RF jammers and their effects on drones. Both sides are using commercial quad-copter drones to attack both personnel and vehicles. Either by dropping munitions on the targets or by performing a suicide attack and the drone is carrying impact fused plastic explosive.

These drones operate on a number of standardized frequency bands. Such as 2.400–2.483 GHz and 5.725–5.825 GHz. A white noise signal transmitted at these frequencies will have an effect on these types of drones. As they don’t normally use encryption plus they have a very narrow bandwidth for frequency hopping. However, to have a better stand-off effect. The jammer needs to be transmitting at an exponentially greater power than the controller signal.

Military drones such as Lancet use both direct and in-direct communications that is encrypted. Which does have a level of mitigation against white noise. As it can filter out some of the adverse effects. But if the jammer power levels are high enough. Even basic white noise will swamp the filtering.

Plus with military drone the frequencies that are used, have a much greater bandwidth, allowing a better spread of frequency hopping. Therefore, a RF jammer has to operate over a much broader range of frequencies. That tries to keep up with the hopping. Or do simultaneous multi-signal transmissions, but with a much lower average power. Thereby allowing the drone to get much closer before it is affected.

There are other types of more targeted jamming, that deliberately targets the drone’s data-link encryption. But you start adding lots of zeros to the cost.

Directed microwave weapons operate differently based on radar phenomen. It was discovered as early as the 1940’s that ground based radar interfered with radios and radio navigation aids through electromagnetic interference (EMI). However filtering and protection against EMI got much better. As electronic components got smaller leading to transistors and microprocessors. The effects of EMI on these components when they reached a voltage/current threshold led to catastrophic damage. But again the filtering and protection also stayed in step with technology.

It was with the advent of phased antennas that made it more feasible to use directed microwaves as a weapon. The generated RF beam’s narrowness is directly proportional to the number of phased elements and the concentration around the primary transmitter. Therefore the more elements the tighter the beam’s diameter. But also through positive signal interference, the transmission’s amplitude is multiplied.

Modern AESA radars are particularly good at spotlighting a target. Particular radars line the US Pave Paws early warning radar, is an AESA system operating in the UHF band. It was designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missiles, MIRVs and aircraft. It has a designated exclusion zone of some 20 miles from the face of the antenna array.

This is due to the EMI it will cause on aircraft and their avionics. Though 20 miles is probably a bit racey. As some aircraft will be better whilst others worse. Ship’s radar operates at lower power levels, so the distance an aircraft is affected will be closer, but the effects will be the same. Even aircraft radar like the F35’s APG-81 will have similar effects.

A microwave weapon is basically one half of a radar, i.e. minus the receiver and signal processing elements. In essence you could use the microwave transmitter as part of a bistatic radar.

I have also heard of the electronic warfare cruise missile. But my information said it was a non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapon.