https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-pushi...59093.html
Interesting article. The most interesting part, to me at least, is this quote"
It isn't totally accurate to say the US has dismantled the extensive EW infrastructure left over from the cold war. The collection side and technical Elint, while not as robust as it was, is orders of magnitude better than what Russia has. Russia always considered EW important because they believed they couldn't fight the US air force "straight up". They needed ways to defeat the US attacks besides their own air force. It was critical to them. The US air force (and US Navy) eventually came to believe that they needed effective EA to penetrate the Russian IADS and lead the way for air strikes. We had a lot of equipment and trained people to do that, and were pretty good at it. However, no matter how good your SEAD plan is, and how well it is supported by EA, there will be casualties. The US solved this problem by building stealth aircraft. While both the F-35 and F-22 supposed have very good internal jamming capability (and from what little I know, IMO they indeed do), the intent is to not need it. This led to the US Navy and the US air force to de-emphasize EW.
The US Army never has been much interested in EW. That was obviously before drones became a significant part of the battle. The US air force hasn't been much interested in countering GPS jamming of our existing weapons. The newer weapons are all "jam resistant", and they work well in that regard. The problem is we still rely on a lot of old "stuff" (e.g. JDAMS) that have "cheap" GPS systems that are not jam resistant. The big value of the JDAMs is that their GPS add-on is "cheap". Modifying the add-on kits, if it is even possible, is not cheap. There are geometry problems that make it questionable it can be done. Belatedly, the US is building a longer range version of the HARM that can be used to target L band jammers.
Great, but it is expensive. What we (and Ukraine) need are home-on-jam drones that seek out GPS jammers. They are not that hard to build. They are much cheaper than HARMS. The don't need to "go fast" as the GPS jammers are generally not airborne. They are mostly truck mounted or "fixed" installations. Jammers are easy to "kill" because all you need to do is destroy the antenna. The antenna can't be behind armor or it won't radiate. Of course, we aren't doing the obvious. Go figure.
Interesting article. The most interesting part, to me at least, is this quote"
Quote:Are the Americans paying attention? The US military notoriously dismantled the extensive EW infrastructure it had built up during the Cold War. It’s unclear that it’s rebuilding it – even as it observes the Ukrainian military fight its way back from the electromagnetic brink.
It isn't totally accurate to say the US has dismantled the extensive EW infrastructure left over from the cold war. The collection side and technical Elint, while not as robust as it was, is orders of magnitude better than what Russia has. Russia always considered EW important because they believed they couldn't fight the US air force "straight up". They needed ways to defeat the US attacks besides their own air force. It was critical to them. The US air force (and US Navy) eventually came to believe that they needed effective EA to penetrate the Russian IADS and lead the way for air strikes. We had a lot of equipment and trained people to do that, and were pretty good at it. However, no matter how good your SEAD plan is, and how well it is supported by EA, there will be casualties. The US solved this problem by building stealth aircraft. While both the F-35 and F-22 supposed have very good internal jamming capability (and from what little I know, IMO they indeed do), the intent is to not need it. This led to the US Navy and the US air force to de-emphasize EW.
The US Army never has been much interested in EW. That was obviously before drones became a significant part of the battle. The US air force hasn't been much interested in countering GPS jamming of our existing weapons. The newer weapons are all "jam resistant", and they work well in that regard. The problem is we still rely on a lot of old "stuff" (e.g. JDAMS) that have "cheap" GPS systems that are not jam resistant. The big value of the JDAMs is that their GPS add-on is "cheap". Modifying the add-on kits, if it is even possible, is not cheap. There are geometry problems that make it questionable it can be done. Belatedly, the US is building a longer range version of the HARM that can be used to target L band jammers.
Great, but it is expensive. What we (and Ukraine) need are home-on-jam drones that seek out GPS jammers. They are not that hard to build. They are much cheaper than HARMS. The don't need to "go fast" as the GPS jammers are generally not airborne. They are mostly truck mounted or "fixed" installations. Jammers are easy to "kill" because all you need to do is destroy the antenna. The antenna can't be behind armor or it won't radiate. Of course, we aren't doing the obvious. Go figure.