Russians subvert Western guidance system with electronic warfare: Russia effectively blocks the GPS signal from Western weapons

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Russian electronic warfare systems appear to be effective against weapons previously thought to be invulnerable. As the British “Economist” reports, Russia is effectively jamming the GPS signal of Western weapons in Ukraine. This could also make modern missile systems practically useless.

The so-called Global Positioning System GPS has become an integral part of our daily lives. Who still needs tickets? Smartphone apps guide you safely to your destination thanks to GPS technology. But apparently a special version of the commercially used technology is now failing the war in Ukraine.

Technology from the 1970s

The GPS system was developed by the US military space agency in the 1970s. In Ukraine it is used to precisely control guided artillery shells such as Excalibur and GMLRS missiles. However, the location systems of these weapons are often blocked by the Russians. “Sometimes missile models that were considered invulnerable are also affected.”

Even special signals and anti-jamming filters do not protect against Russian electronic warfare systems. Apparently, US generals have been warning the US Congress for years that the military is too reliant on GPS.

Alternatives are being discussed, and some are already in use, such as the Eloran radio navigation system, which uses stronger signals on the ground that are much harder to jam, but require many more transmitters. Eloran is not GPS compatible, which is why development has stalled.

Relatively simple solution

The most common alternative is the so-called inertial navigation. It is considered effective, but is vulnerable to projectiles that deviate from the flight path. Small errors in the acceleration measurement quickly lead to larger errors in the location. In addition, there are extremely high costs associated with such navigation systems.

Still other technology is based on visible landmarks. The US Tomahawk cruise missiles, which predate the development of GPS, use something called terrain contour matching for trajectory and to identify hills and valleys.

Developing new guidance systems and installing them in existing munitions would take many years. Meanwhile, the leaked Pentagon reports on electronic jamming in Ukraine suggest a simpler solution: bombing Russian jammers. (kes)

Source: Blick