The US is looking for to develop its offensive counterspace capabilities with ground-based jammers
Washington is near boosting its offensive counterspace capabilities with new ground-based jammers designed to briefly disable satellites deployed by Moscow and Beijing, Bloomberg wrote on Friday, citing sources within the US House Drive (USSF).
Having examined the brand new programs earlier this yr, the US will deploy 11 of 24 Distant Modular Terminal jammers within the coming months, the USSF instructed the newspaper. They’re all anticipated to be in place by the tip of the yr. The jammers will not be meant to guard US satellites from jamming; slightly, they intention to “counter adversary satellite tv for pc communications capabilities,” the USSF stated.
The House Drive has described the terminals as “small, transportable, and low-cost satellite tv for pc communications jammers,” designed “utilizing business off-the-shelf elements.”
The jammers will increase different digital warfare programs such because the already deployed and far bigger Counter Communications System and the medium-sized Meadowlands system by providing a extra “proliferated, remotely managed, and comparatively relocatable functionality,” in line with the USSF. They famous that the Meadowlands system has encountered growth points, delaying its rollout till at the least October, two years later than deliberate.
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These programs is not going to be “defensive weapons,” however are supposed to “assault rival capabilities,” Victoria Samson, the chief director of house safety and stability on the Safe World Basis, stated. She categorized it as an “offensive counterspace functionality,” claiming that the system can be “reversible, non permanent, non-escalatory, and permit for believable deniability when it comes to who the instigator is.”
Bloomberg contrasted the apparently offensive nature of those jamming programs with the Pentagon’s standard stance of positioning its “rising satellite-jamming expertise as purely defensive.” They juxtaposed this towards the alleged high-altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons the US has accused Russia of creating.
Moscow and different member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Group are staunchly towards the weaponization of house, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated to journalists earlier this month. Moscow firmly stands towards the deployment of any form of weapons in house, he stated.
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