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 quickly disable satellites deployed by Moscow and Beijing, Bloomberg wrote on Friday, citing sources within the US House Pressure (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 informed the newspaper. They’re all anticipated to be in place by the tip of the yr. The jammers should not meant to guard US satellites from jamming; relatively, they intention to “counter adversary satellite tv for pc communications capabilities,” the USSF stated.
The House Pressure has described the terminals as “small, transportable, and low-cost satellite tv for pc communications jammers,” designed “utilizing industrial 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 accordance with the USSF. They famous that the Meadowlands system has encountered improvement points, delaying its rollout till no less than October, two years later than deliberate.
These programs is not going to be “defensive weapons,” however are meant to “assault rival capabilities,” Victoria Samson, the chief director of house safety and stability on the Safe World Basis, stated. She labeled it as an “offensive counterspace functionality,” claiming that the system can be “reversible, short-term, 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 ordinary stance of positioning its “rising satellite-jamming expertise as purely defensive.” They juxtaposed this in opposition to 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 in opposition to the weaponization of house, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated to journalists earlier this month. Moscow firmly stands in opposition to the deployment of any sort of weapons in house, he stated.
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