The U.S. military has reportedly seen a spike in Russian forces in Syria jamming the GPS receivers and other data links on its small unmanned aircraft flying over the country. But it’s unclear whether this reflects any significant change in Russia’s overall strategy amid evidence that the Kremlin has been harassing American aircraft over the country in this way to some degree for years, which The War Zone was among the first to reveal.
On April 10, 2018, NBC News, citing anonymous U.S. government sources, reported that Russia had been launching electronic warfare attacks against unspecified American unmanned planes for weeks. This increased activity came after a series of indiscriminate Syrian government poison gas attacks on rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the capital Damascus. Those atrocities culminated in a strike on April 7, 2018 that left dozens dead and hundreds injured, which has prompted the United States and its allies to threaten some form of retaliation.
The unnamed officials told NBC that the jamming was having an “operational impact” and that the Russian equipment was sophisticated enough to break through a number of existing countermeasures, including some jamming-resistant components. “The U.S. military maintains sufficient countermeasures and protections to ensure the safety of our manned and unmanned aircraft, our forces and the missions they support,” Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said in response to the outlet’s request for additional information, refusing to confirm or deny the reports.
Though we don’t know what type of U.S. military drones the Russians have been targeting, from the available description these sound like catapult- and hand-launched unmanned aircraft that American special operators, and supporting conventional forces, are almost certainly using in Syria for short-range surveillance missions. These typically carry electro-optical video cameras, but some, such as the AeroVironment RQ-20A Puma and the Boeing Insitu MQ-27A ScanEagle can carry infrared optics and miniaturized signals intelligence equipment.
But Russia’s capabilities to jam and intercept video feeds from this category of drones are well established at this point. The country has a wide array of man-portable and vehicle-mounted electronic warfare systems that are reportedly capable of jamming transmissions and also feeding false information into networks, including “spoofing” GPS signals and potentially sending parties and vehicles off their intended course.