India unveils home made COMJAM & EW System

India unveils home made COMJAM & EW System

    Indian Army unveiled the improved communication jammer and electronic warfare system on the Republic day parade rehearsal, The future battle relies on soft kill and effective jamming techniques. Nations like Russia Israel and US invested huge amount of money to research on ground based jamming system, to effectively counter guided munitions and communication frequency.

     It's back in 2005, Team of DRDO, BEL and Army's signal corps jointly developed a communication jammer known as Samyukta, Samyukta is designed to perform multiple jamming, such as wide range of communication frequencies, Electromagnet spectrum used in communication and illumination, The system also capable of handling electronic intelligence and communication intelligence.

    The Samyukta has less range compared to it's other counterparts, The range of  Samyukta is some 150x70 square kilometers. The Samyukta also act as a direction finder too, by intercepting source of the signal location too. The classic performance of Samyukta is jamming all kind of radio frequencies from High Frequency to milli meter wave frequencies, So Samyukta can jam radar frequencies too.

    Jamming the electromagnetic spectrum gives an upper edge to the System,  Samyukta will jam enemy surveillance signals, voice and radar frequencies, while ensuring its own signals are not jammed by the enemy. The appearance of such system always maintained as high level secrecy due to the importance of the system. The system act as a heart of future battle's.

    Compared to the Samyukta, The newly unveiled integrated communication electronic warfare system seems more powerful with set of two vehicles or more, comprising antenna's and small dish antenna's. the new system also capable to jam frequencies over 10,000 square kilometers of area.

    Indian Army already deployed those system in J&K to effectively counter the signals which can be used by militants, Such as jamming the wireless phones, satellite phones, and radio receivers. However they too jam the mobile communication if the threat level increased.

     Soft kill is the technique which can be used to disrupt the electronic circuits in the guided munitions, Smart bombs who having pin point accuracy relies on either laser guidance or the satellite guidance, The laser can be countered easily by the smoke dispensers, However jamming the satellite or GPS guided munitions is bit harder, So GPS can be jammed by jamming the dedicated frequency only.

    More over most of the long range missile uses the GPS and INS guidance system for long range strike missions, If the GPS/INS guidance jammed in terminal phase the missile will strike the false target, The main reason why many nations invested huge amount of R&D in such jammers.

     Another is the communication jammer, This jammers specially used for suppress the frequency, most of the wireless and satellite communications works on VHF or UHF frequency, Jamming the mentioned frequency can disable communication between the deployed troops and Command center.

    Russians are the best example who uses the ground based jammers. In Ukarine they installed huge antenna array's which can act as communication jammers.  The R-330ZH Zhitel installed in Mariupol, Ukraine can jam mobile, and satellite phones within some 5000 square kilometers,

    Also another EW system Karkusha deployed in Syria to safe guard Russian air base from US and NATO intelligence missions, Mostly within the operating zone of those jammers, no one can send or receive anything from others using normal mobile comm or Satellite communication.

China making Growler version of Xian JH 7

China making Growler version of Xian JH 7

  As a truth that future warfare fully relies on the Air power, whether it's a fighter jet or the missiles,  mean time there were couple of technologies also adopted by the fighters and missiles is the countermeasure suites, to make sure their travel is safe and secure from guided missiles , almost all of the fighter jets and Military cargo and Transporters uses the Flares and Chaffs to disrupt the guided missile, at best chaff's are used to confuse the radar guided missiles which uses aluminized glass filament or silver coated nylons, and the Flares used to spoof the infrared or heat seeking missiles by dropping number of burning magnesium or hot burning materials,

   But those are ineffective due to several reason, they can be used very quickly making empty the shells, and because of modern missiles they can easily bypass any kind of chaff's and flares, which is  the widely used countermeasure systems, But later technologies emerged to confuse the missile by it's data link, usually missile transmit and receive target information through a unique frequency which is mostly in the millimeter band which means the frequency range is somewhere between 60 to 120 Ghz, as per some open sources the AGM hell fire missile uses the 94 Ghz frequency to transmit the target information, while the missiles actual frequency is Top secret. so It's needed a amplifier system that can generate the frequency same at the missile frequency to disrupt it,

   The Americans and the Israeli's found that application very early now they were masters in such warfare, usually the Americans use the AN ALQ 99 pod which generates the frequency that can spoof almost all kind of Air to air, ground to air and Radar signals, the Specially designed F 18 is used to accommodate such huge Systems, Jamming is same like Communication Jammer COMJAM used to jam enemy communications, however in Air warfare it can be carried by a fighter jet and react very quickly,

   The Chinese now only identified the use of dedicated jamming systems like the American EA 18 Growler, China plans to convert the Fighter bomber JH 7 as their dedicated Jamming platform, it's a good idea since the JH 7 can carry much larger payload, designed to fly very low, and large combat radius to assist the friendlies to complete the mission at long range,

   China already have a COMJAM and EW flying system based on the H 6 bomber, and another model based on the Y - 8, because of huge in size and low speed, those are not combat capable, like air combat or aerial dog fighting's, means the enemy forces can easily identifies the larger plane and kills it very easily if they identified heavy radio frequency interferences,  So it's looks the JH 7 is a good options since it's same like the fighter jets, can also carry out Air to air missions and SEAD operations,

    Meanwhile Still IAF has no good such systems,however is IAF not new to this field, when in Kargil the Indian Airforce mirages used the Remora EW pod designed by the French, which spoofed the Pakistani Stinger missiles, making the bombing run safer even in dense manpad threat zone. also earlier once IAF silently sounded inside their Circle that IAF should buy a squadron of EA 18 Growler from the US, Since it's rival forces could adopt the same kind of technology in future, while the Plans shelved same like other plans, and Now China ramps up it's JH 7 and rebooting with advanced electronic warfare systems,

Pay your attention to the wingtip that's the SAP 518

   However Chinese also have small EW pods in the Su 30 wingtips, it's the Russian origin SAP 518 Jamming pods, the standard Russian wingtip jammers for Flanker and Full back variants, most of the Flanker users like Algeria, Malaysia and Chinese also have the same system, But the Indian MKI don't have such systems, since IAF adopted to use the  Israeli made ELTA EL/L 8222 Jamming pods, However now only India thinks to use the Russian made SAP 518 wingtip jammers in the Su 30 MKI fleet, earlier it was spotted when HAL puts the Su 30 MKI in a vibration test, So it's believed the modified Sukhoi's who used to carry Brahmos also comes with the wingtip Jammers like SAP 518.

   However those Kind of wingtip Jammers or very small, and small range, they never comes close to the AEWCS and dedicated Jamming Fighters bubble, compared to the dedicated Jammers like American EA 18 G, those wingtips are just a small caliber bullets.

   Even Chinese are new to the EW environment, they can study the existing SAP 518 jammers and develop their own and deploy in it's own JH 7 fighter Bombers,  So in future warfare IAF pilots should ready to face the Chinese magic, otherwise IAF should step up to counter such threats by buying modern EW systems or develop our own.