An undisclosed south-east Asian nation gets enhanced counter-IED protection for its head of state motorcades.
Netline Communications has shared with Armada Analysis further details regarding its announcement on 11 November that it would supply vehicular versions of its C-Guard Counter Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) jammers to an undisclosed nation in southeast Asia. These jammers will help protect head of state motorcades. The company states that C-Guard is optimised to detect and jam cellphone transmissions.
Although not specified by the company, the equipment almost certainly covers standard GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) wavebands of 380 megahertz/MHz up to 1.9898 gigahertz/GHz. This waveband will also allow the C-Guard to jam other wireless devices using Ultra High Frequency (UHF: 300MHz to three gigahertz) transmissions to initiate IEDs such as garage door remote controls or standard civilian handheld radios.
The company states that the C-Guard series, which also includes a manpack variant, can perform reactive jamming upon reception of a suspicious transmission. One benefit of reactive jamming is that its highly focused nature enables electronic attack to be performed at potentially longer ranges, and with more power than when the system is performing active jamming.
A written statement provided to Armada Analysis by the company stressed the importance of reactive jamming in countering IED threats, and the ability of this electronic attack technique to focus high power jamming at range against such a threat. Moreover, reactive jamming is also effective against closer, yet higher-powered RF threats. Active jamming, meanwhile, transmits continuous jamming signals across a wide waveband of frequencies which can pre-empt the remote detonation of an IED. Finally, both modes can be combined to perform hybrid jamming where active jamming is used to provide protective shield of barrage jamming around a motorcade on convoy, with specific threats at longer ranges being disrupted by reactive jamming as and when encountered.
5G
The company says that it adopts a flexible approach to its CIED system design articulating its policy “to allow customers to challenge us with specific requirements which we tailor our solution to.” The world of cellular communications is now embracing so-called 5G (Fifth Generation) protocols which will allow higher download speeds than those presently achievable with existing third/fourth generation systems, while accommodating the expected increase in cellular users in the coming years.
Wireless communications currently occupy several segments of the spectrum between 380 megahertz/MHz up to 1.9 gigahertz/GHz. To avoid saturation of the UHF waveband 5G will move wireless communications into higher frequencies of 26GHz, 28GHz, 38GHz and 60GHz. Low-band 5G will use frequencies of 600MHz up to six gigahertz, notably in the 3.5GHz to 4.2GHz waveband.
More information on the challenges that 5G will bring to the communications intelligence professional can be found in Armada Analysis’ Generation Game article. While not explicitly referring to 5G protocols, Netline’s statement continued that “C-Guard is being continuously being updated in accordance with the foreseeable threats for different regions of the world including new emerging communication standards, whether wireless or cellular.”
