Armada’s monthly round-up of all the latest electronic warfare news in the product, programme and operational domains.
C-GEM Live Firing
On 28th January, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems announced it had performed a successful live fire test of the company’s 130mm C-GEM offboard active radio frequency decoy rocket. These rockets are designed to work with the company’s Deseaver series trainable naval countermeasures launchers. According to the company, C-GEM uses an active electronically scanned array transmitter. Providing 360 degrees of coverage, the rocket employs a digital radio frequency memory to generate jamming waveforms. These waveforms can be employed against anti-ship missile active radar homing systems. C-GEM can work with Rafael’s Wizard corner reflector decoy to help protect warships. Other naval countermeasures in the company’s portfolio include the Smoke Trap infrared smoke decoy and the Beam Trap chaff decoy. Boris Katsman, Rafael’s business development director, told Armada that C-GEM is an affordable decoy not covered by US International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Beyond Deseaver, C-GEM can be employed in other trainable launchers like BAE Systems’ Mk.36 Super Rapid Bloom Offboard Countermeasure, known as SBROC. C-GEM is in service with the Israeli Navy and has been supplied to other undisclosed customers in recent years.
New Counter-GNSS Jamming Module
InfiniDome has launched its new GPSdome-Sunstone next-generation Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Position Navigation and Timing (PNT) jamming and spoofing resilience module. According to a press release announcing the news GPSdome-SunStone can equip small Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The module weighs between 50 grams/g (0.11lb) and 100g (0.22lb). In addition to UAVs, the company says the module can provide GNSS PNT jamming protection for other space and weight constrained platforms. InfiniDome told Armada that GPSdome-SunStone uses “null steering to mitigate the jamming attack.” Although null steering is not a new technique, InfiniDome claims their new product is “revolutionary in form factor, weight, price and flexibility (compared) to anything else in the market today making anti-jamming accessible for lower-end platforms as well.”
The company says the module can be retrofitted onto existing platforms: “Any of our customers could take their existing GNSS receiver, disconnect its antenna, connect (our module to the UAV’s GNSS antennas) thus making the platform about 100 times more resilient to an attack than without it.” InfiniDome says it has already won orders for its new product from customers in the European Union, Israel and the United States, “some of which have already began testing in some of the harshest environments with very promising results.”
Blue Jay Mobile Unveiled
Blue Jay Mobile is a new mobile electromagnetic through-air testing system launched by Mellori Solutions in February. The company says Blue Jay Mobile can test and validate sensor performance in any environment. The product covers frequencies from 500 megahertz/MHz up to 40 gigahertz, offering up to 50MHz of bandwidth, according to the Blue Jay Mobile product brochure. The brochure continued that the system can be made ready for use in 15 minutes, and is operated from a laptop or tablet. Remote operation is possible using either a WiFi or ethernet connection. Blue Jay Mobile can mimic both real world signals and In-phase and Quadrature (IQ) data. Ranges of between one kilometre (0.6 miles) and three kilometres (1.9 miles) are achievable. David Devine, Mellori Solutions’ general manager, told Armada that “Blue Jay Mobile has a scenario mode for programming emitters and libraries to simulate real-world radar signals and replay IQ data. These are controlled via a laptop or tablet (by) remote control.” Multiple emitters can be simulated as Blue Jay Mobile “has a dual-channel output that allows transmission across two frequency bands at the same time with no antenna swaps required. This is limited to one channel per band, except for the 500MHz to six gigahertz band, which supports dual-channel capability by default.” Meanwhile, an optional add-on “allows simultaneous dual-channel capability in all bands (and the) system can be upgraded to support a third transmission channel.”
by Dr. Thomas Withington
