A top Pentagon official testified recently he is concerned about the growing threat of adversaries jamming U.S. satellites.
Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), during a Senate hearing highlighted ground-based jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) system.
“It’s not a terribly difficult signal to jam if you have the right pieces of equipment in place,” he said. “So jamming is one of the issues (regarding threats to U.S. space capabilities). We see the development of jammers in militaries around the world.”
He spoke during a special hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee held at Offutt AFB, Neb. Panel Chairman Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was the only senator present questioning Kehler.
The general testified that STRATCOM is “taking a number of steps” to address the “proliferation of jammers.”
“At some level, some of this is an engineering solution,” he said. “You have to design the satellites differently. In some cases they’re pretty well protected, from a lot of things. (But) they’re not protected against everything.”
Kehler added officials have gotten “into difficulty in determining what those other satellites that are on orbit, what their real purpose is.”
“They all look like communication satellites, but that may not be their (purpose),” he said.