UK reveals year-long satellite jamming campaign to counter hostile threats
The RAF has been using ground-based systems to block adversary satellites, with a new Space Effects Squadron formally tasked with defending British orbital assets.
What to know
- The RAF has been actively jamming hostile satellites for a year using ground-based electronic warfare systems to protect sensitive UK military operations, including nuclear submarine movements.
- The UK formalized space defence with a new Space Effects Squadron as Air Force leadership warned of unprecedented adversary threats in orbit.
- Defence officials framed satellite threats as critical economic risk: GPS loss alone would cost the UK £1.4bn daily and disrupt civilian infrastructure from banking to emergency services.
- The disclosure comes as the US, Russia, and China are known to possess similar or more advanced space weapons, ranging from electronic jammers and lasers to kinetic projectiles.
“Sat-nav systems would fail, congestion on our roads would be severe and our emergency services would take longer to help those in need.”
Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth, RAF head · BBC ↗ · Sep 22
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting UK Defence SecretaryAir Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth RAF headRoyal Air Force (RAF) UK military branchMinistry of Defence (MoD) UK Defence Ministry
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
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“Our dependency on space is precisely why it is increasingly under threat from our adversaries.”
— Defence Secretary Wes Streeting -
first by BBC, 10h ago · also HN Frontpage
1 more headline
- UK military jamming other nations' satellites to defend itself, BBC told Mastodon · 11m ago
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I’m sure we’ll go back to beacons [1] here in the UK”Using fire to signify a message is thousands of years old. The earliest use of beacons in the UK dates back to the medieval period, primarily as a means of communication to warn of impending invasions or other dangers. Positioned on hilltops and along coastlines, these beacons were part of an…
2 more of the top 3 · 21 posts in this stretch
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Right, in future conflicts between major countries the satellites will be first casualties. The US military is aware of this and still trains personnel on analog navigation techniques. Inertial navigation works well for some missions and research is underway on alternative technologies. Civil airliners can still navigate without GPS, although this…
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Presumably when World War 3 kicks off the very first thing each adversary will do is knock out their opponents satellites? These are like flying lightbulbs that shine down usefulness from above, so step one is to cut the lights.Presumably-squared there is some kind of military backup to survive once the lights (GPS) go dark? Whatever that…
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Defence Secretary Streeting warns of daily £1.4bn economic cost of GPS loss — Speaking at the UK Space Conference, Wes Streeting emphasizes the economic and infrastructure consequences of satellite loss, stating that adversary threats are growing in scale, speed, and sophistication.
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UK formally establishes Space Effects Squadron to defend satellites — The Ministry of Defence creates a new RAF unit called the Space Effects Squadron, focused on disrupting, degrading, and denying hostile threats in space. This coincides with warnings from RAF leadership about unprecedented space threats.
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US confirms deployment of unspecified space weapon to defend its satellites — Washington discloses for the first time that it has deployed an unspecified weapon in space to defend US satellites, though it has already accused Russia and China of developing similar space weapons.
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RAF Air Chief Marshal reports Russian satellite disruptions to GPS signals — Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth states that a Russian satellite constellation caused disruptions to GPS signals across Europe and Canada.
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RAF tracks dangerous Russian satellite manoeuvres near Finnish commercial satellites — The RAF observes five Russian satellites performing close manoeuvres near two Finnish commercial satellites, characterizing the movements as dangerous.
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RAF begins operating ground-based satellite jamming system — The Royal Air Force deploys a terrestrial electronic warfare capability to jam or block satellites from other countries as a defensive measure. A defence source characterizes it as having already been used to deter adversaries.
What people are saying 18 voices from 1 site · best of 21 · verbatim
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A few months back Vertisium did a decent run down on how Russians are testing GPS blocking satellites over Europe.
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For the love of God, nobody wants to invade the United Kingdom. What is this for?
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we don't use the word WAR anymore. it's uncouth. it's CONFLICT now. they'll call this the era of the Great International Technology Conflict or Technology Hostilities.
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I think military should offer solution that is reasonable instead of finding problem and jamming everything.
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You may be right, but if that happens the resultant space debris will serve as an additional terrible outcome of any major conflict.We will have to kiss goodbye to any future space launches, existing satellites are likely to get knocked out and ultimately our frontier space era will grind to a hault.
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Knock out? no, best option is to have them all pre-hacked and send out spoofed data at the most desired times, especially if you knew what weapon systems were relying on them. Knocking out the satellites is like flipping the table in chess, you'd only do it if you were pretty sure you had no chance of winning because everyone else in the…
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The US military has been funding plenty of projects related to what it calls Alt-PNT, or "alternative position, navigation, and timing" systems. I imagine other nations have invested in this as well.Which systems are actually getting deployed, and in what pieces of equipment? No idea, I imagine that's super duper classified.
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There's technology now that matches local satellite/aerial images against the imagery that a drone or cruise missile sees to replace the GPS chip.For fairly obvious reasons, militaries that have it would rather it stay in their hands, for fear of creating a non-state peer competitor that can do cheap long-range strikes on strategic targets.It's…
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GPS has relatively few satellites... but if in doubt, I think Starlink with its absurdly large fleet of satellites can be used as an alternative. Maybe not at a precision level good enough for precision farming, but good enough to roughly guide troops to where they need to go.Modern cruise missiles and stuff like Storm Shadow, Taurus etc. already…
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> Whatever that technology is, why hasn’t it proliferated into civilian life so that we all benefit from a resilient, non-GPS backup?Once a stealth technology is integrated into civilian life, it's no longer stealth, and you lose the element of surprise if you have to use it in warfare. If somebody _does_ feel they have a clever secret…
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does anyone know what exactly they are jamming? if a satellite spies on cellular and wifi activity, can you directionally jam it on that spectrum without causing collateral?if it's an active frequency hopping radar can you react in time to ruin its image?can a ground based laser track it well enough to dazzle its optical sensors?
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I think the general assumption is GPS is denied in most combat zones, it's constantly being jammed in and around Ukraine.For most things the fallback is going to be everything we used to use. Maps, stellar navigation, inertial navigation that sort of thing.Guided weapons wise, terrain mapping is pretty common for cruise missiles. Storm Shadow, for…
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It’s probably trying to disrupt the Russian GPS jamming satellites.Veritasium did a video on it recently
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It should be standard practice to use radio jammers and dazzling lasers against every non-allied foreign satellite that passes over our territory, or any of our military bases or warships. Why give them a free look?
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Given the “Hybrid” attacks in Europe originating with Russia, the Houthi’s and Iran taking shots at shipping and the likelihood that certain countries are feeding Iran some of the intel… this is pretty understandable.Russia makes whole regions inaccessible to GPS and it’s ultimately for the same underlying reason: soft kill systems and area denial…
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I thought after 60,000 feet MSL a country's airspace ends.So, who's the UK actually attacking?
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In terms of international game theory, this is entirely expected. No action would be the anomaly.
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this should end wellor a whole new technology invented other than radio waves for data transmissionare any satellites using laser downlink yet or is line-of-sight too temperamental with weather and planes?