The rise of commercial SATCOM (broadband via LEO constellations) on the battlefield in Ukraine (Counter-UAS & drone EW) has made jamming of SATCOM terminals an everyday reality — a new round in the age-old arms race, this time in space.
Protection largely comes from the same toolbox as elsewhere in this course:
- Spread spectrum / frequency hopping (New concepts in EW) makes the link resistant to jamming and harder to intercept.
- Spot beams and null steering (compare CRPA for GNSS, GNSS and navigation warfare) point sensitivity away from the jammer.
- Onboard processing and specially hardened protected military SATCOM raise jamming resistance further.
EW relevance
Space EW is not a separate discipline but the same principles applied to a new target: GNSS warfare (GNSS and navigation warfare) is in fact a specialised case of space EW, spread spectrum (New concepts in EW) is the defence, and the uplink/downlink trade-off mirrors the stand-off/stand-in logic (SEAD & DEAD). The core question is always the same: which segment and which link gives the greatest return to attack — or to protect.