Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
Focusing on the GPS jammer would require some hardware for direction finding; it’s not just software. Still, it’s not a huge design change.
I would have figured they’d already have multiple antennas for reliability, though I suppose that doesn’t imply they are set up to determine direction.
GPS uses time differential to calculate relative distance. It requires a fairly omnidirectional antenna to function. It would have to be a dedicated anti jammer targeting system.
The easier option is to use GPS to get into the general vicinity, then just go inertially guided, or use a camera etc.