[Travis McGee]

I thought our frequency-hopping algorithms made jamming our drones impossible?

[super7man]

Plus, these things MUST have a “go home” function if communication is lost.

[verity]

"Bolton said Congress ought to be concerned if the Iranians.."

And the Queen said: If I had testicles, I could be King.

Goddam sensationalist reporting.

[GonzoGOP]

I thought our frequency-hopping algorithms made jamming our drones impossible?

They make it hard to take control of the drone, but not jamming. You just jam the entire section of the spectrum where the transmitter operates. Simple in theory, hard in practice. You need to know how wide a band to jam. And you need some serious gear to do that but then that is what the Russians were selling them. Finally you tend to blind any of you own equipment operating in that range.

I have always been a big fan of the cheap drone. Think V-1 buzz bomb with a camera instead of a warhead. Have an assembly line crank them out by the thousands. Sure they will probably shoot down five out of six. But they are shooting million dollar a pop SAMs at you $200,000 a copy drones. You force them to wage economic warfare against themselves. And when you lose a drone no big deal.

[CodeToad]

US ambassadors don’t have clearance for such knowledge, so I highly doubt his guessing is accurate.

[Myrddin]

The frequency hopping or CDMA approach is resistant to jamming on a single frequency. You jam that kind of signal with a frequency hopper or CDMA. The technology to receive the signal is common as dirt. CDMA cellphones are a common example. In theory, the PN sequence we use should be hard to follow. The GPS version repeats on a 2 week cycle, but you can "join" that cycle by using the encrypted channel to get info on where the PN cycle is currently functioning. The jamming exercise is simply a denial of service attack using a technique that whacks enough receiver samples to prevent complete reception of a digital data packet. You don't even have to hit 100%. Just keep the reception disrupted.

[alex2011]

If they are Jamming GPS signal from Sats,then you not using Freq-Hoping. Also, Frequency Hopping makes it harder to Jam,not impossible you just have to Jam much wider channel. Also,where is guarantee that the Drone was using it, instead something much simpler,because its cheap.

[Lurker]

I thought our frequency-hopping algorithms made jamming our drones impossible?

Something is impossible right up until the time that someone does it. Then it's no longer impossible.