The U.S. Space Force will soon acquire ground-based jammers against SATCOM to counter space-based reconnaissance.
Defense News reported that the service will receive its first batch of Remote Modular Terminal jammers in 2025. The first batch will consist of 11 jammers with 160 to 200 systems planned in total.
Space RCO Director Kelly Hammett explained the system:
“We want to be able to disrupt their comms and their kill chains and their targeting links. That’s what these systems are intended to do: to block reception going either from, say, sensors that are looking at our joint forces and reporting up to a satellite and back to a battle management node, or vice versa.”
China is extensively using spy satellites to survey the activities of the U.S. and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
Space-based reconnaissance has proven to be one of the safest ways against strategic assets due to the difficulty of shooting the satellites in technical and political terms.
A soft-kill solution would be cheaper and less escalating compared to anti-satellite capable missiles like SM-3 launched from AEGIS destroyers.
