Mastering offensive space electronic warfare tactics

The 1960s saw the beginning of the space race. Sixty years later, the electromagnetic spectrum domain is the focus of a new bid for space supremacy – control over the space environment and ground support services. With an increasing number of countries shoring up their military capabilities, one thing is clear: offensive space electronic warfare tactics are key to winning this new competition.

The list of countermeasures that can be used to deceive, disrupt, deny, degrade space systems continues to grow and evolve. At present it includes a broad range of offensive space EW tactics, from signal jamming – such as satellite uplink jamming, downlink jamming and crosslink jamming – to spoofing, directed energy, optical, space based anti-satellite (A-SAT) and cyber offensive attacks.

Critical countermeasures

• Satellite jamming: Disrupts RF communications by transmitting interference signals in the same frequency band as the targeted satellite or receiver's antenna. It includes various forms like uplink, downlink, and crosslink. For example, satellite downlink jamming disrupts transmissions from the satellite to ground or airborne receivers, mimicking the frequency of the downlink signal and inhibiting users from receiving satellite transmissions.
• Optical attacks: Involve the use of high-powered lasers, either terrestrial or space-based, to dazzle or damage the image sensor(s) on reconnaissance satellites. The damage to the sensor can be either temporary or permanent, depending on the power of the laser and its distance from the target.
• Cyber offensive attack: operations primarily related to the ground segment of network operations and TT&C links. These attacks employ networks to disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy information residing on computers and computer networks or affect the computers and networks themselves. They can include computer network exploitations, backdoor attacks via cloud infrastructure, data corruption and supply chain attacks.

The utilization of these and other offensive space EW tactics will continue to have a significant impact on the shape of the space domain not only now, but also in the future.

For a full exploration of modern offensive space EW tactics, download our "An Overview of Space Electronic Warfare" white paper.

Operational challenges and solutions of offensive space electronic warfare

As the space domain grows in prominence, with countries vying to assert their dominance and protect their national interest, it is not without its challenges. Despite offering an extended electromagnetic environment, when compared to the terrestrial environment, the space domain must contend with atmospheric effects, terrain and physical distances which counterbalance the benefits of pure space transmission.

For example, positioning and distance are critical considerations for satellite uplink jamming. Where in typical terrestrial jamming scenarios the jammer can be placed close to the target, this is not possible in a space environment. Additionally, techniques like satellite uplink jamming require significant RF power to reach the satellite transponder with sufficient amplitude to disrupt it. The high visibility (in the RF spectrum) of the jammer to an adversary can also lead to geolocation and kinetic counter effects.

It is imperative, then, to apply the appropriate technologies, such as link budgeting, communications monitoring, signal analysis, carrier-under-carrier detection, interference hunting, capturing short-duration events, handheld interference hunting and high bandwidth recording to capture long-term events.

Within the white paper “An Overview of Space Electronic Warfare” we explore effective electronic warfare testing and how our products, including the R&S®GSASLP satellite link planner, R&S®GSACSM communications system monitoring and R&S®FSW signal and spectrum analyzer, can best be utilized. Space based electronic warfare is changing the game.

A new space race is on and there is no turning back.