According to U.S. officials, Russia trying to find a way to jam and block signals from U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted and unarmed, aerial reconnaissance system.
In the past few months, high-flying RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned spy planes have been highly active in the European theater, along the western borders of Russia.
The Global Hawk serves as a high-altitude, long-endurance, remotely piloted and unarmed, aerial reconnaissance system. The aircraft is designed to provide persistent, day and night, high-resolution, all-weather imagery of large geographic areas with an array of integrated sensors and cameras.
Pentagon reconnaissance aircraft, including RQ-4 drones, have been making regular day-to-day appearances, up to two or even three times daily, at Russia’s borders. U.S. military intelligence has been snooping on almost all Russian military facilities on the Black Sea, in Crimea, and eastern Ukraine.
The emergence of high-tech reconnaissance platforms near Russia’s main military facilities in the region greatly perplexes their military, who are attempting to intercept or jam U.S. RQ-4 spy aircraft.
Russia is using its latest ground-based and air-based electronic warfare systems to jam drones to thwart their intelligence activities. Russia’s electronic warfare capability has used to disturb a radio signal of the global navigation system and to jam signals from drones.
It is already known that Russian troops deployed in Crimea and the Rostov region used their well-known electronic warfare systems such as Krasukha-4, R-330Zh Zhitel, R-330M1P Diabazol, and even Murmansk-BN strategic jamming system. These systems are designed to suppress enemy radio signals at distances of up to 5,000 kilometers.
Furthermore, Russian Air Forces scrambled its newest A-100 airborne early warning and control aircraft at the Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex (TANTK) when the U.S. Air Force RQ-4 drone flies over eastern Ukraine on 21 April. The Beriev A-100 is a Russian-built airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft based on the Il-76MD-90A transport aircraft that also equipped with modern Electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic warfare systems.
