The second Gulf War has witnessed the first confirmed use of GPS-jamming equipment, but attempts by Iraqi forces to use the systems - reportedly imported from Russia - to throw US and UK precision-guided weapons off target have proved ineffective, claim coalition forces.
"We have noticed some attempts by the Iraqis to use a GPS-jamming system that they have procured from another nation. We've been able to identify the location of each of those jammers, and I'm happy to report that we have destroyed all six of them," says Maj Gen Gene Renuart, US Central Command director of operations. The jammers were destroyed over two nights by US Air Force Lockheed F-117 and Rockwell B-1B airstrikes.
Russian manufacturer Aviaconversiy has been accused of supplying the GPS jammers to Iraq, something the company and the Russian government have denied. Company general director Oleg Antonov confirms it had been approached by Baghdad, but "in the end they bought nothing". Instead, he suggests Iraqis developed the jammers themselves or with the former Yugoslavia, suspected of using such a system during the 1999 Kosovo conflict.
Coalition forces rely on GPS guidance for a variety of weapons being widely employed, including the Boeing JDAM, and Raytheon's BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missile (TLAM) and Enhanced Paveway. A number of the almost 700 ship- and submarine-launched TLAMs have gone astray, but, says Renuart, "they had no effect on us. In fact one of the GPS jammers we destroyed was with a GPS weapon."
Source: Flight International
