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From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: CNN and jamming
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.040139.4435@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 21 Jan 91 04:01:39 GMT
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From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
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If CNN had a hardwire (landline) to Amman, then the jamming
would be extremely unlikely to affect it.

In this case, even a satellite throw would probably be largely
unaffected.  To understand this statement, we need to make a
couple points about electronic warfare:

When jamming an enemy receiver, technology is not the issue.
Power, and intelligence are.  The intent of a jammer is to insert
enough noise into the control loop (via a receiver) so that
control ceases to work, or work reliably/predictably.  Since
receivers are tuned to receive specific frequencies, it does
no good to jam them with RF energy outside those freqs.

In the case of Baghdad, I strongly suspect that we know what
freqs to jam to a considerable level of confidence and precision.
The weaponry is largely Soviet and recall the note about the
Soviets trucking the Dutch Patriot battery to Turkey...  So
we probably know every technical detail about the AA radars,
including any war reserve frequencies.  This means that the offensive
jammers can be tuned to concentrate their jamming energy in very
specific frequency bands and not waste it elsewhere ... like
in CNNs frequency.

Rex Buddenberg
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