Electronic Jamming Exercise

Communications provide a mission-critical lifeline for military and law enforcement, ensuring
they can do their jobs to protect and serve our citizens, communities and nation. Illegal
jamming of communications systems – including jamming of GPS, radio and wireless systems
– poses a threat to law enforcement and public safety across the country. Jammers may
interfere with public safety communications and can leave responders without vital
communications and critical situational awareness. While jamming is a growing threat to
public safety communications, many solders and law enforcement officers across the country
remain unaware that jammers exist, or that jammers can impede their communications. The
law prohibits the operation, manufacture, sale, marketing, importation, distribution or shipment
of jamming equipment withour permission.

By objective enabling solders and officers to recognize, respond to, report and resolve
jamming incidents without compromising the mission or endangering communities, ít í
simporrtant to learn how to increase organizational and community communications resilience
to jamming and other interference threats.

The first step to improving communications resilience is recognizing if there is an interference

problem. Disruption or failure of wireless communications or mapping equipment – including
cellular, LMR or GPS systems – for unknown reasons could indicate jamming. Jamming
indicators include all the following.

 Can’t communicate in areas where there is typically good radio or cell coverage
 Can’t communicate with normally reliable base radios or repeaters
 Can’t communicate on multiple communications devices using multiple bands
 Notice a significant loss of lock or general failure of GPS systems
 Can significantly improve communications capability by moving a short distance away
from a fixed “dead zone”

In a jamming environment, an emergency response or law enforcement mission may be

compromised by the lack or unreliability of communications, and they may not realize there is
a problem. Many operators assume that a communications device is simply broken if it isn’t
working, rather than considering that jamming could be the source of the problem. Educating
operators that jamming is a real issue and ensuring they understand what to do is essential to
keeping responders and our communities safe.

The first priority for the responders is to complete the mission while ensuring operator safety,
so DHS S&T has developed several basic mitigation tactics to ensure responders can
continue focusing on their mission while re-establishing communications:
  Switch Communications Devices or Bands: Try using a different band on radios, a
cellular call or text, or disconnect Bluetooth. Many jammers only target certain types of
devices, and so one device may have connectivity while others do not.
 Move Away: Move 10-20 feet in any direction to see if coverage improves. If inside, try
moving outside and vice versa.
 Go High: Elevation increases range, so try climbing a flight of stairs, or onto the back of
a truck.
 Shield Yourself: Go around a corner or behind a vehicle. Because jamming is a signal,
it can be blocked or weakened by physical barriers, including vehicles or buildings.
Heavy materials, such as metal or concrete, work best to shield devices from jammers.
 Mobiles versus Portables: It is better to transmit on the mobiles and receive on
portables to get through jamming. Mobile radios in response vehicles are more
powerful, so they can better punch through jamming to send a message, but because
they have more sensitive antennas than portable handheld radios, the receiver gets
overwhelmed by the jamming noise and can’t receive. Portable radios have poor-
quality antennas, so they don’t pick up as much noise.

Once the primary mission is accomplished, it is important to locate the source of the
interference and neutralize it. Trained technicians can located jamming devices using
spectrum analyzers and direction-finding equipment, which are now available for purchase
with grant funding through the FEMA Authorized Equipment List (06CP-07-RFDF -
Equipment, RF Direction Finding and 06CP-07-RFSA - Equipment, RF Detection and
Spectrum Analysis). Once found, the device should be turned off and disconnected from the
power source. One of the tactics that DHS S&T validated at JamX 17 to destroy jammers is
covering it with a Mylar emergency blanket – something most responders have in the back of
their car. This is an easy and effective way to disable the jammer quickly without touching it
directly. Operators should follow all local policies regarding device seizure and evidence
collection on and around the jamming device.

All suspected radio frequency interference must be reported to the RF management

authorities as soon as possible. The agencies monitor reports of interference and jamming to
conduct trend analysis and inform policy. Most interference incidents are not currently
reported, which makes it difficult to understand how frequently jamming occurs and what the
consequences are.

In addition to concluding the legal aspects of a jamming case, one key aspect of resolving
jamming incidents is identifying lessons learned and then applying those to improve an
agency’s response to jamming. To better prepare your agency, it is recommended to focus on
education, preparation, and evaluation:

 Educate operational employees. Training new and incumbent employees is essential

to ensure they are aware of jamming threats, symptoms and response protocols. Can
they recognize a jammer? Do they know the symptoms of interference? Do they know
how to respond to and report incidents?
 Prepare employees and agency policies. Ensure your agency is prepared by updating
policies and interference reporting requirements, understanding what legal actions
officers are authorized take to counter jammers, conducting operational exercises, and
procuring any needed equipment to detect and locate interference. It is also critical to
develop a Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency (PACE) Plan for
communications and to train all operators from every local agency on it. If the primary
means of communication is disabled by jamming or other issues, all operators will
understand what the fallback communications means is and coordination can continue
without interruption.
 Evaluate communications resilience. Assess how well employees are prepared to
identify, locate and mitigate interference and evaluate your baseline communications
resiliency. If communications vulnerabilities are exposed, address the gaps. Develop
after action reports to review how interference incidents were handled and identify
lessons learned to incorporate throughout the agency.