Download Administration to begin jamming Taliban frequencies

Administration to begin jamming Taliban frequencies
by Richard Sale, Middle East Times Intelligence Correspondent
The Obama administration plans to launch an information warfare program that
will disrupt Taliban command and control, and counter Taliban propaganda
broadcasts, according to U.S. officials.
Using special signals intelligence aircraft, called EC-130 Compass Call
electronic warfare planes, advanced U.S. technology will be used to jam the
frequencies Taliban commanders use to talk to each other, impeding the jihadis’
ability to plan attacks, mass and deploy forces for staging ambushes, sabotage
roads or attack allied convoys going to Afghanistan, these sources said.
Much of the effort will act to aid Special Forces and NATO troops, they said.
In addition, the jamming operation will aim at suppressing Taliban chat rooms
or other websites that broadcast propaganda that incessantly boasts to the Afghan
public that the jihadis control the population and can strike with impunity at any
time, these sources said.
The websites have been used in the past to show videos of attacks on U.S. and
other allied forces in an effort to gain recruits and expose the vulnerability of the
allied forces, they said.
The new U.S. jamming effort will also suppress an even more sinister Taliban
operation that involves a whole network of FM radio frequencies in the tribal areas
of Pakistan that have been used to broadcast the names of Afghani or Pakistani
members of government and security officials who are targets for assassination,
U.S. officials said. Former U.S. intelligence officials said that hundreds of these
people have later been killed as a result of the broadcasts.
U.S. officials said that this jamming effort marks a new era in waging a more
aggressive information war against the Taliban. “They have been whipping our ass
in this area so far,” one U.S. intelligence official said.
Said another: “You name the type of communications, and we can jam it.”
Traditional jamming has usually been directed at surface-to-air missile sites.
During the Kosovo war, for example, U.S. electronic warfare experts at U.S.
European headquarters worked with the San Antonio-based Joint Command and
Control Warfare Center known as “jakewick,” to insert false messages and targets
into Serbia’s centralized air defense command networks that prevented surface
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anti-aircraft missiles from either activating or working accurately if activated,
former U.S. intelligence officials said. Many of these weapons were confused or
disabled.
Viruses were also inserted into Serb computer networks, and there could be an
effort to do the same with the Taliban, one former U.S. intelligence official said.
This new program will be a joint effort by CIA, NASA, and military electronic
warfare experts, U.S. officials said.
The chief U.S. airborne jammer in the past has been the Grumman U.S. Navy
EA-6B Prowler which was enormously potent. Robbie Robinson, at the time a
writer on military technology for Aviation Week, told the author in the mid-1980s,
that he had been a passenger aboard a Prowler flying from the aircraft carrier,
U.S.S. John Kennedy in the Mediterranean. When the pilot activated the plane’s
system, “It blacked out the whole western coast of Italy,” Robinson said.
The severely annoyed officials aboard the aircraft carrier sent an angry message
to the pilot that he was “interfering with fleet operations” and recalled it, Robinson
said.
John Pike of Globalsecurity.org felt Robinson’s claim stretched the truth, but
verified that the Prowler was “extremely formidable.”
The EC-130 H aircraft to be deployed in the new Afghan program is a
redesigned Hercules with external antennas that is crammed with every sort of
sophisticated ground communications disruption and frequency suppression
devices, say sources.
Some U.S. sources intimated that a top secret Air Force element, the Electronic
Security Command, which reports directly to the NSA, would be involved in the
new program. It will work with the over 30 NSA ground stations around the world.
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The NSA analysts aboard the EC-130s are trained to determine the means of
transmission, who is talking to whom, and most importantly, what is going on in the
area. The emphasis is on updating and locating signals intelligence, the type of
signal or frequency being used, then forwarding the information to commanders via
burst transmissions, sometimes shrouding the transmissions in extraneous noise.
“The purpose is to shape the information battlefield,” said a U.S. official.
“Jamming is a force denier, it adds an unpredictable element that denies the
enemy the ability to coordinate, to mount unified movements, to frame surprise
attacks,” said another official.
Strict guidelines must be observed. Only certain frequencies are targeted and
others being used in U.S. or NATO operations must be avoided at all hazards. For
example, the frequencies used by unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator or
Joint Direct Attack Munitions or Joint Stand-Off weapons channels must not be
targeted, and any plane hitting these would be quickly benched.
EC-130 Compass Call aircraft played a key part early in the 2003 invasion of
Iraq by jamming links between Iraqi ground forces and knocking Iraqi TV
transmissions off the air to clear the way for U.S. propaganda messages to the Iraqi
people. The four-engine Compass Call aircraft also allowed free passage for U.S.
cargo plans equipped with TV and radio aimed at the Iraqi people.
Compass Call planes were also used in jamming operations to provide safe and
secure conditions during the Sept. 18, 2005, historical elections for the Afghanistan
National Assembly and the follow on peace program. They also worked in support
of Afghan and coalition ground forces.
According to U.S. officials, the Obama administration is considering supplying
the Pakistan government with advanced U.S.-built jamming equipment and advisors
which could include Compass Call aircraft.
The United States will also begin its own propaganda broadcasts against the
Taliban in Dari and Pashtu, Afghanistan’s major languages. Such broadcasts were
used during the 2001 war, U.S. officials said.
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