The Signal Report // DEFENSE TECH
Defense Tech.
Drones, jamming, GPS spoofing, and counter-IED, read by an electronic-warfare officer who operated the kit. All reports →
30 in this beat · page 1 of 3
What a GPS-jamming map actually shows
A red hex on a public GPS-jamming map is not a jammer. It is airplanes grading their own navigation over a day, at altitudes where a ground jammer can be hundreds of kilometers away. An electronic-warfare officer on what the maps measure, what they filter out, and the aircraft that drop off them entirely.
Read the report → Report 172 · Defense Tech · 2026-10-02 · 7 minWhat a bomb robot demo doesn't prove
One clean run on video shows a bomb-squad robot can do a task once. The NIST-DHS-ASTM test methods ask for 10 straight successes, or 20 with one fault, or 30 with three, driven from out of sight. Three clean runs from a robot that is only 80% reliable still gives you a coin flip.
Read the report → Report 166 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-29 · 7 minA tethered drone hides its link, not its radio
The Army's Maneuver Battle Lab says operators "bypassed signal jamming" with tethered drones over a moving squad vehicle. The cable does protect the drone's own control and video. The radio relay it lifts is a different story: line of sight is symmetric, so the height that extends your network extends the enemy's intercept and jamming reach too.
Read the report → Report 161 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-25 · 8 minJamming doesn't make a jet invisible
Headlines say a jammer blinds a radar or makes an aircraft invisible. The Navy's EW handbook says something more useful: jamming falls off with the square of range, the radar's echo with the fourth power, so close enough in the echo always wins. That distance is burn-through range, and doubling the jammer's power moves it by less than a third.
Read the report → Report 154 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-21 · 10 minWhat a $74 million drone defense assumes
CBO priced a layered drone defense for one base at about $74 million, $7.4 billion for a hundred. It sized the systems for ideal conditions, added no soldiers, and may need to buy it all again in four or five years. And 28 of its 32 simultaneous engagements depend on the drone using a radio.
Read the report → Report 148 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-18 · 11 minCost per shot is a laser's cheapest number
A solid-state laser's cost per shot is the cost of the electricity, which is true and is also the only cheap line on the invoice. Congress's own analysts list line of sight, rain and fog, thermal blooming that worsens as you scale power, and one target at a time. Soldiers who took 50-kilowatt lasers to the Middle East reported heat, wear and optics that need a clean room. A 365-day pilot at five bases is now pricing the rest.
Read the report → Report 139 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-10 · 11 minGPS jamming is not a navigation problem
A Royal Institute of Navigation report did the boring, useful thing nobody else did: it counted the systems on a modern ship that consume satellite positioning or satellite timing. More than twenty of them, across seven categories, and fewer than half are navigation. The ballast water treatment system is on the list. So is the voyage data recorder, and the network time protocol server.
Read the report → Report 133 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-07 · 11 minWhat police need before they can stop a drone
The headlines said local police can now take down dangerous drones. The rule says so too, after a certification from one FBI schoolhouse, a signed operations plan, listed equipment, and a call to air traffic control within five minutes. Congress gave police the authority. It did not give them the spectrum, and that is the gate that will bind.
Read the report → Report 127 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-04 · 10 minThe Baseline Without an Exposure Record
DOD gave 198,161 new service members a baseline cognitive assessment in fiscal year 2025 and reached 96 percent of its high-risk population by March 2026. That is half of a two-part measurement, and it worked. The other half, the record of what those people were exposed to, has barely started: the Army reported tracking begun for under 2 percent of 142,000 potentially exposed service members. The coverage called it a resources problem. It is a measurement-design problem.
Read the report → Report 121 · Defense Tech · 2026-09-01 · 11 minFifty-Six Bomb Dog Teams, None Passed
A NIST-funded field study ran 56 explosive-detection dog teams through the new national certification standard in three regions. None of them cleared it. The same study found the standard predicts real-world performance, and that the binding constraint is access to explosive training material.
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