Back in 2004, the U.S. Air Force suggested that they might be willing to mess with commercial satellites, if they were aiding an American foe. The idea drew howls from outside observers. And, for a while, it seemed destined for an extremely quiet corner of flyboy doctrine.
But now, the Israelis are picking up where their American counterparts left off, Defense News’ Barbara Opall-Rome reports. Fed up with Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV broadcasts — which stayed on the air, despite repeated aerial and electronic attacks — the Sabras are now talking publicly about “disrupt[ing] transmissions of enemy programming carried by commercial satellites.”
No doubt, we understand the power of the media, public opinion and mass psychology, said [Maj. Gen. Ido] Nehushtan, who is responsible for IDF modernization planning. Al-Manar is a liability, and were going to have to improve our ability to counter this threat…
…the only way to ensure persistent, reliable, wide-area broadcast denial is through an anti-communication satellite system. Israel must develop the means to surgically target signals serving Hizbollah without damaging the spacecraft or disrupting operations of other customers serviced by the broadcast frequencies, he said…
[But] according to [an Israeli] executive, jamming a communications satellite is like interfering with civil aviation. You can do it, but its against international law and youll be subject to all kinds of lawsuits.
It is technologically impossible, he said, to selectively jam only those satellite signals that carry enemy broadcasts.
Everything goes out as a single beam, and it is impossible to jam only those channels viewed as a threat, the executive said. If you make the decision to interfere with one [satellite signal], then you must be prepared to face the consequences of the collateral damage incurred to the many other legitimate users of the signal.
Robert Ames, chief executive of the Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group… said it is relatively easy to jam a specific satellite transponder.
Transponders are separated by frequency, he said. All you have to do is know the frequency which it operates on and then put up a signal that is stronger than the programming carrier of the satellite…
Satellite interference capabilities have been around since the mid-1970s, he added. But if the Israelis are talking about technological challenges, I assume they are aiming for a capability that goes way beyond what our companies have experienced to date.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Since when have the Israelis demonstrated a concern for significant collateral damage in the name of their national security? If they can’t figure out how to jam just one channel, are they prepared to blot out satellite communications across the Near East? Al Manar is current carried on three comsats, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Hezbollah has backup carriers arranged.
I don’t see what blocking Al-Manar would accomplish anyway. Israel doesn’t have the kind of popular credibility in the Middle East to counter Hezbollah’s message even if it could dominate the airwaves..
I’m surprised the Israelis didn’t do this during the last engagement. It’s not like they would lose popular support or anything. They would, however, shut down a rallying point for their enemy.
Even if Hezbollah had backup sats, once one sat went black, I doubt the other carriers would have been willing to risk their equipment to carry the signal. And if Al Cheer-leadia went black as collateral damage, would that have been so terrible?
I don’t know. If this works, it has the potential to be a great military asset. You’d need to cut off internet traffic as well, but silencing communications could be a great help in a war. The last thing you want is a reporter for a hostile power pointing a TV camera at your tanks and saying “the Israelis are advancing from the northeast”. Even as a propoganda piece, Al-Quaeda TV is effective. I’d say that potential combatants would be much more inspired by such a station staying on the air and continuing to broadcast than they would if it went static in the first wave of a war.
Back during my days as an employee of a now defunct defense contractor one of the projects I worked on involved the AAMS. If you have a broadband input on a satellite you can lower the effective power out of that satellite by pumping in a signal that saturates the front end of the receiver.
The satellite is limited to how much power it can transmit at any one time and a booming input signal reduces all other output signals. Put too much power in and the receiver does a graceful shut down.
Pete Brown is on to the second point I was going to make: What if Al-Manar moves onto YouTube? Is Israel going to black out websites as well? Jamming comsats sends Israel down a road similar to the one it took into southern Lebanon in July.
If they escalate on the strategic communications front and Hezbollah out-maneuvers them, they look bad twice over – once for blotting out Arab TV and once for failing to gain the upper hand.
Brown also brings up a good point about pirate signals. Ultimately the only way to stop Al-Manar may involve blotting out all TV sats in range of the Arab Peninsula. There are at least three major sats I can think of off-hand, but there are bound to be more.
‘Enemy programming’ is quite a loose term, and could just as easily include CNN as MEMRI TV. In essence, any communication is a target in ‘total war’. Just look at US strikes on Al Jazerra in Kabul and Baghdad (which only served to increase its popularity).
If anything should have been learned by now, it’s that infrastructure is not necessary to wage guerrilla warfare, and that attacks on infrastructure serve to drive the indigenous population towards the insurgency.
Finally, we are not dealing with societies where every house has TV, internet, or even telephone connections. Knocking out satellite communications is more likely to be an attempt to keep ones own population in the dark.
Good Evening Folks,
All you make good points but I don’t see what Israel has to gain by jamming TV signals. This is all date technology, with the internet and 24 hour new channels vacuuming up anything that out tere it looks like just a bad case of old thinking.
The one part on the “Information Battlespace” that the terrorists have excelled at is getting the information. They know about Video, Mobile satellite phones, DVD’s, 802.11 etc. Unlike the US,s DoD who has to go through a bureaucratic bidding and purchasing process they just go on line and buy what ever they want with US dollars, and get it in there next DHL shipment.
In the US, TV often has video of attacks on FOX or CNN before the OSD even can even put out a press message, in short the US’s message is the second version of events to hit the airways.
The only way to defeat the terrorist is to get your message out FIRST. Both the United States and Israel are a distant second to the terrorists on this part of the “Information Battlespace”.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Hmmm, why not employ those “EMP Bombs” we have heard so much about?
If you can’t turn off the sat transmission, turn off the TV (…and everything else) receivers in the region. That would also address the issue of the Internet. Haji’s sat and cell phone comms would be fried as well.
“I don’t see what blocking Al-Manar would accomplish anyway. Israel doesn’t have the kind of popular credibility in the Middle East to counter Hezbollah’s message even if it could dominate the airwaves.”
Non functional TV would just another subtle reminder to Haji that he was not gaining the upper hand. When you have people with cities reduced to rubble and still claiming “victory”, it is important to play every card in the deck.
QUOTE: “Non functional TV would just another subtle reminder to Haji that he was not gaining the upper hand. When you have people with cities reduced to rubble and still claiming “victory”, it is important to play every card in the deck.”
I don’t even know where to being with this. The pejorative use of the term “Haji” is emblematic of how some people clearly don’t understand what is going on the Middle East. Allow me to illustrate a simple scenario:
“Haji” doesn’t care about television, he cares about selling his socio-political angle. One way or another he will figure a new way of pedaling his views.
Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed Q. Public, on the other hand, were just sitting at home, minding their own business somewhere between Tehran and Cairo when their very expensive satellite TV service went out. Even if this only proves to be a minor annoyance, it still generates negative attitudes towards Israel and U.S. – and worst of all, when “Haji” gets his media machine up and running again, he only has more public grievances to prey on.
The War on Terror isn’t about international borders or material goods or fantastical ideological notions. Its about winning hearts and minds and resolving a series of loosely related socio-political struggles across the globe.
stop invading lebanon and al manar won’t have anything to report on in regards to israel.
what about Freedom of Speech ?
if Iran banning of BBC is a threat to the freedom of speech then banning of
al manar is as well.