BriteStorm Miniature Electronic Warfare System Can Allow Small Drones To Create Big Ghost Formations
A new miniature electronic warfare jammer that is relatively low-cost enough to be a payload on loyal wingman-type drones and even expandable loitering munitions has hit the market from defense contractor Leonardo. Focused on stand-in jamming, the BriteStorm payload is based on technology pioneered in the BriteCloud air-launched decoy, which The War Zone has covered in detail in the past. Like its predecessor, BriteStorm can scoop up hostile radar emissions and emulate returns to create large numbers of false and confusing ‘ghost’ tracks and can also execute more traditional jamming, with even more adaptive capabilities on the horizon.
Leonardo, which is headquartered in Italy, officially unveiled BriteStorm at the Association of the U.S. Army’s main annual conference, which opened today in Washington, D.C. The company’s subsidiary based in the United Kingdom has led the development of the new jammer, as well as the preceding BriteCloud decoy.
“A standard BriteStorm fit incorporates a platform-specific antenna, transmit-receive modules and Leonardo’s Miniature Technique Generator,” according to a press release today from Leonardo. BriteStorm weighs just five and a half pounds (two and a half kilograms), the company also told Breaking Defense. This is small, but still substantially heavier than the soda can-sized BriteCloud, which weighs just over a pound (or half a kilogram).
