RST Engineering wrote:
Detecting it is one thing, stopping it is quite another kettle of
fish.
So tell you what, I'll give you a scenario, you give me your
countermeasures and I'll defend against it.

CW emitter using a watt of erp semi-isotropic radiation inside of a
"static proof" bag (fairly decent radar stealth shielding at the
frequency in question) in a plastic bucket under a helium weather
balloon. Power source (inside the bag) is a small garden tractor 20
amp-hour battery. A watt of RF requires about 2 watts of dc power,
or about 170 mA from the 12 volt battery. That's roughly 120 hours
(5 days) of operation on a continuously moving target. Do a little
winds aloft calculation when filling your balloon and you can drift
them across the country, doing a wide area blankout for days at a
time.
Perhaps $1000 in parts at the outside and at that price I can launch
one a day for what terrorists spend as chump change. Launch point
can move 500 miles via automobile in a day easily.

Jim


Any given EW aircraft in the USAF fleet to narrow localize and an AWACs
that'll get a skin paint on the balloon. They could probably pump enough
energy through the radar to pop the balloon.