Electronic warfare for counter-drone missions has moved from academic demos to fielded, modular kits you can embed into a brigade or a fixed-site protection plan. This review looks at the European offerings that matter as of November 7, 2024, focusing on how they work, what they actually do in the field, and the tactical tradeoffs you must accept when you employ them.

Categories and representative systems

Stand-in, attritable airborne jammers. Leonardo’s BriteStorm is the clearest example from Europe of a small, stand-in jammer designed to ride onboard attritable UAVs and launched effects. BriteStorm builds on Leonardo’s DRFM know-how and is intended to suppress and deceive ground radars and surveillance systems by producing obscuration, noise, and false tracks rather than only blasting a single frequency. That makes it tactically useful where you need to shape an enemy air picture ahead of friendly high-value platforms.

Vehicle, site and integrated jammers. Large system integrators and national suppliers are packaging jamming effectors into layered C-UAS suites. Airbus has long promoted “smart responsive” selective jamming as part of its Counter-UAV stack where a detected control link is classified and only the necessary bands are targeted to reduce collateral effects. That same integration model is what you see across vehicle and site systems at major European shows.

Sensor-to-effector modular jammers. Rohde & Schwarz’s ARDRONIS family provides a modular detection, DF and jamming chain where the ARDRONIS Effect module delivers multi-band reactive jamming and is designed to be networked to C2 and other sensors. Rohde & Schwarz demonstrated ARDRONIS capabilities in NATO technical interoperability exercises in 2024, showing the practical emphasis on automated detect-to-disrupt chains for RF-linked drones.

Small and portable effectors. At Eurosatory 2024 and similar trade events, several European and regional manufacturers showed compact jammers and portable mitigation tools intended for point defence and convoy protection. These light-weight jammers are useful for close-in protection but generally lack range and sophistication against modern FHSS, encrypted or GNSS-denied autopilots. They are best treated as one layer in a multi-sensor architecture.

How they work in practice

Radar suppression versus command-and-control denial. Systems like BriteStorm are optimized to influence radar-based surveillance and target-tracking radars with DRFM-based deception and noise. They are not single-purpose RC link blockers. Conversely, ARDRONIS Effect and the small portable jammers primarily target RC and telemetry bands and may also include GNSS disruption. Choose the effector based on the threat profile. If you face loitering munitions or an IADS that uses radar handoff, a stand-in radar deception payload is higher value. If you face FPV assault drones controlled via 2.4 or 5.8 GHz links, a focused RF/telemetry jammer is the correct tool.

Range reality. Marketing often quotes mission envelopes that are conditional and optimistic. Practical effective ranges depend on output power, antenna gain and pattern, the target’s receiver sensitivity, line of sight, and the drone’s countermeasures or autonomous modes. Small, vehicle-mounted jammers commonly provide useful denial inside hundreds of meters to a few kilometers against typical commercial links. Stand-in airborne payloads can affect larger radar sectors because they get closer to the defended axis and use directional TRMs, but they require platform integration and survivability tradeoffs. Field reports and demonstrations at Eurosatory 2024 confirm this layered truth.

Target discrimination and false positives. Modern C-UAS must rapidly distinguish benign hobby flights from hostile, weaponized drones. The systems from Airbus, Rohde & Schwarz and others use signature libraries, DF, and sensor fusion to prioritize mitigation actions so that jammers are only triggered when the risk justifies the collateral risk. In practice you will tune trigger thresholds and create rules of engagement to prevent unnecessary jamming events.

Collateral effects and tactical constraints

Spectrum hygiene and rules of engagement. Jamming is not a free tool. Selective jamming reduces collateral damage but does not eliminate it. Governments and operators must document intent, C2 authority and legal cover for active mitigation. Vendors and integrators emphasize selective and smart jamming for exactly this reason. If you plan to operate jammers in or near civilian infrastructure you must account for the local regulatory regime and obtain explicit authorization.

Jam-resistant and autonomous drones. Adversaries increasingly use frequency hopping, encrypted links, and autonomous waypoint navigation to limit jamming effectiveness. The arms race is real. Rohde & Schwarz and others have pushed multiband and continuous jamming techniques to increase effectiveness against jam-resistant links, but long-term resilience requires layered defeat options including kinetic interceptors, directional high-power jamming, GNSS-denial mitigation and sensor fusion. Expect diminishing returns if you rely on a single effector.

Tactical employment recommendations

  • Build layers. Use passive RF detection, radar and EO/IR to establish early warning. Apply geolocation and classification before activating jamming. Systems such as ARDRONIS and integrated C-UAS suites are designed for this.

  • Match effector to threat. Use focused RC/telemetry jammers against FPV attacker drones, select stand-in radar deception for IADS and surveillance radars, and reserve high-power area jamming for well-justified operational windows.

  • Plan legal and comms. Have written ROE, spectrum authority and coordination with civilian spectrum owners. Smart responsive jamming reduces risk but does not remove legal obligations.

  • Expect countermeasures. Train for jam-resistant behaviours and integrate kinetic or intercept drone options where mission risk demands guaranteed defeat. European vendors are already iterating on multiband, high-power and DRFM techniques to respond.

Verdict

Europe has matured from point-case demo jammers into a pragmatic ecosystem with three clear strengths. First, system integrators focus on detect-to-disrupt chains that reduce collateral harm. Second, vendors are fielding both small, platform-agnostic stand-in jammers and robust multiband effectors to address different threat families. Third, the market is converging on modularity and C2 interoperability to let national forces scale layered defenses. That said, do not trust single-device claims about long-range universal denial. Real world effectiveness is a mix of physics, integration, ROE and adversary tactics. If you are specifying capability, write a use-case driven requirements document, insist on field trials against representative threats, and budget for integration and legal overhead as much as for the hardware itself.