"Hammer of the Gods" Makes First Sea Trial to Fight GPS Jamming
The Army's counter-navigation weapon went to sea for the first time off San Diego, testing how forces fight when GPS is denied.
U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Sar Paw, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, via DVIDS, public domain
A low-signature electronic-warfare system called “Hammer of the Gods” went to sea for the first time this month, as U.S. Army, Navy and Space Force personnel tested whether a land-proven tool for jamming enemy GPS signals can work from a maritime platform. The trial took place off Southern California in mid-July as part of Project Convergence Capstone 6 (PC-C6), the joint force’s largest annual experimentation exercise, running July 20 through 29 and headquartered at Fort Irwin, with the maritime leg supported out of Naval Base San Diego and U.S. Space Forces Pacific.
What “Hammer of the Gods” actually does
Hammer of the Gods is not a missile or a gun. It is a deployable electronic-warfare emitter designed to be highly mobile and hard to detect, providing what the Army calls expanded command-and-control and counter-positioning, navigation and timing, or counter-PNT, effects. In plain terms, it is built to jam or corrupt the GPS-derived navigation signals that adversary precision weapons and drones rely on to find their targets, while keeping its own electromagnetic footprint small enough to avoid being located and struck in return. Land-based versions of the system have been demonstrated for roughly two years across prior Project Convergence iterations, giving ground units a repeatable way to contest the GPS environment during an exercise. What had not happened until this month was putting that same counter-PNT capability on a ship.
From land to sea: the first maritime trial
During PC-C6’s maritime experimentation, Army, Navy and Space Force personnel worked together to deploy, operate and recover the Hammer of the Gods emitter from a vessel operating off Southern California, coordinating through resilient mesh networking meant to keep the system connected and controllable even when GPS and other PNT signals are degraded or denied outright. That last detail is the point of the exercise: rehearsing how a force actually fights and communicates when the very navigation and timing signals it normally relies on are the thing being contested. Land forces have practiced this scenario for two annual cycles of Project Convergence. Getting a maritime variant through its first at-sea deployment, control and recovery cycle extends that same practiced capability into a domain where U.S. forces have historically assumed uncontested access to GPS.
The exercise drew participation across all three services involved, a deliberate design choice for Project Convergence, which the Army has increasingly used to test how the joint force, not just individual services, would operate against an adversary capable of degrading American technological advantages rather than trying to match them symmetrically.
Why contesting GPS at sea matters now
GPS and GNSS jamming and spoofing incidents are no longer rare. Reporting from the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Middle East over 2024 through 2026 has documented adversary interference with satellite navigation signals used by commercial shipping, civil aviation and military platforms alike, disruptions that have forced pilots and ship captains to fall back on older dead-reckoning and inertial navigation techniques. Most of the American and allied response to that trend so far has centered on hardening friendly systems against jamming, building receivers and platforms that can keep working when GPS signals are degraded. Hammer of the Gods represents a different posture: a system built to actively contest that electromagnetic space against an adversary at sea, not just protect against being jammed.
That distinction matters for a general audience because so much of what makes a modern precision weapon “precision” comes down to knowing exactly where it is and exactly where it is going, typically derived from GPS or an equivalent satellite constellation. A drone, a cruise missile or a guided artillery shell that loses a clean GPS fix either goes off course or falls back on a coarser guidance method with worse accuracy. A system capable of denying that signal to an adversary’s weapons while preserving it, or an alternative, for friendly forces is effectively trying to take away the targeting advantage that makes precision-guided munitions precise in the first place. Testing that capability at sea, where a growing share of both commercial and military GPS-dependent activity takes place, is a logical next step for a system already proven on land.
Sources
- Project Convergence Capstone 6 experiments with Hammer of the Gods — DVIDS (U.S. Army, Sgt. Sar Paw, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment), Jul 25, 2026
- Project Convergence Capstone 6 experiments with Hammer of the Gods — U.S. Army, Jul 25, 2026
Frequently asked questions
What does "Hammer of the Gods" actually do? +
It is an electronic-warfare emitter that jams or disrupts GPS-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals that enemy precision weapons and drones depend on, while keeping its own electromagnetic signature low.
Is this a new weapon, or a new test of an existing one? +
The system itself has existed and been demonstrated on land for roughly two years. What's new is the maritime variant's first-ever sea trial, conducted in mid-July 2026.
Where and when did the test happen? +
During Project Convergence Capstone 6, held July 20 to 29, 2026, with the maritime leg supported out of Naval Base San Diego and Fort Irwin, California serving as the exercise's overall hub.
Why does GPS jamming matter for a general audience? +
Modern precision weapons, drones and ship navigation all rely on GPS or similar satellite signals. A system built to deny that signal to an adversary, or protect it for friendly forces, directly affects how accurately weapons can find their targets in a contested environment.
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