How OSINT Spots Electronic Warfare

Electronic warfare isn’t just one thing—it’s a family of techniques that leave distinct fingerprints in open source data. This episode explores how the OSINT community detects these fingerprints, from GPS jamming that glitches your ride share app to the subtle harmonics of military radar. We cover the tools and methods used by analysts to map jamming zones via ADS-B anomalies, identify specific electronic warfare systems by their “exhaust note,” and triangulate signals using crowdsourced receiver networks. The conversation also dives into synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, AIS spoofing that creates phantom ships, and how the absence of data—like a sudden dark zone in flight tracking—becomes the most critical clue of all. If you want to understand how civilians can now see the invisible battle for the electromagnetic spectrum, this is the episode for you.