BEIJING – When the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier cruised throughthe South China Sea last week, one US Navy pilot encountered Chinesejamming technology interfering with his plane’s equipment, according to areport.

“The mere fact that some of your equipment is not working is already anindication that someone is trying to jam you,” an EA-18G Growler pilot toldGMA News on April 14, adding that “we have an answer to that.” The Growleris a carrier-based, electronic warfare variant of the F/A-18 Super Hornet,Sputnik has reported.

According to Omar Lamrani, a defense analyst at consulting companyStratfor, however, “this is not something that the US will look kindly on,”Business Insider reported Wednesday. While the manned Growler plane isunlikely to be significantly impacted by jammers, Lamrani said, drones aremore susceptible to electronic jamming threats.

On April 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that new military jammers hadbeen deployed at Chinese outposts in the disputed Spratly Islands in the SouthChina Sealink>,citing US intelligence sources. The jammers are capable of interferingwith enemy communications systems, the newspaper reported.

The USS Roosevelt put on a display of force during its patrol through theSouth China Sea on its way to Manila. The aircraft launched from the planeat a rate of one plane per minute for 20 minutes straight.

The commander of the US ship also said at the time that the People’sLiberation Army Navy has been “nothing but professional” when itencountered the Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group.

For its part, the PLA Navy initiated live-fire drills in the Taiwan Straiton Wednesday following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s April 12 commentto Chinese sailors and naval aviation crews that the need to build a morepowerful navy “has never been as urgent as it is today.”