softkill

Softkill refers to non-kinetic measures used to degrade, deny, or disrupt an adversary's use of sensors, communications, or weapons systems, without destroying hardware. It is commonly contrasted with hard kill, which involves physical destruction or permanent incapacitation of equipment. Softkill aims to reduce combat effectiveness through deception, disruption, or denial while keeping the platform intact.

Techniques include electronic warfare methods such as radar jamming and spoofing, communications interference, GPS and navigation spoofing, cyber operations that disrupt control networks, and the use of decoys or deception to mislead sensors and targeting systems. Operationally, softkill can be preferred when destruction would be too costly, impractical, or escalate conflict; it offers reversibility and lower collateral damage in some cases, though it may still provoke escalation or have legal and ethical implications.

In defense planning, softkill measures are integrated with hard-kill options to create multi-layered denial of an adversary's capabilities. They are used in air defense, naval warfare, cyber defense, and space domain awareness to degrade an opponent's situational awareness and command-and-control.

Criticism of softkill notes that it can be imprecise, vulnerable to countermeasures, and may cause unintended consequences, such as misdirection or collateral jamming of own forces. The term also covers dual-use technologies; its applications raise strategic stability concerns and export-control considerations.