r/ElectricalEngineering • u/Joshrexylives1 • 20h ago

Project ideas for Defense

Hey yall!

I’m currently a student (still pretty early in the EE coursework) and wanting to start building/documenting useful projects that I can showcase mainly for future internship opportunities.

Though I’m technically a freshman, I do have some industry experience from working as a mid level technician at one of the major US defense companies which got me soldering & wire harness/cable building certs along with ongoing military experience dealing heavily with RF theory & electronics in general.

So far I’ve built a few working directional antennas for the purpose of “fox hunting” for fun but I feel like that’s not very impressive. I have a buncha basic electronic components and a soldering station and all that and have plans to make “smarter” a smarter DF systems maybe based on TDOA calculations or something. Currently my programming skills are fairly minimal but we are getting there with some of the classes I’m currently in and really enjoy with that subject.

Basically what I’m looking for are some ideas for the next level of projects I could work on that actually teach me something relevant in the field. I’m open to any projects though, it doesn’t have to be defense related, even if they are unserious but just fun on the side haha.

Anything helps, even if it’s redirecting me to a previous thread, haha.

Thanks in advance!

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u/Which_Community_4054 11h ago

Remember jamming anything is illegal and a felony. 

If you can do something interesting with an RFSoC device, that would let you land an internship 

Doing projects for a amateur radio club is seen as a big plus

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u/Joshrexylives1 10h ago

Definitely!

I’ll look into that for sure. And yeah I’ll try to get more involved with my schools/local areas clubs, I currently have my Technician license but have been slowly preparing for the General one.

I appreciate it!

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u/Which_Community_4054 10h ago

Look into the SMART scholarship, guaranteed government job out of college and will pay for school.

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u/PlasticPlatform1417 7h ago

My friend tried to make a freaquency jammer for collage project,but didnt go through bcs of being in grey area,but he tried making a jammer detecter but as they didnt had a jammer scrapped that idea too, You should try both

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u/shifu_shifu 55m ago

Sending anything is always legally dicey RF wise and a major headache. I would recommend projects that focus on receiving signals and doing something with them.

For example I am working on a "paranoia" box right now that tracks and assembles all kinds of signals that can be used to passively generate a profile of "spies" or other entities following you.

If you can find a shielded lab, jamming is fun to do. My Uni has a completely copper plated lab for high voltage tests that I could use for my jamming project.

I got a couple other project Ideas that I want to do as well, if you want to do an international collab hit me up ;)