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ELECTRONIC WARFARE
Electronic warfare, any strategic use of the electromagnetic spectrum, or of tactics related to the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, against an enemy in a military conflict.
The most commonly practiced types of electronic warfare are jamming, which falls under the category of electronic countermeasures (ECM), and eavesdropping on enemy communications, which is known as signals intelligence (SIGINT) gathering. The purpose of jamming is to limit an enemy’s ability to exchange information by overriding radio transmissions or by sending signals to prevent radar detection or convey false information. Intelligence gathering has grown more significant in direct relation to the increased technical complexity of modern warfare and now plays an important role in determining whether states go to war in the first place.
Electronic Warfare (EW) refers to any action involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum or directed energy to control the spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede enemy assaults via the spectrum. The purpose of electronic warfare is to deny the opponent the advantage of, and ensure friendly unimpeded access to, the EM spectrum. EW is waged throughout the electromagnetic spectrum to secure and maintain effective control and use through the integration of detection, denial, deception, disruption, and destruction. EW can be applied from air, sea, land, and space by manned and unmanned systems, and can target communication, radar, or other services.
Electronic Attack (EA): involves the use of EM energy, directed energy, or anti-radiation weapons to attack personnel, facilities, or equipment with the intent of degrading, neutralizing, or destroying enemy combat capability.
Electronic Protection (EP): involves actions taken to protect personnel, facilities, and equipment from any effects of friendly or enemy use of the electromagnetic spectrum that degrade, neutralize, or destroy friendly combat capability.
Electronic Warfare Support (ES); involves the search for, intercept, identify, and locate or localize sources of intentional and unintentional radiated EM energy for the purpose of immediate threat recognition, targeting, planning, and conduct of future operations.
EW contributes to the success of Information Operations (IO) by using offensive and defensive tactics and techniques in a variety of combinations to shape, disrupt, and exploit adversarial use of the EM spectrum while protecting friendly freedom of action in that spectrum. Expanding reliance on the EM spectrum increases both the potential and the challenges of EW in IO. All of the core, supporting, and related IO capabilities either directly use. Activities used in EW include:
Electro optical-infrared and radio frequency countermeasures;
EM compatibility and deception;
EM hardening, interference, intrusion, and jamming;
Electronic masking, probing, reconnaissance, and intelligence;
Electronics security;
EW reprogramming;
Emission control;
Spectrum management;
Wartime reserve modes;
Electronic Warfare (EW) represents the ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum—signals such as radio, infrared or radar—to sense, protect, and communicate. At the same time, it can be used to deny adversaries the ability to either disrupt or use these signals.
Electronic warfare includes all actions in the entire electromagnetic spectrum to intercept, analyze, manipulate, or suppress the enemy's use of the spectrum as well as to protect friendly use of the spectrum from similar attack by an enemy—to be considered an element of the technological aspect of strategy and an element of the combat power of the United States armed forces. The electromagnetic spectrum includes both the visible and invisible ranges, measured in megahertz, of the spectrum. The use of signals intercepting, locating, identifying, detecting, jamming, disrupting, deceiving, protecting, analyzing, and cryptanalyzing is electronic warfare. Electronic warfare can be used to provide intelligence or combat power like jamming, disruption, or deception.
The strategic response to ECM is electronic protective measures, also known as electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM), the purpose of which is to undermine enemy attempts to deny use of the electromagnetic spectrum. A common method is to quickly switch frequency channels according to a prescribed pattern, known only to the transmitter and the receiver. This technique is known as frequency-hopping spread spectrum.
A counterpart to SIGINT gathering is known as electronic support measures (ESM) to gain intelligence about the enemy. The information gained from electronic support measures may be used as the basis for ECM or ECCM, as well as for threat recognition, avoidance, targeting, and homing.
Electronic warfare (EW) systems can be configured for a variety of different missions and use a host of different subsystems. But despite this incredible sophistication and diversity, there are three main capabilities common to most electronic warfare systems – sensing the environment (receiver sensor), analyzing the environment (signal analysis), and responding to the environment (technique generation and high power transmission).
An electronic warfare system, whether configured to attack, protect or support, must have a way to collect and make sense of the signals in its environment. It must identify what’s out there, understand how it’s using the spectrum, and determining if it’s a threat. This is the system’s “receive” capability, and it is usually performed by a subsystem called radar warning receiver (RWR).
If the RWR detects a signal and analysis determines it to be an unavoidable threat, the EW system must then neutralize it and passes the threat data to the technique generator which determines how the system should respond to address the threat. The technique generator will select the jamming technique with the highest likelihood of success, based on a number of factors including the particular threat’s characteristics, the EW system’s host platform and the domain of battle – land, sea or air.
For an EW system to conduct electronic attack or electronic protect missions, it must be able to broadcast signals of its own to dominate the electromagnetic spectrum. Once a threat is analyzed, and a response generated, the EW system’s transmitter(s) ability to precisely radiate electromagnetic energy that make jamming, spoofing, deception and other electronic countermeasures possible.
Modern day Electronic Warfare (EW) has been proven to be the key to success in many recent combat situations. Even in peacetime, many new threats are being developed and defences tested with the aid of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. There is a vital need to gather, validate and process EW data from many different sources. Being able to understand what such electronic emitters are up to – whether friendly, hostile or unidentified – is crucial for effective electronic warfare operations, and for the decisions that have to be made when the pressure is on. A comprehensive knowledge of the electronic battlespace is critical to mission success.
The Pentagon defines Electronic Warfare (EW) as military action involving the use of electromagnetic energy and directed energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or to attack the enemy. EW consists of three divisions: electronic attack, electronic protection, and electronic support; EW is employed to create decisive, stand-alone effects or to support military operations by generating various levels of control, detection, denial, deception, disruption, degradation, exploitation, protection, and destruction.
While its early history is debated, the first known use of an EW capability — the interception of wireless communications — occurred in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War.
EW sometimes is considered to be interchangeable with cyber warfare, which involves the actions by a nation-state or trans-national organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks using such methods as computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.
While those elevated cyber to a level never applied to EW, they did not answer the question of where EW and cyber warfare begin, end and overlap.
This new approach and related technologies and warfighter training mark a significant change in the operations of ground maneuver forces that also is likely to see effects on U.S. Marine Corps and Special Operations concepts of operations (CONOPs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
It comes at a crucial time for the U.S., as Pentagon planning and emphasis moves away from fighting asymmetric wars in Southwest Asia against less advanced enemy states, insurgents, and terrorist organizations. Now military forces are refocusing their attention on potential conflicts with near-peer and peer adversaries in the Pacific and Europe. It also is the first time in some six decades that the United States has not been the unquestioned military technology leader.
Throughout the history of warfare, “boots on the ground” has been the catch phrase for the successful defeat and conquest of an enemy (the atomic bomb-forced surrender of World War II Japan notwithstanding). In the 21st Century, the value of individual warfighter has increased as they have become nodes in the battlespace network — walking sensors and EW/cyber warfare platforms to combat close proximity enemy electronics like robots, radar installations, communications, and precision-guided munitions. Combined with advanced vehicle-mounted EW capabilities, they will be crucial to dominating the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Lockheed Martin Symphony system is a radio-controlled improvised explosive device (RCIED) defeat system. Symphony provides global ground EW solutions to U.S. forces and partner nations with the ability to defeat current and emerging IED threats and is interoperable with other jamming devices at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, Hawaii.
This expansion of EW capabilities across all ground forces also reflects the convergence of offensive and defensive EW and cyber warfare capabilities and the move toward more software-defined systems, which began with the software-defined radio (SDR), where a single piece of hardware can be repurposed in the field in real-time with software changes.
An example of this is the VMAX and VROD Dismounted Electronic Support/Attack system planned for insertion into tactical forces in Europe. VROD, which stands for Versatile Radio Observation and Direction, detects electronic frequencies and creates a virtual map of the electronic environment. VMAX, which stands for VROD Modular Adaptive Transmit, enables soldiers to conduct focused electronic attacks at certain frequencies in the spectrum.
Spectrum is central to EW and cyber warfare. Because of this, dealing with them as independent efforts in securing military information networks may create cyberspace or electromagnetic spectrum vulnerabilities, Army leaders believe.
The U.S. Army Cyber and Electronic Warfare Operations Field Manual, released in April 2017, outlines the service’s thinking: “Employing cyberspace and EW capabilities under a single planning, integration, and synchronization methodology increases the operational commander’s ability to understand the environment, project power, and synchronize multiple operations using the same domain and environment.”
That has gained emphasis with growing evidence — from operational doctrine and actual implementation — that China and Russia view information operations and electromagnetic spectrum dominance as critical to any future conflict, especially, but not limited to, peer and near-peer.
Defeating future enemies that possess advanced capabilities calls for land forces operating as part of integrated joint teams that conduct simultaneous and sequential operations across multiple domains, In multi-domain battle, future Army forces will fight and win across all contested spaces to create windows of advantage across multiple domains that enable Joint Force freedom of action to seize, retain and exploit the initiative.
The Army will operate in and through cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum and will fully integrate cyberspace, EW, and electromagnetic spectrum operations as part of joint combined arms operations to meet future operational environment challenges.
These operations provide commanders the ability to conduct simultaneous, linked maneuver in and through multiple domains and to engage adversaries and populations where they live and operate. They also provide commanders a full range of physical and virtual, as well as kinetic and non-kinetic, capabilities tailored into combinations that enhance the combat power of maneuver elements conducting joint combined operations.
This convergence essentially defines the electromagnetic spectrum, rather than cyber warfare alone, as the real fifth domain of war, as the spectrum becomes more crowded with military and civilian transmissions. In an urban conflict, that greatly expands potential targets and vulnerabilities — especially if the rules of engagement call for as little interference with or damage to civilian systems as possible.
The future operational environment will be more unpredictable, complex, and potentially dangerous than today, the EW/cyber warfare concept document warns.
The physical structure of cyberspace will be extremely vulnerable to attack by an array of destructive weapons, including high-power microwave munitions and laser systems, which are increasingly effective against digitized, miniaturized and integrated circuits. Because these challenges and changes can occur swiftly, the Army must adopt advanced cyberspace operations capabilities at a more rapid rate than current capability development time lines, even while in a constrained fiscal environment.
State and non-state actors will invest in capabilities to protect their access to cyberspace and disrupt or deny access to others.
Use of these capabilities has the potential to negate current Army combat power and technological overmatch. Less capable adversaries will also use a variety of improvised weapons and technologies, such as global positioning system jammers and radio-frequency weapons, that utilize the electromagnetic spectrum to exploit Army reliance on technology.
The evolution of autonomous systems in the battlespace, from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to robots, with each generation relying on more and more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. While such systems will enhance the offensive and defensive capabilities of ground forces, they also comprise new dangers if compromised by enemy EW/cyber warfare attacks, making fail-safe technologies and software crucial to their control and data integrity.
Typically, an EW attack begins with a change in jamming modes; some form of AI is required to do that quickly. Future battles will be fought across multiple domains and we must win the first battle, which will be spectrum. We need SDR’s that can conform on the fly while under attack.
The Army plans to continue to acquire EW to support ground-based attack, the leverage will come when you have interoperability between all the airborne and ground robotic systems.
The Army already has demonstrated having a forward deployed unmanned platform being controlled from an Apache provides a lot of value to the warfighter; a similar progression is likely on the ground.
The rapid pace of technology advances — from materiel properties and switching architectures to ever-shrinking components and power requirements — have increased the speed and capacity of operations and the number of ways to attack the electromagnetic spectrum.
If you want to induce an electronic effect on the enemy, jam them without being detected by using smart, low-power effects. You must use synchronous, smart techniques to be protected from counter-EW.
One enabler is signal fratricide, being able to maintain friendly C2 networks while disrupting the enemy. If you can do force structure, operate in a high signal-dense environment, adapt to enemy actions, have threat agility and electronic protection and mitigate signal fratricide, you will effectively win the first battle for the electromagnetic space.
Dramatic reductions in size, weight and power (SWaP), combined with greater sensor range and sensitivity, have enabled EW/cyber warfare capabilities down to the individual warfighter level, revolutionizing the commander’s operational options. Employing them as well on remote, robotic and autonomous systems, including artillery and rocket EW munitions, dramatically expands the conduct of electromagnetic spectrum operations with small signature platforms and minimal risk to Army forces and non-combatants.
Ground-based electronic attack is certainly a critical capability for the future.
Now EWOs can be off-network, operating on last-known-data as well as real-time feeds for intelligent, actionable EW. It does more than just planning; it remotely controls EW systems and can provide RF signal analysis and geolocation capabilities.
While some ground-based EW has been fielded, most advanced prototypes undergoing real-world evaluations, what the future of individual warfighter and small unit EW will look like remains an open question, with the answer in constant flux.
It’s probably too early to tell how future ground EW capabilities will be incorporated into the battlespace. A lot of ground capabilities are in the experimentation stage. If you look at what the Army is doing with their cross-network teams, they are learning how to do an air-ground, multi-service, integrated framework.
As hardware is becoming ubiquitous, smaller, and more capable, the Army is requiring an open architecture set of capabilities with EW/cyber warfare built-in, enabling the warfighter to use the same hardware for different mission-based functions. As the warfighter evolves from the concept of “every shooter is a sensor” to every shooter is an EW/cyber warfare node, the need to bring all that new data back to the commander — from the smallest unit to higher headquarters — as useful information to make real-time tactical decisions also increases.
There are several communications paths that exist already and others coming online that enable this data to be used across the battlespace.
As you open the aperture on EW, we’re seeing more and more data, so there is a lot of effort going into data fusion, machine learning, AI and such. As you expand your sensors, the number of capabilities, you have to have a way for the system to narrow all that down, without taking away significant data. And each user has a different view on what that should be. We’re seeing a priority for it to be tailorable to the level of data required by each user across the battlespace.
Rapid innovation in the commercial world also leads to rapid innovation in EW and other military applications, with ground EW and associated applications expected to see a lot of innovation on which they can move quickly. Commercial technologies, typically based on industry standards, also make it easier to update existing systems and tie all platforms into the battlespace network.
The overall convergence of assets is the path forward, where ground is not a diverse and separate piece. From a warfare perspective, you’re trying to use all your assets together to achieve the goal, so why is EW any different? Ground has a lot of platforms, including individual warfighters, which means a lot of ways to sensibly and intelligently add EW capabilities that are very refreshable because you are leveraging open standards.
It is critical to understand that EW today may not be the same as EW six months from now, just as the leading cell phone today won’t be the leading cell phone in six months.
EW is shifting into a fast-paced technology area. There may be an advance in a totally different application, such as medicine, that may have applications in EW.
We should expect to see developments coming quicker and quicker, especially with the Army Innovation Command saying they want to see new advancements, which is a massive change in government procurement.
A lot of effort is going into electromagnetic management and it is becoming an extreme priority across the board. Technology is moving extremely quickly and systems must be able to operate in very different environments and produce tactically valuable information.
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