Bryan Clark and Mark Gunzinger, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments 1 December 8, 2015
Editor's Note: The following is the executive summary to a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the full copy of which is linked to at the bottom of this page.
The electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) is one of the most critical operational domains in modern warfare. Although militaries have used it for decades to communicate, navigate, and locate friendly and enemy forces, emerging technological advances promise to dramatically change their operations. In the same way that smartphones and the Internet are redefining how the world shares, shops, learns and works, the development and fielding of advanced sensors and networking technologies will enable militaries to gain significant new advantages over competitors that fail to keep pace.
Unfortunately, “failed to keep pace” is an appropriate description of the Department of Defense’s investments in EMS warfare capabilities over the last generation. In the absence of a peer rival following the end of the Cold War, DoD failed to pursue a new generation of capabilities that are needed to maintain its EMS operational superiority. This pause provided China, Russia, and other rivals with an opportunity to field systems that target vulnerabilities in sensor and communication networks the U.S. military has come to depend on. As a result, America’s once significant military advantage in the EMS domain is eroding, and may in fact no longer exist. This does not have to remain the case. DoD now has the opportunity to develop new operational concepts and technologies that will allow it to “leap ahead” of its competitors and create enduring advantages in EMS warfare.
Viewing EMS warfare as a long-term competition
EMS warfare can be roughly described as military communications, sensing, and electronic warfare (EW) operations that occur in the EM domain. While the term EMS warfare may be new, military operations in the EMS are not. Excluding simple visual signaling, armies, navies, and air forces have used EMS capabilities for more than a century to support their operations. Most people are familiar with the advantages communication and sensing systems such as radios and radar that operate in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the EMS have provided militaries since the opening stages of World War II. How militaries have conducted EMS warfare, however, has changed significantly over the last 100-plus years. These changes are as a series of major phases, each of which placed a different emphasis on the use of active or passive EMS capabilities and countermeasures. Within each phase, incremental improvements to existing EMS capabilities allowed militaries to gain temporary advantages over their competitors. Advantages that are more enduring have proven to be the product of new operational concepts and capabilities that enabled militaries to transition to the next phase of the EMS warfare competition before their rivals.
The U.S. military has an opportunity to make another such leap ahead, one that will allow it to regain and maintain an enduring advantage in the EMS warfare competition. Specifically, DoD could shift toward using low-power countermeasures to defeat enemy passive and active sensors, as well as low probability of intercept/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) sensors and communications to reduce the likelihood that its forces will be counter-detected. The term “low-to-no power” EMS warfare describes this approach. If embraced by DoD’s leadership and funded by Congress, low-to-no power operational concepts and capabilities would help the U.S. military to take back the airwaves and dominate a critical domain — the electromagnetic spectrum — in which future wars may be won or lost.
Need for new operational concepts
Shifting into a new EMS warfare competitive regime should begin with the development of new operational concepts that inform DoD’s EMS capability priorities, doctrine, and tactics. The services are already pursuing some operational concepts for low-to-no power EMS warfare. The Navy, for instance, is developing tactics for E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft to use passive capabilities to geo-locate threat emitters alone or in concert with other aircraft through the Navy Integrated Fire Control (NIFC) network. Here is a set of illustrative concepts that would apply more broadly across the joint force and for a wider range of missions and scenarios in the low-to-no power EMS warfare regime, including:
Using passive or multistatic detection capabilities to find hostile forces while avoiding detection by their active and passive sensors;
Finding enemy forces by using reflected ambient electromagnetic energy that can come from enemy communications systems, emitters of opportunity such as television and radio transmitters, or even the sun;
Taking advantage of enhanced emissions control and low-power countermeasures to avoid detection while operating inside enemy anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) zones;
Protecting U.S. forces that must operate in contested and denied areas; and
Conducting strike operations enabled by low-to-no power EMS warfare capabilities.
Investing in new technologies and capabilities
Executing these new operational concepts will require the U.S. military to evolve and expand its portfolio of EMS capabilities. To operate effectively in contested and denied environments, DoD should field EMS warfare systems that have the following attributes:
Networked: able to communicate and coordinate operations with neighboring EMS warfare systems using LPI/LPD data links;
Agile: able to maneuver in power, frequency, space, and time to remain undetected, target enemy networks, and avoid enemy countermeasures;
Multifunctional: able to perform multiple EMS warfare functions such as communications, active and passive sensing, jamming, deception, or decoying;
Small and affordable: can be procured and deployed in large numbers on small unmanned vehicles and systems or large platforms to enable diverse EMS warfare networks; and
Adaptive: able to characterize the EMS, including previously unknown emitters, and respond to exploit opportunities or counter enemy EMS operations.
Some systems with these attributes are already in the U.S. military’s inventory or will be fielded in the next several years. Other potential capabilities are languishing in research and development due to a lack of new, validated requirements and other barriers that inhibit their transition into DoD’s acquisition system.
Barriers to transitioning to the next competitive regime
Operating concepts and capabilities similar to those suggested above would help DoD to transition to the low-to-no power phase of EMS warfare. For this transition to occur, however, DoD will first need to address major conceptual, organizational, and programmatic impediments to progress that derive from the lack of an institutional vision for how U.S. forces should fight in the EMS. These barriers include:
Impediments to developing new operational concepts. Technologists, operators, and policy-makers often do not communicate effectively on the potential for emerging technologies to enable new approaches to warfare. Some in DoD are beginning to develop new concepts for the next phase in the EMS warfare competition. Their efforts are hindered by the U.S. military’s continued emphasis on operating as it has in the past, rather than embracing new ways of operating and fighting in the EMS.
A continuing bias toward research instead of procurement. The lack of new operational concepts inhibits DoD’s development of formal requirements that would “pull” new EMS warfare technologies into its acquisition process. Moreover, new systems that could support low-to-no power operations that are already fielded, such as active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, are prized more for their ability to support old operational concepts rather than their potential to enable different approaches to EMS warfare.
Fractionated acquisition. DoD acquisition organizations are now structured to procure single-mission EMS capabilities that are upgraded or modernized versions of their predecessors, rather than pursue new, more agile and multifunction systems needed for future EMS warfare.
Conclusion and recommendations
The Department of Defense has an opportunity to establish an enduring advantage in the EMS by adopting a low-to-no power approach for conducting EMS warfare. Technologies that would enable DoD to make this shift are largely mature and could be integrated on DoD’s manned and unmanned platforms, expendable payloads, and ground systems. Missing are the operational concepts and formal requirements that would help transition these capabilities to U.S. warfighters, organizations to develop and acquire more versatile EMS warfare systems, and sufficient resources allocated to procure them. The following initiatives could help DoD to address these shortfalls and create a network of capabilities suited for the next phase of the EMS warfare competition, rather than wars of the past:
Create a vision for EMS warfare. The recently-established EW executive committee (EXCOM) should oversee the development and implementation of a new vision for how future U.S. forces will operate and fight in the EMS. This vision should guide the efforts of the Services and Defense Agencies to implement low-to-no power EMS warfighting approaches.
Develop new EMS warfare operational concepts. The Services should create operational concepts and doctrine for low-to-no power EMS warfare to guide acquisition initiatives and the development of new doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP).
Establish requirements for new capabilities and refine DoD’s acquisition process. DoD is slow to field new EMS warfare systems in large part due to the lack of formal requirements that are used to begin acquisition programs. Using new operational concepts, Services should develop capability requirements that will shift acquisition priorities toward systems that will be effective in the next phase of the EMS warfare competition. To aid this process, DoD and Congress should work together to streamline DoD’s requirements development process; reduce cumbersome, often time-consuming www.csbaonline.org v and redundant analyses for new requirements; and base more new requirements on the capabilities delivered by prototypes and demonstrations.
Accelerate development of new EMS warfare technologies. DoD should prioritize its research and development investments to further mature networking, agility, multifunctionality, miniaturization, and adaptability technologies needed in the next phase of EMS warfare.
Integrate the acquisition of EMS warfare systems. The Services should greatly increase cooperation between multiple executive and management offices now responsible for developing and procuring new EMS warfare systems. This would help DoD as a whole to field more agile, multifunction capabilities essential to future EMS warfare operations.
Demonstrate new EMS warfare capabilities. The Services and Combatant Commands (COCOMs) should expand the number and scope of EMS warfare experiments they undertake that feature new operational concepts and capabilities that have yet to transition into DoD’s existing program of record.
American and allied military forces have gained significant advantages over their enemies in previous EMS warfare competitive regimes. But there are operational concepts and capabilities needed for DoD to transition to a low-to-no power approach of operating in the EMS domain. A successful transition would give future U.S. power projection forces a significant edge over their opponents. A failure to develop new operational concepts and capabilities needed for this next phase of EMS warfare, however, could result in situations where the U.S. military will be at risk of losing the battle for the airwaves.
Download the full report: Winning the Airwaves.
Editor's Note: The following is the executive summary to a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the full copy of which is linked to at the bottom of this page.
The electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) is one of the most critical operational domains in modern warfare. Although militaries have used it for decades to communicate, navigate, and locate friendly and enemy forces, emerging technological advances promise to dramatically change their operations. In the same way that smartphones and the Internet are redefining how the world shares, shops, learns and works, the development and fielding of advanced sensors and networking technologies will enable militaries to gain significant new advantages over competitors that fail to keep pace.
Unfortunately, “failed to keep pace” is an appropriate description of the Department of Defense’s investments in EMS warfare capabilities over the last generation. In the absence of a peer rival following the end of the Cold War, DoD failed to pursue a new generation of capabilities that are needed to maintain its EMS operational superiority. This pause provided China, Russia, and other rivals with an opportunity to field systems that target vulnerabilities in sensor and communication networks the U.S. military has come to depend on. As a result, America’s once significant military advantage in the EMS domain is eroding, and may in fact no longer exist. This does not have to remain the case. DoD now has the opportunity to develop new operational concepts and technologies that will allow it to “leap ahead” of its competitors and create enduring advantages in EMS warfare.
Viewing EMS warfare as a long-term competition
EMS warfare can be roughly described as military communications, sensing, and electronic warfare (EW) operations that occur in the EM domain. While the term EMS warfare may be new, military operations in the EMS are not. Excluding simple visual signaling, armies, navies, and air forces have used EMS capabilities for more than a century to support their operations. Most people are familiar with the advantages communication and sensing systems such as radios and radar that operate in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the EMS have provided militaries since the opening stages of World War II. How militaries have conducted EMS warfare, however, has changed significantly over the last 100-plus years. These changes are as a series of major phases, each of which placed a different emphasis on the use of active or passive EMS capabilities and countermeasures. Within each phase, incremental improvements to existing EMS capabilities allowed militaries to gain temporary advantages over their competitors. Advantages that are more enduring have proven to be the product of new operational concepts and capabilities that enabled militaries to transition to the next phase of the EMS warfare competition before their rivals.
The U.S. military has an opportunity to make another such leap ahead, one that will allow it to regain and maintain an enduring advantage in the EMS warfare competition. Specifically, DoD could shift toward using low-power countermeasures to defeat enemy passive and active sensors, as well as low probability of intercept/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) sensors and communications to reduce the likelihood that its forces will be counter-detected. The term “low-to-no power” EMS warfare describes this approach. If embraced by DoD’s leadership and funded by Congress, low-to-no power operational concepts and capabilities would help the U.S. military to take back the airwaves and dominate a critical domain — the electromagnetic spectrum — in which future wars may be won or lost.
Need for new operational concepts
Shifting into a new EMS warfare competitive regime should begin with the development of new operational concepts that inform DoD’s EMS capability priorities, doctrine, and tactics. The services are already pursuing some operational concepts for low-to-no power EMS warfare. The Navy, for instance, is developing tactics for E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft to use passive capabilities to geo-locate threat emitters alone or in concert with other aircraft through the Navy Integrated Fire Control (NIFC) network. Here is a set of illustrative concepts that would apply more broadly across the joint force and for a wider range of missions and scenarios in the low-to-no power EMS warfare regime, including:
Using passive or multistatic detection capabilities to find hostile forces while avoiding detection by their active and passive sensors;
Finding enemy forces by using reflected ambient electromagnetic energy that can come from enemy communications systems, emitters of opportunity such as television and radio transmitters, or even the sun;
Taking advantage of enhanced emissions control and low-power countermeasures to avoid detection while operating inside enemy anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) zones;
Protecting U.S. forces that must operate in contested and denied areas; and
Conducting strike operations enabled by low-to-no power EMS warfare capabilities.
Investing in new technologies and capabilities
Executing these new operational concepts will require the U.S. military to evolve and expand its portfolio of EMS capabilities. To operate effectively in contested and denied environments, DoD should field EMS warfare systems that have the following attributes:
Networked: able to communicate and coordinate operations with neighboring EMS warfare systems using LPI/LPD data links;
Agile: able to maneuver in power, frequency, space, and time to remain undetected, target enemy networks, and avoid enemy countermeasures;
Multifunctional: able to perform multiple EMS warfare functions such as communications, active and passive sensing, jamming, deception, or decoying;
Small and affordable: can be procured and deployed in large numbers on small unmanned vehicles and systems or large platforms to enable diverse EMS warfare networks; and
Adaptive: able to characterize the EMS, including previously unknown emitters, and respond to exploit opportunities or counter enemy EMS operations.
Some systems with these attributes are already in the U.S. military’s inventory or will be fielded in the next several years. Other potential capabilities are languishing in research and development due to a lack of new, validated requirements and other barriers that inhibit their transition into DoD’s acquisition system.
Barriers to transitioning to the next competitive regime
Operating concepts and capabilities similar to those suggested above would help DoD to transition to the low-to-no power phase of EMS warfare. For this transition to occur, however, DoD will first need to address major conceptual, organizational, and programmatic impediments to progress that derive from the lack of an institutional vision for how U.S. forces should fight in the EMS. These barriers include:
Impediments to developing new operational concepts. Technologists, operators, and policy-makers often do not communicate effectively on the potential for emerging technologies to enable new approaches to warfare. Some in DoD are beginning to develop new concepts for the next phase in the EMS warfare competition. Their efforts are hindered by the U.S. military’s continued emphasis on operating as it has in the past, rather than embracing new ways of operating and fighting in the EMS.
A continuing bias toward research instead of procurement. The lack of new operational concepts inhibits DoD’s development of formal requirements that would “pull” new EMS warfare technologies into its acquisition process. Moreover, new systems that could support low-to-no power operations that are already fielded, such as active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, are prized more for their ability to support old operational concepts rather than their potential to enable different approaches to EMS warfare.
Fractionated acquisition. DoD acquisition organizations are now structured to procure single-mission EMS capabilities that are upgraded or modernized versions of their predecessors, rather than pursue new, more agile and multifunction systems needed for future EMS warfare.
Conclusion and recommendations
The Department of Defense has an opportunity to establish an enduring advantage in the EMS by adopting a low-to-no power approach for conducting EMS warfare. Technologies that would enable DoD to make this shift are largely mature and could be integrated on DoD’s manned and unmanned platforms, expendable payloads, and ground systems. Missing are the operational concepts and formal requirements that would help transition these capabilities to U.S. warfighters, organizations to develop and acquire more versatile EMS warfare systems, and sufficient resources allocated to procure them. The following initiatives could help DoD to address these shortfalls and create a network of capabilities suited for the next phase of the EMS warfare competition, rather than wars of the past:
Create a vision for EMS warfare. The recently-established EW executive committee (EXCOM) should oversee the development and implementation of a new vision for how future U.S. forces will operate and fight in the EMS. This vision should guide the efforts of the Services and Defense Agencies to implement low-to-no power EMS warfighting approaches.
Develop new EMS warfare operational concepts. The Services should create operational concepts and doctrine for low-to-no power EMS warfare to guide acquisition initiatives and the development of new doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP).
Establish requirements for new capabilities and refine DoD’s acquisition process. DoD is slow to field new EMS warfare systems in large part due to the lack of formal requirements that are used to begin acquisition programs. Using new operational concepts, Services should develop capability requirements that will shift acquisition priorities toward systems that will be effective in the next phase of the EMS warfare competition. To aid this process, DoD and Congress should work together to streamline DoD’s requirements development process; reduce cumbersome, often time-consuming www.csbaonline.org v and redundant analyses for new requirements; and base more new requirements on the capabilities delivered by prototypes and demonstrations.
Accelerate development of new EMS warfare technologies. DoD should prioritize its research and development investments to further mature networking, agility, multifunctionality, miniaturization, and adaptability technologies needed in the next phase of EMS warfare.
Integrate the acquisition of EMS warfare systems. The Services should greatly increase cooperation between multiple executive and management offices now responsible for developing and procuring new EMS warfare systems. This would help DoD as a whole to field more agile, multifunction capabilities essential to future EMS warfare operations.
Demonstrate new EMS warfare capabilities. The Services and Combatant Commands (COCOMs) should expand the number and scope of EMS warfare experiments they undertake that feature new operational concepts and capabilities that have yet to transition into DoD’s existing program of record.
American and allied military forces have gained significant advantages over their enemies in previous EMS warfare competitive regimes. But there are operational concepts and capabilities needed for DoD to transition to a low-to-no power approach of operating in the EMS domain. A successful transition would give future U.S. power projection forces a significant edge over their opponents. A failure to develop new operational concepts and capabilities needed for this next phase of EMS warfare, however, could result in situations where the U.S. military will be at risk of losing the battle for the airwaves.
Download the full report: Winning the Airwaves.
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