Airborne Electromagnetic Warfare in NATO: A Critical European Capability Gap

Professor Justin Bronk

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Airborne electromagnetic warfare (EW) capabilities are critical to Western airpower, but they are also one of the areas in which NATO countries have the greatest dependence on the US military. The scale of this dependence represents a potential risk for the Alliance if Russian aggression occurs when American reinforcements and support capacity are either tied up with a concurrent crisis in another theatre or are otherwise unavailable at scale.

• No single European country has either the existing foundations or sufficient suitably qualified and experienced personnel to rapidly be able to add meaningful capabilities across all aspects of EW. Therefore, creating end-to-end capability within Europe will require genuine multinational partnerships and cooperative specialisation.
• The UK has maintained world-class signals analysis and mission dataprogramming expertise, especially through the Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Centre and the tactical data-focused Typhoon Mission Support Centre. However, maintaining these vital and scarce capabilities in electromagnetic support measures (ESM) and electromagnetic countermeasures (ECM) in an era of rapidly evolving digital threat systems will require increased investment and rapid adoption of AI- and machine learning-enabled toolsets.
• The key to rapidly increasing European NATO’s ability to collect electromagnetic intelligence data is to ensure that all the electronic support measures suites being carried by non-traditional ISR platforms – such as modern fighter aircraft and UAVs for other mission sets – are used to their full collection potential.
• A pooled multinational electromagnetic attack squadron procured and run by NATO could allow air forces that are too small to economically field dedicated EW capabilities to meaningfully contribute funding and personnel. There is precedence for this approach in other areas, such as the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System Force (AWACS), the Multinational Multirole Tanker Transport Capability fleet, and the Strategic Airlift Capability fleet.