After divesting of much of its EW tool set following the Cold War, the Army has sought to rebuild its arsenal and tactics within the spectrum. That includes the gamut of electromagnetic spectrum operations such as electronic attack, or jamming, electronic support, or sensing the environment for enemy signals, and electronic protect, or guarding friendly systems and units from enemy jamming.

Observations from Ukraine have solidified the importance of robust and redundant capabilities, particularly within the spectrum.

In addition to having jammers for offensive actions, U.S. forces must possess a raft of other tools to be able to protect themselves from enemy jammers, hide within the spectrum and deceive the enemy.

As evidenced in Ukraine, units can be located and targeted with munitions solely based on their emissions within the electromagnetic spectrum.

“Commanders must be able to see themselves to control their emissions and defeat the enemy’s ability to sense, identify, locate, and target them. This is critically important when observations from current conflicts around the world show there are eight minutes from identification in the EMS to artillery impacting on the detected location of said emission,” the Army’s Multidomain Operations Range Guide states.

As such, the Army’s budget request would place more investments in these key areas of understanding its signatures and protecting forces with a combination of new-start programs, repurposed portfolios and existing efforts.

The Modular Electro-Magnetic Spectrum System (MEMSS) is a new start this budget cycle, stemming out of a prior science-and-technology effort called Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum Deception Suite (MEDS). Officials have previewed the effort in years past, noting some prototyping had gone toward developing it.

The Army is requesting $9.1 million in 2026 for the effort in its research-and-development budget. Specifically, it would provide force protection and freedom of maneuver through “radio frequency technical effects,” a term the Army uses to describe classified capabilities.

MEMSS will look to prioritize iterative development with commercial-off-the-shelf capabilities, a top priority for the Army and its electronic warfare portfolio overall.

The budget documents note that the system will be given to units as part of the Army’s transforming-in-contact (TiC) initiative, which aims to speed up how the service buys technologies and designs its forces and concepts by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments.

The documents note that these units will receive prototyped capability and, as part of the program, fiscal ’26 funding will support testing to ensure it performs as expected against realistic threats to include both lab testing and evaluation from soldiers from TiC 2.0 units, which now involves armored formations as well as Multi-Domain Task Force and Army special operations units.

Another new start within the Army’s budget request is a program called Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance (CSR). It’s envisioned as a family of systems to provide force protection at echelon — specifically ground-based capabilities for division, corps and theater commanders — through enhanced situational awareness, operational planning tools for effects coordination and electronic support capabilities.

This program, along with many others, is included in the Army’s new Electronic Warfare Agile Systems Development program.

For this budget request, the Army sought to secure agile funding for a limited pot of systems: electronic warfare, unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS. This agile funding allows the Army to consolidate capabilities into a single portfolio to better move money around and be more responsive to real-world events, as opposed to having to ask Congress for reprogramming requests. The budget documents note this pilot effort provides enhanced capabilities through fostering innovation and the accelerated development of promising technology.

The Army is requesting $34.4 million in R&D funding for CSR in fiscal 2026. The program aims to use technologies that will hide units’ locations within the electromagnetic spectrum. So-called low-probability-of-detection/low-probability-of-attribution non-kinetic effects will establish “unobserved” positions and preserve combat power, the documents note.

The CSR program will provide three distinct lines of effort for counter-space surveillance that will be controlled by an overarching mission planner and common execution software to plan and employ non-kinetic effects to protect friendly forces.

The prototype development for all three lines of effort are scheduled to begin in second quarter of 2026. The first unit issued for the first line of effort is scheduled for third quarter 2029, with the second and third slated for fourth quarter 2030.

The Army’s budget request is also asking for $1.5 million in R&D funding for a program to develop an integrated multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system.

That program, Integrated Electronic Warfare Systems, shifted in funding and terminology compared with last year’s budget release. It has now been moved to the agile funding pilot.

Additionally, in the previous budget proposal, the Army sought mainly to fund Counter-Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Electronic Warfare (CREW), a term that is a relic of the Global War on Terror when insurgents used radio devices to trigger roadside bombs.

The CREW technology, however, is still relevant today as it can be used for counter-UAS and counter-communications.  

Now, the program is aiming to prototype an integrated multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system that can respond to changing signals of interest employed by adversaries.

When a signal is discovered that isn’t in a unit’s library of known signals, a countermeasure must be devised, which historically could have taken months. That pace is unacceptable for the fast-paced warfare of the future. The Army and other services are looking at rapid reprogramming on the battlefield, in part, by leveraging artificial intelligence.

“Electromagnetic warfare (EW) capability gaps exist across several areas, including the need for development of more sophisticated countermeasures, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics into EW operations. Specifically, the development of advanced countermeasures that can effectively disrupt or neutralize enemy EW capabilities is crucial, especially in the face of evolving technologies and tactics. Integrating AI and advanced analytics into EW operations will significantly enhance the ability to quickly identify and respond to threats,” the budget documents state. “VMEWS is intended to provide a suite of electromagnetic warfare capabilities to protect wheeled and tracked vehicles against a wide range of radio frequency-controlled threats.”

The Army expects a competitive commercial solutions offering that leads to an other transaction agreement for a tech demonstration of a vehicle mounted multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system to accelerate technology maturation and prototyping.

A new procurement effort for the Army in the budget request is the Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS), which will provide sensing and visualization of what units look like in the spectrum and allow commanders to be able to sense and report in real-time their command post signatures, sources of electromagnetic interference — either from coalition partners or the enemy — and threat emissions.

The Army awarded 3dB Labs earlier this year an other transaction agreement to develop and demonstrate a prototype. S2AS had already undergone a prototyping effort prior to the award.

The fiscal 2026 budget request includes $17.6 million in procurement funding for S2AS as a new start in procurement and under the “Electronic Warfare” program, which is also new this year as part of the agile pilot. Those funds would enable procurement, delivery, training and initial sparing of S2AS, according to budget documents, which state the Army plans to buy 20 systems.

The budget also asks for $8.9 million in research-and-development funding for S2AS.

The Army will be using transforming-in-contact units to help inform how the program matures.

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At the end of the Cold War, many of the services divested of their capability within the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, these technologies are at a premium and in high demand for jamming enemy communications, navigation and missiles while protecting against the same. Adversaries have invested heavily in this area following U.S. divestment, forcing a sprint to reinvigorate American EW prowess.

“We’ve made some progress this year [but] here’s my concern: there’s a lot of studies and there’s a lot of paper, but paper doesn’t jam and paper doesn’t hit missiles,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said Tuesday during an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We need to have more capability output, and I’m just not seeing enough of it right now.”

Bacon chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems and is a retired one-star Air Force general who specialized in electronic warfare.

He observed that what’s been learned from military history is that when nations feel dominant, they walk away from electromagnetic spectrum capabilities — thinking they might not be necessary — as was seen at the end of the Cold War when the United States was the sole superpower.

“If you’re very dominant, EW is an unnecessary expense. But if you think you’re going to be in a very tough fight, electronic warfare is critical to saving lives,” he said, adding: “We walked away from [it] in the ’90s and we put very little emphasis” on it. As a result, those capabilities atrophied.

The electromagnetic spectrum should have the same importance placed on it as the other domains of warfare, he suggested, despite not being considered a domain itself.

“We need to talk like we do air power, sea power, the ground, cyber … Just like air, we want to control the air, deny [it] to the bad guys — we got to have that same mindset for the spectrum. That means you need attack capabilities. We got [to] also have the defensive measures,” he said, noting the U.S. dominated in the electromagnetic spectrum when he was a brand new EW officer.

As a one-star in the Pentagon, when he sought resourcing for electronic warfare, officials would tell him there wasn’t enough to go around because other assets, such as the F-35, KC-46 or new intercontinental ballistic missiles, were higher on the priority list, he recalled.

Similarly, the Air Force is slated to only have 12 EA-37B Compass Call aircraft, which boasts cutting-edge capabilities to degrade and disrupt adversary communications, information processing, navigation and radar systems.

Air Combat Command officials say they need 22 of those systems, Bacon said, while others have noted they’d like more platforms for their regions, which contributes to resource constraints in the EW environment.

The Army, for its part, has been on a decade-long journey to rebuild its arsenal. Amid fits and starts, it has sought to cancel or reapproach several programs after years of development, having delivered its first program-of-record jammer only last year, awarding a system tested by Special Operations Command. The service is now looking to move faster in the electronic warfare realm, seeking to utilize agile funds to stay ahead of threats and buy commercial as much as possible.

Bacon has also made it a priority during his years in Congress to drive the services and DOD to identify personnel in charge of EW for accountability.

“When I first came in [Congress] in 2017, I’d go [to] a service, I’d go, ‘who’s in charge of EW?’ say, for the Army or Navy or the Air Force. They would say ‘it’s the vice chief of staff.’ Well, he or she is in charge of a lot of things,” Bacon said at the Mitchell Institute event. “We need somebody at the one- or two-star level to have that accountability.”

He noted progress on that front with leadership at the joint level, both on the Joint Staff and with a new Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Center at Strategic Command, as well as joint electromagnetic spectrum operations cells resident within each combatant command to help plan and integrate EW into operations.

“I feel like we’ve made a lot of strides in giving people responsibility and knowing who exactly we hold accountable,” he said.

Bacon also noted progress on getting the Pentagon to develop an EW strategy and implementation plan.

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The service has decided to move on from the current Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large (MFEW-AL) platform and approach. MFEW is the Army’s only airborne electronic warfare — with limited cyber — capability organic to combat aviation brigades to support maneuver commanders on the ground. The Lockheed Martin-made technology is a pod-mounted capability on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, though officials have noted it was designed to be platform agnostic — provided the platform had the right power requirements.

The Army began developing the requirements and acquisition effort for MFEW over 10 years ago, awarding Lockheed the contract in 2019. The program has faced steep challenges for years with the department zeroing out procurement funding in its fiscal year 2022 budget. Following that decision, Army leaders sought to demonstrate that the service could make the system work in a variety of environments, especially considering the persistent need for aerial electronic attack.

Officials continued to maintain that following the zeroing out, the Army was making progress and the technology would be a critical enabler for multi-domain operations, even projecting it would equip the first unit with it in fiscal 2026 following initial operational test and evaluation.

The Army now wants to look at alternatives, either from the other services or the commercial sector, pivoting away from the MFEW platform as it exists currently, Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in a series of interviews.

Barker and his team briefed the changes to Congress last week.

“We’re pivoting to a more incremental approach focused on some of the existing capabilities that are out there with either sister services or other entities … within the EW space and trying to baseline what’s out there — and then [examine] what would it take to grow to meet the requirements from an MFEW standpoint,” he said. “The challenge will always be, and the Army acknowledges, the fact that we’re going to have the demand for aerial EA. And it’s [a question of] how do we close that gap?”

The problem, according to Barker, was when MFEW began, the Army didn’t necessarily have all the acquisition authorities it does now such as other transaction and middle tier of acquisition.

Over a decade ago, when the capability development document was finalized, MFEW was locked in and the Army didn’t have the latitude to learn, according to Barker.

That old mentality of locking in strategies and capabilities meant that the system was based on technology and threats with uncertain futures.

“When something has a degree of uncertainty and you try and codify it and then you’re not allowed to iterate and make adjustments, if any of that uncertainty or the risk of the uncertainty is realized, then it really can impact you,” Barker said. “What happened was so much of the uncertainty from a technology standpoint and the threat was realized, and without the mechanisms from a contractual standpoint or a requirement standpoint to pivot based on those changes, it just was not in an optimal position to be successful.”

Electromagnetic spectrum technologies and concepts have rapidly evolved over the last 10 years, leading the Army to now desire a more rapid approach and agile funding to be able to adjust in near real-time to the environment that is primarily software-based.

The initial requirement and capability for MFEW was all-encompassing, which has proven to be problematic now. The Army has instead opted for a more iterative and needs-based approach to requirements, issuing what it dubs “characteristics of needs” documents that are just a couple of pages of broad-based wishes for capabilities that industry can respond to rather than hundreds of pages of prescribed requirements.

As it stands right now, the current capabilities aren’t meeting the needs for MFEW.

Part of the discussion is framed around how the Army itself if evolving. Just over a month ago, the service unveiled a sweeping transformation initiative to become leaner and more agile. As part of the plan, it will no longer be procuring Gray Eagle drones and it will be divesting of some combat aviation brigades, which were key to MFEW.

Sensors, to include electronic attack capabilities, can now be strapped onto small and attritable drones that are significantly cheaper and easier to operate than larger, more exquisite systems.

As such, Barker said the Army isn’t totally starting from scratch with MFEW, noting officials are going to “leverage other people’s work” and take a more iterative approach to grow into something on the electronic attack front that can meet the Army’s requirement that still remains for aerial EA.

The old MFEW approach is much different than how the Army sought to build its Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team (TLS-BCT) capability, which was devised roughly six years ago and awarded to Lockheed in 2021. It was an integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform and had been described as a key enabler of Army priorities — considering the service has been without a program-of-record jammer for decades — that will support multi-domain operations.

The Army used middle tier of acquisition and other transaction authority for that program. About a year ago, it decided to alter its initial approach to TLS-BCT, which was envisioned to first to be mounted on Strykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes. The Army decided last year to split up those functions.

Outside experts had always voiced concern with such a setup given the highly classified nature and authorities that come with signals intelligence and the issues associated with putting that on the same platform as electronic warfare tools. Moreover, putting a highly classified platform so close on the battlefield posed challenges as well.

“Had MFEW gone down that path [of OTA and middle tier like TLS], it may have been a different story,” Barker said. “That’s why I’m grateful for the authorities we have from Congress when it comes to those capabilities. I mean, that’s what’s allowed us to be very successful in a lot of different ways.”

New approach for TLS

Since the Army decided to split up TLS, there had been questions regarding what its approach would be for platform-based ground EW. The service awarded Mastodon Design, a CACI subsidiary, last year, for the dismounted version of the program. The Manpack capability is a dismounted electronic attack system that soldiers can use for direction finding and limited jamming on-the-move.

Now, the Army has decided to use the Manpack version as its primary ground-based jamming platform, rather than having a dedicated, vehicular-specific variant.

The plan is to use what the Army is calling a Modular Adapter Kit to mount the Manpack to vehicles. The Manpack for BCTs is the optimal solution for EW, according to Barker.

“We’re going to look at opportunities, both from a dismounted and then we’re also looking at adapter kits … which aren’t integrated,” Barker said. “It’s like strapping [or] tying onto the bustle rack of a Bradley or a tank to [at] least allow it to have a platform but not fully be integrated to where we’re worried about the [tactics, techniques and procedures] … with the platforms, which will also allow it to derive power from the platforms for greater capability.”

Lessons from Ukraine demonstrated that the old approach of integrating signals intelligence and electronic warfare onto the same vehicle was not survivable, Barker said. Using other transaction authority allowed the Army to iterate and pivot away from that approach, he added.

Moreover, along with the Army’s transformation efforts, it is moving away from certain platforms. Using a Modular Adapter Kit allows the service to be more agile to incorporate technology into whatever the Army decides to field and cut down lead times for costly and timely integration with platforms.

“You’re not integrating onto a platform which, in itself, is costly and takes a long time. That’s the goal. We’re starting to experiment with those. And that’s what we’re going to tell folks. That will allow us to get at the mounted formations at the BCT level, to get them that EW capacity,” Barker said. “It was really just a combination of the threat, technology and then force structure changes within the Army with a lot of the intelligence portions being pushed up to division and then the platform focus changing away from the Strykers and some of the other armored vehicles at the brigade.”

The Manpack solution was the first program-of-record jammer fielded to the Army in over 20 years, providing much needed capability. Now, it believes, it can speed up that delivery for other formations to get them critical tools to fight and win on the modern battlefield.

The Army is slated to field 51 brigades by the end of 2027 with the Manpack solution, seeking to iterate and change it along the way based on experimentation and the threat.

“It would be a crime on our part for the first eight [Manpacks] that we’ve done so far to be exactly like the way we do it for the last eight,” Barker said. “If we’re not learning and doing those things from each one of those [training and experimentation] events and having reps forward as those organizations either taking it forward in a theater or going to their rotations. There’s just so much experimentation going on out there right now and learning.”

For example, the Army has learned through ongoing experimentation that certain units in certain environments require slightly different capabilities. The 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii and operating primarily in the Pacific region, is operating under thick foliage and is more reliant on data systems with smaller pipes. The 101st Airborne Division, by contrast, will be a little less constrained, meaning the program community must adjust the kit accordingly based on how each unit fights.

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1st Armored Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division is in Hohenfels, Germany, as part of Combined Resolve 25-02, a U.S., NATO and multi-partner exercise focusing on interoperability, that’s slated to take place from May to June. That unit has been designated as a so-called “transforming-in-contact” unit. That Army concept aims to speed up how the service buys technologies and designs its forces by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments.

The unit has conducted four transforming-in-contact events to date — to include activities at home station and a rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, last year where they encounter a full force-on-force conflict against an opposing enemy.

During that event, 1st Brigade began testing out tactics and technologies for electromagnetic deception to trick the enemy into thinking its forces were in one place, even though they were actually in another location. They recorded what the electronic emissions of their command posts looked like and played those recordings back on the battlefield for the opposing force.

“Our first iteration with the deception command post out here at NTC we had great effects, where the OPFOR attacked it. At NTC, I did not have to move my brigade command post once because of enemy indirect fire, enemy contact,” Col. Jim Armstrong, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division commander, told reporters this week.

The unit placed those signatures in locations where personnel thought the enemy would look for a command post, played the signatures and put the real command posts somewhere else.

The opposing force attacked the fake command post, revealing its own position and making it vulnerable to attack.

One of the biggest lessons from Russia’s incursions into Ukraine — from 2014 to its latest invasion — is how units can be located and targeted with kinetic munitions solely based on their emissions within the electromagnetic spectrum.

In addition to pushing units to reduce their overall signatures, the Army is pursing technologies that will allow them to deceive the enemy and even hide in plain sight.

“Commanders must be able to see themselves to control their emissions and defeat the enemy’s ability to sense, identify, locate, and target them. This is critically important when observations from current conflicts around the world show there are eight minutes from identification in the EMS to artillery impacting on the detected location of said emission,” the Army’s Multidomain Operations Range Guide states.

That effort is a partnership between the Cyber Center of Excellence and Intelligence Center of Excellence to inform how units conduct electromagnetic spectrum training at combat training centers and home stations.

In many cases, it is back to the future for the Army in electromagnetic spectrum operations as a whole — having divested much of its gear and tactics following the Cold War — and decoys especially. The service is looking to regrow that tradecraft and expertise as adversaries view electronic warfare as an essential tool for gaining and maintaining information superiority.

“Our adversaries employ world-class EW forces that support denial and deception operations and allow identification, interception, disruption, and, in combination with traditional fires, destruction of adversary command, control, communications, and intelligence capabilities,” the Multidomain Operations Range Guide states. “Near peers have fielded a wide range of ground-based EW systems to counter GPS, tactical communications, satellite communications, and radars. Additionally, their EW fuse with cyber operations enables their forces to corrupt and disable computers and networked systems as well as disrupt use of the EMS. Our adversaries aspire to develop and field a full spectrum of EW capabilities to counter Western Command, Control, Communications, Computers Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and weapons guidance systems.”

The Army has tested other systems in the past capable of replicating the service’s assets — such as company to division level radio frequency signatures — to confuse and deceive enemy signals collection.

Those tools were able to collect the signals and signature profile of a command post — or anything that emits — and copy it to rebroadcast as a decoy. Some of the systems can be deployed to mimic a command post so the enemy doesn’t know exactly where the command post is or which one is the real command post.

Other units around the Army and as part of their transforming-in-contact rotations have sought to use electromagnetic deception, albeit in different ways depending on the enemy they faced or the terrain they were in.

2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division last year strapped $30 raspberry pi’s to small drones and used them as electronic decoys against its enemy, to great effect, according to after-action briefs.

However, that wasn’t necessarily a tactic that would work for 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, which conducted its rotation in January at Hohenfels as part of the last Combined Resolve event. The opposing force it faced would typically confirm electromagnetic detection with visual confirmation. That meant that in contrast to the setup for the 101st, where the enemy would simply detect the signal and fire upon it, if a signal of interest was discovered the opposing force would have to send a scout or a drone to validate that there were physical assets there.

Understanding that, 3rd Brigade paired inflatable M777 howitzers with its decoys, providing the physical evidence needed to deceive the enemy.

Following its National Training Center rotation, 1st Brigade, as well as 3rd Infantry Division as a whole, will be using its rotation in Hohenfels and Combined Resolve to build on operations using electronic deception designed to replicate EMS emissions, according to a spokesperson.

1st Brigade will be the first armored transforming-in-contact unit to participate in Combined Resolve.

The first iteration of transforming-in-contact, TiC 1.0, featured three light brigades. TiC 2.0 is focused on armored formations and divisions as a whole — to include enabling units such as artillery and air cavalry brigades as well as Multi-Domain Task Forces, some Army special operations units and National Guard units.

The division spokesperson declined to provide specific details regarding the deception capability for security reasons, but noted the decoy command post has both a physical and an electromagnetic spectrum component.

“There are 9 doctrinal forms of contact (visual, direct, indirect, non-hostile, obstacles, aircraft, [Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear], and electronic) and the deception command post is designed to mimic as many of them as possible,” they said.

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At the end of the Cold War, the service divested much of its electronic warfare inventory. During counterinsurgency fights in the post-9/11 wars, the Army used blunt jamming tools to thwart improvised explosive devices, which, in turn, inadvertently jammed friendly systems.

But Russia’s first incursion into Ukraine in 2014 served as a wakeup call, and the Army has been on a years-long journey to modernize its EW prowess.

“I think this year will be the beginning of the combination of force structure, training circulars, range guides and field manuals now combined with manpackable gear that allows both the sensing and the activity in the space that heretofore … was different systems or different methods from different units. We’re going to make this a solution across our whole Army,” Maj. Gen. Ryan Janovic, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, said in an interview.

In 2017, the Army merged electronic warfare within its cyber branch, meaning soldiers that go to the cyber school at Fort Eisenhower in Georgia also learn to be electromagnetic spectrum professionals.

The Army, up until the last year or so, had no fielded program-of-record jammers — relying for years on quick-reaction capabilities developed to address capability gaps in Europe.

That system, the Terrestrial Layer System Manpack, is a manpackable system, which provides direction finding with limited jamming on-the-move as well, had a history of use by special operations units, allowing it to be awarded and fielded to the conventional force on a much faster timeline.

Through the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — which seeks to speed up how the service buys technologies and designs its forces by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments — the service will begin providing units a variety of EW systems for sensing, understanding their footprint to manage it, and jamming.

“We’re excited that this is the year where we’re going to start to see in earnest the combination of equipment arriving into divisions and the formations of trained young men and women ready to take that equipment and demonstrate what it can do on behalf of those division commanders. That’s going to continue as we roll this out to all the divisions, as we continue to equip the force and train the force,” Janovic said. “That’s an area that will remain a priority and it’s one of our chief’s priorities, because we’re all looking at what we’re learning from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and operations in the electromagnetic spectrum define the future of combat as we see it.”

The Army has been on a path to provide more electromagnetic spectrum forces to units in the way of EW platoons and companies. Janovic noted that just a few years ago, where the Army may only have trained 60 EW personnel, that number is up to 600 over three years.

“It’s just a magnification change as we start to man the formations that we built from platoons and companies all throughout the divisions and then the corps and the [Multi-Domain Task Forces]. We will end up training significantly more EW professionals,” he said.  

In fact, Fort Eisenhower, the home of the Cyber Center of Excellence, has sought to invest in training ranges for EW professionals to get out in the dirt with gear and test their classroom courseware given they are increasing the force structure.

“We’re putting them under gear and out in the wood line and really trying to create as tough and realistic training that we can to simulate the environment,” Janovic said. “We’ve got room to grow both in what we’re doing in the classrooms and what we’re doing in the field, but I think that’s the important balance that we have to find. How do you do it in tough, realistic conditions, but also teaching the fundamentals of the EMS and understanding it, the science of it? It’s a complete overhaul.”

The Cyber Center is also working to proliferate EW expertise across the entire Army and the other centers of excellence in an expansion of a partnership that began a couple of years ago.

Janovic noted that all units and formations must be aware of how the electromagnetic spectrum affects their operations and how they maneuver on the battlefield.

“We’re contributing to the body of knowledge and other centers of excellence. How do they put EW into their programs of instruction? How do we help all formations understand what they need to know at the basic level for survivability, if you will, in emissions control, if you’re being jammed, how not to be detected?” he said. “We’re going to have to do this in a very, very collaborative way, because all centers have some aspect of the EMS at work in the foundation of what they do. All formations will be operating in the EMS. When you think about it from a protection standpoint or from an intelligence standpoint, all of us at the centers of excellence agree that we’re going to have to do this somewhat differently.”

As part of that effort, the Cyber Center is improving doctrine and manuals, having recently collaborated with the Intelligence Center of Excellence to develop the Multidomain Operations Range Guide.

The aim is to improve home station training for units. The Army is also working on other training circulars, Janovic said, especially as more lessons are learned from Ukraine where a team led by an Army general officer was sent to loot at electronic warfare.

Those observations will be factored into training, courseware and even combat training centers where forces execute operations against a live opposing force.  

“We’ll continue to learn lessons as we fight at home station and fight at the CTCs, and learn lessons about what works and what doesn’t right,” Janovic said. “We’re excited about seeing where that takes us in the next year.”

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The electromagnetic spectrum arsenal serves as a set of exploits in the radio frequency sense, that can be loaded on platforms for a set of targets. It’s a centralized location where soldiers can find details of each EW technique — including descriptions and implementation parameters or configurations — that can be used in support of electronic warfare mission planning and effects. It also offers a database that can be used for rapid reprogramming against adversary signals or techniques.

The advanced modern state of EW involves a constant cat-and-mouse game between friendly forces and adversaries. Each side aims to jam or deny the other’s access to spectrum for communications or other systems, while also seeking to geolocate forces based on electronic emissions and enable freedom of maneuver for themselves.

Once a signal is detected that is not in the U.S. military’s existing library of known systems, personnel must work to reprogram capabilities to counter it, which during the Cold War, could take weeks to months as the signal had to be sent back to a lab, a fix devised, and then sent back to the field.

The modern battlefield requires much faster, near real-time reprogramming that negates the need to send it back to a central repository.

Existing mission planning toolsets provide electronic warfare officers with a fairly limited and rudimentary set of capabilities to support commanders at the tactical edge.

The Army’s program office in charge of the arsenal refers to it as “knowledge repository” that can be used to augment EW officers’ ability to understand what tools they have available to address commanders’ needs. For example, it provides a set of capabilities the operator can leverage if a commander wants to create an effect against a specific adversary using a particular set of equipment.

“The Arsenal is a method of allowing our electronic warfare officers to understand what capabilities they have at their disposal,” Bret Eddinger, senior engineer for offensive electronic warfare, stated in an Army news release. “[W]hat we need to realize is that electronic warfare is just another form of fire, but it is not as stringently characterized as our traditional forms of firearms. The EW Arsenal is attempting to provide that characterization.”

The arsenal database or repository of electronic warfare techniques, allows forces to go after targets faster.

Over the last year, the arsenal has matured from a lab-based proof of concept into a collaborative pilot program, according to a spokesperson from program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors.

That pilot effort involves participation from the program office, Combat Capabilities Development Command’s C5ISR Center and the Army Reprogramming Analysis Team.

The arsenal team at Project Convergence Capstone 5 in March at Fort Irwin, California, conducted testing utilizing surrogate targets and representative EW program-of-record systems, the spokesperson said. The test scenario involved a tactical operator leveraging the arsenal’s interface to synchronize with the enterprise-level database, discovering relevant capabilities for a given scenario and identifying potential courses of action. An operator then selected and used an electronic warfare capability on a designated platform, observing and evaluating the resulting effects.

Army officials said Project Convergence sought to gain feedback and assess the arsenal’s ability to reduce the cognitive burden on soldiers.

This experimentation was in concert with a bevy of tests on EW capabilities and concepts at the venue.

The Army has sought to rebuild much of its electronic warfare prowess after divesting much of it following the Cold War. The service has been on a decade-plus journey to reinvigorate the enterprise and build out an arsenal of capabilities.

“This year’s Project Convergence helped us develop a more nuanced understanding of the spectrum, which will enable kinetic and nonkinetic targeting, situational awareness, and enhance our commanders’ decision-making abilities on future battlefields,” Mike Monteleone, director of the all-domain sensing cross-functional team, stated in the news release. “The ability to understand enemy movements, and prevent the enemy from understanding our own movements, is crucial for maintaining a lethal advantage.”

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Transforming-in-contact, a top priority of the Army spearheaded by Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, aims to speed up how the service buys technologies and designs its forces by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments. The first iteration, TiC 1.0, featured three light brigades. TiC 2.0 is focused on armored formations and divisions as a whole — to include enabling units such as artillery and air cavalry brigades as well as Multi-Domain Task Forces, some Army Special Operations units and National Guard units.

The prototypes that will be tested are part of the Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade (TLS-EAB) program. That capability was initially designed as an integrated EW and signals intelligence system primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater ranges. It was originally slated for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, but that plan has been altered. Following experimentation and lessons learned from Europe, the Army has decided to split up the SIGINT and electronic warfare functions, like it has for its smaller, brigade counterpart known as TLS-Brigade Combat Team.

The EAB technology, which is being built by Lockheed Martin, was less mature than the BCT variant at the time the decision to split the functions was made. Officials have said EAB will be the main component for defining and demonstrating an initial EW architecture and publishing the requests for information concerning the architecture that will eventually deliver it back to the BCT version for integration.

The Army will test two prototype configurations of the TLS-EAB in fiscal 2025 and 2026, according to a spokesperson from program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors. They will include one made by Lockheed and a variant developed as a pre-prototype that was tested at Project Convergence in March called the Transformation-in-Contact Mobile Node-Terrestrial (TMNT) system.

TMNT was developed by the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command and Project Manager Electronic Warfare and Cyber from IEW&S, as a proof of concept based on requirements from TLS-EAB. While not a fully realized system — demonstrating signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities as a modular, scalable platform — it provided the Army certain insights at Project Convergence to help refine the eventual solution. The spokesperson noted that further refinement will be needed in operational packaging to accommodate various unit types to include light and heavy.

During Project Convergence, the system provided intelligence, supported commanders’ priority information requirements and integrated with other sensors while demonstrating the performance, modularity and potential to fill intelligence gaps across all echelons, according to an Army news release.

The apparent success of TMNT at Project Convergence has accelerated the fielding of TLS-EAB systems to transforming-in-contact units.

“Lockheed Martin’s TLS-EAB prototype was developed as part of a modular, fully open architecture approach, which enables form-factor flexibility across multiple platforms as well as rapid integration of third party software and hardware,” a company spokesperson said. “It was specifically developed to support long-range, cross platform collaboration to provide optimized and integrated signals intelligence (SIGINT), support to electronic warfare (EW), and cyberspace support operations at the Corps, Multi-Domain Task Forces for Joint All Domain Operational (JADO) operations.”

The Army plans to keep iterating with transforming-in-contact units. Previously, the service sent other electronic warfare gear to units such as the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack system — the first official program in decades for a dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct jamming on-the-move as well as direction and signal finding with limited signals intelligence capabilities — and the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry (TEWS-I), a quick-reaction capability built a few years ago by General Dynamics, serving as a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles.

TMNT is a prime example of the Army using transforming-in-contact to focus on near-term solutions to threats, the IEW&S spokesperson said, enabling units to rapidly test organizational changes while integrating emerging technology.

The service will be exploring how to best tailor configurations to meet specific mission needs, they added, with further refinement throughout FY26 to identify key capabilities for different combatant commands, echelons and threats.

The Army has outlined a theater– and echelon-based approach to capabilities such as electronic warfare. Officials have said the service won’t provide every unit across its million-man force the same gear, but rather tranche capabilities. This will allow the latest and greatest to get out to units when developed, but also enable the Army to tailor to specific needs in theater.

Each region, based on its geography and how adversaries in that area employ capabilities, requires somewhat unique systems. For example, the dense foliage in the Asia-Pacific affects the way signals are propagated differently than the mountainous terrain in Europe.

The Army’s Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS) — which is intended to provide sensing and visualization of what units look like in the spectrum and allow commanders to be able to sense and report in real-time their command post signatures — will also be given to units to test out as a part of transforming-in-contact in the future.

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The 23d Electronic Warfare Squadron was activated in a ceremony April 18 and falls under the 350th Spectrum Warfare Group. Its predecessor, Detachment 1, which was deactivated, was created in 2023 to focus on reprogramming mission data files for command-and-control and combat rescue platforms.

The mission of the 23d will be to support mission data file reprogramming for command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) platforms, combat rescue platforms and expendables for the combat Air Force, including the High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, according to an Air Force release.

Mission data files are the on-board data systems of an aircraft compiling information from the surrounding environment. They’ve been described as “the brains of the airplane.”

The reactivated unit falls under the command of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, which was created in 2021 to enable, equip and optimize the fielding of electromagnetic spectrum capabilities, specializing in the reprogramming of systems.

In the cat-and-mouse game of EW and electromagnetic spectrum operations — where adversaries seek to deny access to the spectrum for communications or navigation through jamming — agility and speed are paramount. Once a signal is detected, forces must work to reprogram systems to counter it, which during the Cold War, could take weeks to months as the signal had to be sent back to a lab, a fix devised, and then sent back to the field.

Modern forces are trying to use more digital means to reprogram systems in as near real-time as possible to stay ahead of threats.

“The 23d Electronic Warfare Squadron will be the shield that protects our forces, the sword that disrupts our enemies, and the eyes that provide critical intelligence in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Lt. Col. Luke Marron, commander of the squadron, said.

The unit provides operational, technical and maintenance support for electronic warfare systems. Airmen within the squadron maintain 24/7 contingency reprogramming capabilities, conduct exploitation testing of foreign threat systems, and support developmental and operational tests of new and modified EW systems, according to the release.

“The 23d Electronic Warfare Squadron reactivation allows us to more effectively and efficiently appropriate resources to our current C2ISR, rotary, and weapons portfolios while posturing for the future growth. As we look to invest and increase lethality across the Air Force and Department of Defense, this will ensure we’re postured to react to changes in the electromagnetic order of battle in the quickest manner possible,” Marron said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

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Those initial areas include drones, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare. The commercial drone sector is pretty well established, however, what is less clear is how such flexible funding would look for electronic warfare, where to date, most systems have been exquisitely designed and purpose-built for the military.

The thinking is that this agile pot of money, which is really budget line item consolidation, will help the Army be more adaptive on the battlefield in an era where changes are happening in days to weeks as opposed to months and years. In the Ukraine-Russia war, which has spurred the need for a new approach, combatants are discovering that technology, capabilities and tactics are being countered almost as soon as they’re deployed, requiring quick changes and creating an exponentially shorter innovation cycle.

For the U.S. military, programs are set up as specific line items with specific pots of money as opposed to a broad capability portfolio. Currently, the Army can’t take money from one electronic warfare program line item and use those funds for another EW program to adjust to real-world needs if, for example, a certain technology has matured that could be surged to forces on the battlefield to support an urgent requirement.

However, flexible funding, or line item consolidation where all EW programs are housed under the same budget line, could allow the service to move money that traditionally would’ve been allocated to one system to another for forces that may need it sooner — or if a new technology comes along that is ready for primetime and addresses a need.

“Working with the committees on record over on the Hill, how do we consolidate so that we have some flexibility to respond to that operational environment through our budget construct and we are not limited to the bureaucracy inside the building of reprogramming action in order to respond to something?” Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, deputy chief of staff, G-8, said in March at the annual McAleese Defense Programs Conference. “We learned some tough lessons over the last two years as we were watching our soldiers in contact and our inability within our budget to actually move some money to address their needs. We lost a couple of months in there. We can no longer afford to do that. And that’s why we’re doing [a push for] agile funding.”

Moreover, that consolidation not only provides greater flexibility, but innovation as well, according to officials.

“The Army’s agile funding proposal will provide increased flexibility. The streamlined budget structure enables rapid innovation, response and fielding of EW capabilities, and enhances the Army’s flexibility and ability to swiftly address relevant threats in real-time by taking advantage of the latest technological advancements,” said a spokesperson from program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors.

The Army’s Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team capability provides an apt example for what the Army would like such flexible funding to achieve. That program, as initially outlined, would be the service’s first ground-based jammer in decades providing integrated cyber, signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities mounted on Strykers and heavy platforms as well as a manpackable dismounted version.

The Army eventually hit pause on the platform-based component of the program as it sought to disaggreigate the signals intelligence and EW aspects. The service ended up awarding the TLS Manpack using a system that had been proven and used by special operations forces.

Despite the engineering challenges the platform side faced, there was an urgent operational need by the Army that General Dynamics responded to with its Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry Brigade Combat Team, or TEWS-I technology, that provides a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles.

However, under the current way Army budgeting works, there was no ability to pivot funding from the TLS-BCT effort to acquire TEWS-I and get that to the field to a wide swath of units.

Moreover, if new software is all of a sudden developed that can improve a system, like the TLS Manpack, against a threat, but there aren’t any funds left in that line, the Army can’t move funds from a less mature program to upgrade the Manpack. A single consolidated electronic warfare budget line would allow the service to do that.

“I do think that the idea here is to give them more flexibility to move money around between different EW programs, because they’ve got … a variety of EW programs in various states of development,” Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, said. “I think the Army wants to be able to accelerate the ones that have the most promise, like you saw with the TLS Manpack … that’s an example of the Army realizing that their initial [concept of operations] for the BCT version maybe didn’t make sense, and they needed to pivot to a different design. Whereas the Manpack seems like they’ve got a more straightforward way forward and they’ve got a CONOP that they believe works.”

Traditionally, the military electronic warfare market has required purpose-built, exquisite systems. However, today, technology has advanced to the degree that several commercial companies now have capabilities that are ready to go, a reality the Army is trying to capitalize on.

The way military budgeting works presently, is it hamstrings programs and makes it harder to look at commercial-off-the-shelf solutions. That is still driven by the way the Army and the program office aim to outfit the entire Army with a system, according to a former official.

“If we bought one TLS Manpack, then the entire Army had to get that exact same TLS Manpack and we didn’t revisit upgrades until that was done,” the former official said. “What the flexibility would give us is the ability to pivot in stride.”

When a new program is coming into play, the program office will conduct a bake-off of sorts where different vendors will bring in their technologies for evaluation. Rather than doing the bake-off with a bunch of vendors and going through a longer, drawn out process, flexibility would allow officials to say a COTS solution is ready now, purchase a set of it, get it to the 101st Airborne Division, let them play with it, then buy the second set and give it to 82nd Airborne Division, and then buy the third set and deliver it to the 25th Infantry Division, as an example, according to the former official.

For its part, the Army has noted it wants to get out of the business of so-called pure fleeting where every unit is outfitted with the same equipment. Service officials have talked about tranching capabilities to select units that are deploying or that require it in the background, using those deployments and other exercises to make tweaks and advancements that can be incorporated and outfitted to other units later.

“You can continue to modernize the force and get capability in the hands of soldiers, instead of waiting three to five years from when the real time of need is,” the former official added.

This could lead to the fielding of different capabilities made by different vendors in different theaters, but the key is ensuring they’re all riding on common open, interoperable software architectures.

Such an approach could raise questions of fair and open competition. According to the former official, the iterative process of continuing to build on capability and force vendors into bake-offs means they will constantly be competing to stay ahead.

Clark noted those concerns with a constant rapid prototyping approach.

“By accelerating movement from prototyping into procurement at some kind of scale you naturally forego opportunities for competition,” he said. “I think that’s the tradeoff that DOD is making right now that they’re saying, because of this need for speed, I’m going to give up probably some deliberation that it would otherwise have.”

However, he acknowledged a COTS approach incentivizes companies to constantly be innovating.

For the larger, platform-based, exquisite programs, agile funding affords flexibility to not necessarily be wedded towards dollars that have been allocated across the five-year budget cycle if the prototype matures or doesn’t work well.

Critics in the past have said this type of arrangement means less congressional oversight and a risk of money falling into a type of slush fund. The reason for line item funding based on programs instead of portfolios is so lawmakers have a better understanding for accounting and overseeing exactly how and where the Army and the other services are spending money to avoid potential or perceived malfeasance.

However, Army officials have noted they’ve received positive responses from lawmakers in their engagements about the idea of having more flexibility. Some top congressional members have also voiced support.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of the panel’s Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, has previously expressed his backing for the Army’s flexible funding efforts for drones, counter-drone systems and electronic warfare.

“This effort will allow the Army rapidly adopt critical technologies that are shaping the modern battlefield without needlessly wasting time with misaligned dollars. I look forward to working with the administration and our new Secretary of Defense to ensure our warfighters have all the tools they need to keep Americans safe,” he said.

According to Clark, others across the DOD have consolidated lines, such as the Defense Innovation Unit and DARPA. The key is constant feedback and transparency with Congress on how funds are being used to ensure success.

He noted, however, that such a flexible approach could risk having too much focus on prototyping new technologies without fielding systems at scale to soldiers.

“Unlike the Air Force or the Navy, where if you field 10 or 20 of something, that could make a difference, because it could be on 10 or 20 ships or aircraft that are the ones that are forward deployed. Whereas the Army, it operates at such a larger scale that you have to have systems be distributed to many, you have to have hundreds of systems for them to be relevant numbers,” he said. “They need to think about making sure that they don’t make these innovation cycles so short that they’re never fielding a system in a relevant quantity. I think that’s the one challenge they’re riding up against right now.”

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A venue for the Army to test emerging concepts along with other services, Project Convergence Capstone 5 served as a “critical test bed” for the service’s in-development electronic warfare capabilities, according to a spokesperson from Army Cyber Command. During the event, the Army sought to not only focus on rapid generation and deployment of effects in contested environments, but also streamline the process of target identification, develop countermeasures to adversary capabilities and deliver them across multiple electronic warfare systems at speeds required for large-scale combat operations.

The advanced modern state of electronic warfare involves a constant cat-and-mouse game between friendly forces and adversaries. Each side aims to jam or deny the other’s access to spectrum for communications or other systems, while also seeking to geolocate forces based on electronic emissions and enable freedom of maneuver for themselves.

The Army, along with the other services, has been preparing for large-scale combat operations of the future that take place over greater distances with sophisticated adversaries, a departure from the war on terrorism that was more regionally focused and fought against technologically inferior enemies.

As such, the Army and its counterparts have sought to rebuild much of their electronic warfare prowess they divested after the Cold War. The Army has been on a decade-plus journey to reinvigorate electronic warfare and build out an arsenal of capabilities.

While that effort has seen fits and starts, the Army is currently prioritizing a new EW architecture to allow for the rapid collection, dissemination and reprogramming of signals in the field at the speed of war.  

ARCYBER’s participation in Project Convergence consisted of several partner and subordinate organizations, such as the Army Cyber Technology Innovation Center Lab, where ARCYBER tests new technologies; the 11th Cyber Battalion, which conducts tactical, on-the-ground cyber operations (mostly through radio-frequency effects), electronic warfare and information operations; the Army Cyber Center of Excellence; the Army Reprogramming Analysis Team; Project Manager Electronic Warfare and Cyber; Project Manager Cyber and Space; the Army Cyber Institute; the C5ISR Center’s Research and Technology Integration Directorate; and the All-Domain Sensing Cross-Functional Team.

The experiment primarily focused on electromagnetic support activities, like sensing the environment to detect and intercept signals, specifically by refining data flows, processes and standards for EW systems. It sought to improve electromagnetic support characterization through detector modifications.

Forces used the Terrestrial Layer System Manpack, the first official program in decades to provide a dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct direction finding with limited jamming on-the-move, as well as a commercial system and modified commercial software-defined radios.

While the primary focus was on electromagnetic support, Project Convergence aimed to refine processes and standards that support the other main EW domains: electronic attack, primarily through jamming, and electronic protection efforts aimed at safeguarding against jamming. Units also tested the process of requesting, developing, and deploying electronic attack payloads, achieving a turnaround time of less than 24 hours.

Central to the experimentation and continued building out of EW capabilities is the development and implementation of what the Army calls modular mission payloads and a responsive EW reprogramming ecosystem. These modular mission payloads are a different approach to capabilities, moving from platform-centric to payload-centric, meaning effects can be employed over multiple platforms with little to no integration by operators.

The ecosystem will provide rapid generation and deployment of modular mission payloads across several platforms for precise and timely non-kinetic effects, according to the ARCYBER spokesperson.

Enhancing the responsiveness of electromagnetic spectrum systems and using modular mission payloads, the Army seeks to achieve rapid effects generation and delivery at scale, which will significantly improve its ability to dominate the electromagnetic spectrum and achieve operational objectives in dynamic environments, they added.

ARCYBER also sought to demonstrate the end-to-end process of developing and deploying electronic warfare effects from a central repository to units at the frontlines using a common framework to interface with multiple EW systems to deliver targeted electronic fires.

The Army also sought to further test out processes within its Radio Frequency Data Pilot, an effort to determine what it needs to be able to rapidly reprogram systems on the battlefield.

The RF Data Pilot team successfully demonstrated the ability to rapidly sense EW targets on the battlefield, share the data with the Army Warfighting Mission Area System, and pass the information to the Rapid Effects Generation Enterprise.

The Rapid Effects Generation Enterprise developed a new modular technique in a few days that was loaded on multiple EW systems, equipping them with a new capability to automatically characterize and classify an anomalous signal they didn’t possess previously.

When a signal is discovered that isn’t in a unit’s library of known capabilities, it previously could take several months to process and classify it to develop a countermeasure. The U.S. military is seeking a reprogramming enterprise that can do that work in hours and, some cases, at the tip of the spear on the battlefield as opposed to sending the signal back to a static, remote location.

“The RF Data Pilot program has provided valuable insights and data, further solidifying the direction of our non-kinetic effects development. We’ve gained a clearer understanding of the necessary data standards and identified potential policy recommendations to enhance these capabilities,” Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of Army Cyber Command, said in a statement. “This progress allows us to move forward with confidence and refine our approach to achieving the speed and scale required for [large scale combat operations]. The pilot program’s findings affirm our trajectory and provide a strong foundation for continued development and implementation.”

The experimentation at Project Convergence demonstrating the speed of integration and technique generation is a significant milestone in the Army’s ability to build greater situational awareness in the electromagnetic spectrum, according to the spokesperson.

Following the event over the next several months, the pilot team will continue to build on the successes demonstrated.

The Army will also continue refining the electronic warfare reprogramming ecosystem and integrating the modular mission payload framework.

Cyber Quest 25 will be the next big opportunity for industry to demonstrate capabilities to rapidly assess, develop, and deliver EW effects to multiple systems in a realistic operational environment.

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