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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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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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 series of events will help officials determine what the concept of employment for EW will be at the division level and what programs of record will look like.

Those events included a tabletop exercise at Fort Eisenhower, Georgia, focused on how electronic warfare will be done at division and higher; an October Fires Symposium at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, examining how network, intelligence, cyber and EW will integrate into fires; a capabilities-based assessment for electromagnetic warfare conducted by the Cyber Capability Integration Directorate at the Cyber Center of Excellence in Augusta, Georgia, that will be completed over the next year; and a sensor-to-shooter event focused on challenges in the Indo-Pacific region and long-range precision fires at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“We’re doing a deep dive on that now,” Col. Leslie Gorman, Army capability manager for electronic warfare, said in a recent interview regarding how the service is thinking about fighting electronic warfare at echelon and with what platforms. “I had a sit-down with some folks at the Pentagon yesterday. One of the things that came back was truly, what does that concept of employment look like at the division?”

She explained that the Cyber CDID event helped determine what exactly the forthcoming Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade (TLS-EAB) system will be.

TLS-EAB 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. Like its smaller, brigade counterpart, TLS-Brigade Combat Team, following experimentation and lessons from Europe, the Army has decided to split up the SIGINT and electronic warfare functions.

Given the EAB effort was less mature than the BCT variant at the time the decision to split the functions was made, officials have stated 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.

“There’s been some interesting information that came out of that [tabletop event]. We also have another CONEMP we’re taking a look at from [the] C5ISR [Center] to help shape some discussions with the maneuvers at an upcoming tabletop exercise with them because I think that’s going to be very important,” Gorman said, using an acronym to refer to command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “As we’re flushing out the requirements at echelon that we’re not only talking to fires, we’re also talking maneuvers. Because it’s ensuring that we’re incorporating our capabilities in a light infantry fight. Since we are an enabler, what does it look like to implement an EW sensor on a” robotic combat vehicle?

Officials are also looking at other capabilities that have been prototyped and used primarily at the brigade level to see if there’s applicability at division, namely, the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry Brigade Combat Team, or TEWS-I, which was initially a quick-reaction capability built by General Dynamics, providing a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles. It was a prototype activity to serve as a risk reduction and requirements pathfinder for the Army’s program of record, the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team (TLS-BCT) and has been used by units within the XVIII Airborne Corps.

Gorman noted that the service is looking at experimentation efforts next year to not only gain improvements for TEWS-I, but how that capability could potentially be a division asset.

The Army is still essentially in the requirements phase when it comes to the electronic warfare portion of TLS-BCT again, trying to figure out what makes the most sense going forward.

Gorman noted it could evolve to include more robust communications systems, deception capabilities or situational awareness tools. Moreover, while the Army is currently fielding the TLS Manpack — the first official program in decades for a dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct direction finding with limited jamming on-the-move as well — for mobility, the service is looking at possibly bringing that into a vehicle mount with an amplifier for extended range, something that was conceived of initially within the original TLS family.

Constant feedback from units is also helping to inform future generations of the Manpack capability, Gorman said.

As the Army is continuing to work on the platform and capability side of the issue, fleshing out how they’ll be employed, the other critical parallel effort is moving out on EW-enabling capabilities to be able to plan and manage within the spectrum.

“It’s also ensuring that we address it as a system-of-systems approach … It’s going to be important to be able to ensure that these capabilities that we’re fielding, we’re able to communicate and C2 those systems, be able to also incorporate where the systems are on the battlefield and incorporate that into not only our EW plan of action via [the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool], but then also think leveraging [the Spectrum Situational Awareness System] for the spectrum management, the [electromagnetic emission control], the [electronic protection] capabilities, to be able to also bring that information into fires for a more comprehensive, holistic, synchronized, non-lethal effect support to fires planning capability,” Gorman said.

EWPMT serves as a command-and-control planning capability that allows service members to visualize potential effects within the invisible spectrum and chart courses of action to prevent their forces and systems from being jammed during operations. The Army is embarking on the EWPMT “Next” effort, which involves shifting to the Tactical Assault Kit framework, where applications for situational awareness data and geospatial visualizations can be created for better joint and coalition integration.

The Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS) is a new start in fiscal 2025 and is envisioned to be a commercial off-the-shelf solution that 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.

Officials have described EWPMT as the glue that holds the electronic warfare architecture together, because if forces can’t see, understand and plan within the spectrum, jamming and sensing capabilities won’t be effective.

“We’re talking about this too, is like we have a lot of Manpacks coming out. We’re going to have to be able to ensure that those systems can be effectively C2’d and that missions can be planned at the optimal level at echelon, so that way everyone understands what’s going on their battlespace. I think that helps reduce potential adjacent unit RF interference or jamming,” Gorman said. “It’s also ensuring that our signatures that we’re emitting, that is also a part of our planning efforts and you have to do that with each and every EW emitter or an effector.”

The Army will begin embedding its requirements personnel with experimental units to create a direct feedback loop to inform the software developers for EWPMT in the program office. This will help the program office prioritize as the service is planning likely tranches of 12 improvements per quarter going forward in line with a holistic software modernization strategy for EWPMT Next.

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Officials are finding from Ukraine’s conflict with Russia that the technology landscape can change in days, not months. As a result, the Army is pitching the need for fiscal nimbleness to be able to make changes to systems on the battlefield or procurement efforts to get soldiers the capabilities they require.

“Recognizing that we’ve made the shift from primarily what used to be a counter-IED focus to now one where we’re dealing with near-peer threats and a very, very contested battlespace. Flexible funding is one of the three areas we’ve talked about. Recognizing that even as we’ve seen in Ukraine, the EW changes in software that both sides are employing, often are done in a matter of days or hours,” Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary of the Army, told reporters on the sidelines of the annual AUSA conference. “We are looking at making sure that we can rapidly iterate our EW capabilities in a similar fashion. I think having the program and funding flexibility to do it will help us.”

At the end of the Cold War, the Army divested much of its electronic warfare inventory. During counterinsurgency fights of the last 20 years, soldiers used blunt jamming tools to thwart improvised explosive devices, which, in turn, inadvertently jammed friendly systems. Now, the service is trying to develop more sophisticated systems to directly compete with advanced adversaries, their tactics and capabilities.

“A direct result of what we’re seeing in Ukraine is causing us to — our budget [request] that will come up next spring, you’ll see a significant increase in investment in unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare capabilities as well,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at an event in September. “There’s a very tight cycle between the Ukrainians and the Russians in terms of developing a capability and then developing a counter to that capability. But one of the things the Russians have really been cycling quickly on is their EW capabilities, and that’s made it harder for the Ukrainians.”

As part of the flexible funding request — which also includes uncrewed systems and counter-unmanned systems technologies — the Army will be plussing up its electronic warfare budget, though top officials have been vague on exactly where those investments will be made.

According to the Army’s program office responsible for electronic warfare, the service embarked on a comprehensive review of its EW enterprise that spanned the scope of electronic attack, electronic protect and electronic support capabilities, also examining their relationship with signals intelligence as a means of ensuring it’s postured to address the current and emerging threats associated with large-scale combat operations.

“We considered major capability gaps, investments opportunities, trades, architecture considerations, and policy change requirements. Prioritization is on increasing EW capabilities at all echelons and formations from the company level all the way up to theater,” the program office said in a statement.

Some specific efforts mentioned by name include:

• The Electronic Planning and Management Tool, a command-and-control planning capability that allows service members to visualize potential effects within the invisible spectrum and chart courses of action to prevent their forces and systems from being jammed during operations. The Army is embarking on the EWPMT “Next” effort, which involves shifting to the Tactical Assault Kit framework, where applications for situational awareness data and geospatial visualizations can be created for better joint and coalition integration.
• The Spectrum Situational Awareness System, a new start in fiscal 2025 envisioned to be a commercial off-the-shelf solution that 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 signature, sources of electromagnetic interference — either from coalition partners or the enemy — and what threat emissions look like.
•  The Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum System, which is related to command post survivability and could employ techniques to confuse and deceive adversaries born out of a prior science-and-technology effort called Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum Deception Suite (MEDS). That will be a new start in fiscal 2026.

Other capabilities in the Army’s current pipeline not mentioned include:

• The Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large, a pod-mounted capability on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone serving as the Army’s only airborne electronic warfare (with limited cyber) capability organic to combat aviation brigades to support maneuver commanders on the ground.  
• 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 direction and signal finding with limited jamming on-the-move as well.
• The TLS-Echelon Above Brigade system, designed primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater ranges than its brigade counterpart.
• The TLS-Brigade Combat Team system, which was designed as the first integrated signals intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare platform and as initially conceived, was to be mounted on Strykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes. The Army has now decided to split up the platform, separating the signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities, and it will be pursuing a new architecture for its EW suite.

Army officials have also noted they want to move away from major programs that take years to develop through lengthy requirements, in favor of more commercial-based systems that have demonstrated maturity.

The program office added that the Army is considering several ways to be more agile in the electronic warfare space to include the potential consolidation of funding lines to allow for increased flexibility while maintaining acquisition discipline and oversight, and establishing contracting mechanisms to acquire and integrate software solutions faster.

As it currently exists, programs are set up as specific line items with specific pots of money. The Army can’t take money from one electronic warfare program line item and move it to another to adjust to real-world needs, if, for example, a certain technology has matured that could be surged to forces on the battlefield.

Flexible funding could allow the service to move those pots of money to where forces need them, or if a new technology comes along that is ready for primetime.

“You talk to a lot of these companies out there, with tech companies … they will tell you that six months from now, things are going to be completely different. We want to buy a modular, open system architecture systems that we can put any different kind of sensor on. I think that’s going to help with the money problem as well, and that we can continue to adapt,” Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters at the AUSA conference.

“Agile funding enables us to buy technology in tranches that work together in open architectures, with interchangeable parts, and software-defined components that can be changed quickly to meet our needs. This is how we move from named systems to capabilities. We have to be willing to make smaller bets within budget cycles and we have to pick winners with more frequency. We cannot buy programs for 10 years at a time anymore. Technology changes too fast,” George said during remarks at the conference.

Officials noted that Congress has been receptive to this need but also wary.

“In my experience, appropriators in particular, are leery of what they see as slush funds. But I think, given the dangerous environment we’re in and the recognition by everyone that technology is evolving as rapidly as it is, there’s more openness to this,” Wormuth told reporters. “We’ve been talking to both members, but also clerks and PSMSs on the Appropriations Committee about how we can perhaps consolidate budget line items into fewer pools and have the ability, as a result, to be able to move money around … We’re not trying to eat the whole elephant all at once. We’re trying to start with more of a pilot approach, see if that works, and if members and their staffs feel like they can have the oversight and transparency that they need to have to do their jobs, we may, in the future, be able to expand it.”

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The electronic warfare kit is part of the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry Brigade Combat Team, or TEWS-I, which was initially a quick-reaction capability built by General Dynamics, providing a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles. It was a prototype activity to serve as a risk reduction and requirements pathfinder for the Army’s program of record, the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team (TLS-BCT).

That system was designed as the first integrated signals intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare platform and as initially conceived, was to be mounted on Strykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes.

The service has now decided to split up the platform, separating the signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities and pursuing a new architecture for its EW suite. That leaves a gap in vehicle-borne systems given there is now a man-packable capability for direction finding and limited electronic attack, and a larger system in development for higher echelons.

The ISV integration, awarded in 2021, is the fourth generation of the TEWS-I program. The initiative creates a much more mobile platform-based electronic warfare capability.

The TEWS-I ISV technology is “a middleweight fighter in the electronic warfare space because it has the capability at distance to have an effect and be able to sense at a distance. It has a wide frequency range that it covers. It has an extensive peer-relevant set of signals that it handles,” Derek Merrill, chief engineer for tactical signals intelligence, electronic warfare and NetC2 at General Dynamics Mission Systems, said in an interview at the annual AUSA conference. “It has the capability to detect, identify, locate, report and attack targets … It also handles software-based signals integration from the government, so they can give us a signal [and] we integrate it very quickly onto the platform.”

The ISV can be sling-loaded or carried internally in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, meaning it can move much faster on the battlefield and even island-hop in the Pacific — a key tenet to operating in that region where Stryker systems aren’t well-suited.

While the Army has stated that there won’t be any future production on TEWS-I given it was a quick-reaction capability, the system has been used to generate discussion on requirements for light and airborne forces for mobility.

It has primarily been used by units within XVIII Airborne Corps, with General Dynamics delivering them six systems. Officials have previously noted that the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division said they wanted to take their ISVs and mount EW equipment on them given the island-hopping capacity it provides.  

The system was also used by 2nd Brigade, 101st at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, this past summer as part of the first real test for the Army chief of staff’s keystone vision dubbed transforming-in-contact, that uses deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

“Some of the soldiers were part of the design process. It wasn’t a surprise that it was highly, highly desired. They want more of the systems,” Merrill said.

Merrill noted that their electronic warfare kit — which is platform agnostic, meaning it can be mounted on several different infantry-type vehicles — has been able to coordinate and pass data to other Army staff functions such as fires. Specifically, he said XVIII Airborne Corps integrated it with its Project Maven system.

It was also able to coordinate fires.

“The vehicle itself has the ability to conduct electronic attack, but in many cases you’ll want to just coordinate with other fires functions. It can both inform the local units [that] ‘I’ve detected something that’s a threat to us,’ but it can also coordinate fires, for example, for a target,” he said, noting the importance of not always wanting to use jamming to affect a target. “The risk in a peer fight is that jamming also gives away your location. That’s the beauty of being on the vehicle, is because you can emit even long moving or emit and scoot. But that’s also a reason why you might not want to. You might choose to use other fires mechanisms.”

General Dynamics wants to start working to integrate the current manpack system program of record — made by Mastodon and leveraging systems deployed by U.S. Special Operations Command — so they can receive that data and help distribute it.

The goal for the TLS family was always for the vehicle-mounted and dismounted systems to work together in an integrated fashion.

“They bought the TLS-BCT backpack. That backpack is … more of a squad-level capability, shorter range, but effective. Our goal is to be fully interactive with that so that we can receive it, sensing, distribute that, correlate with it. Somebody with that backpack can jump on our vehicle and operate,” Merrill said.

He used a golf analogy to described the Manpack and the TEWS.

“The backpack is more like a putter. It’s a shorter-range capability. And we’re more like a driver. In your golf clubs you don’t want to go golfing with just one,” Merrill said.

General Dynamics is still having discussions with the Army to inform future requirements for capabilities. Merrill said TEWS is a production-ready system, but ultimately it’s up to the Army to decide the mix of systems and what they want to procure.

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Following operational demonstrations, the service determined that the concept for the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team was not going to work the way it was intended or gain the efficiencies desired.

TLS-BCT was designed as the first integrated signals intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare platform, devised roughly six years ago. It has 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. As initially conceived, it was to be mounted on Strykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes.

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.

Now, the Army has decided to split the system up — along with the TLS-Echelons Above Brigade, designed primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater ranges than its brigade counterpart — into two separate systems.

“TLS-BCT, specifically, this program was birthed with the concept that you could have one system where you had EW and SIGINT soldiers on board the same platform, operating at the same time, supporting different battlefield operating systems,” Kenneth Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber at program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in an interview.

“Although SIGINT and EW are very similar — they use very similar hardware, software — they have different mission threads and they often need to be at different places on the battlefield. They have different requirements in terms of timeliness and data sharing,” he added. “The big ‘ah-ha’ as we went into the operational demonstration [was] that wasn’t going to work the way that we envisioned it and we weren’t going to get the efficiencies we wanted.”

This has now forced the Army to relook and reset its electronic warfare architecture as to not be tied to the signals intelligence production chain that requires a different hardware and software approach, Strayer said.

One of the key lessons being learned in conflicts like Ukraine is the need for speed. Classification is often a barrier to moving fast, forcing the Army in other portfolios to loosen the reins with concepts such as secure but unclassified-encrypted communications, which reduces overall network complexity and has had huge benefits in terms of interfacing with partner nations and eschewing the need for liaisons. That increases the pace of operations.

Moreover, as the Army shifts to the division as the unit of action instead of the brigade of the last 20 years during the global war on terror, higher classified networks such as signals intelligence will be pushed to higher echelons while smaller units such as brigade and below will need to be unburdened and empowered to share with coalition forces on faster timelines, such as near real-time.

“This really needs to be pushed down to the unclassified level, secret [and] below … so we can share with coalition partners and rapidly feed the fires targeting cycle without having to go up through national SIGINT chains,” Strayer said.

As a result, the program office is gearing up to release a request for information to industry to inquire on the availability of commercially or government-owned, preferably off-the-shelf electronic warfare hardware and software ecosystems or architectures that the Army could leverage to tailor for the unique requirements of each echelon to converge on a common hardware/software architecture that’s scalable across echelons.

“We don’t want to go trying to reinvent something. We think the commercial marketplace is really caught up based on the work that’s going on with other services and throughout industry. We’re excited to hear what industry has to offer in the coming months,” Strayer said. “That’s going to drive our acquisition strategy for EW moving forward.”

The new architecture it’s pursuing is supposed to allow for the rapid collection, dissemination and reprogramming of signals in the field at the speed of war. The service wants the ability to have a compute architecture of standard CPUs and GPUs that can be purchased to facilitate the ability to pull out classification and identification of signals in the environment, and plug in third-party capabilities such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to keep pace with threats by being able to identify and classify signals.

All the while, the Army wants to be able to purchase commercial sensors given the rich marketplace that exists in the private sector now, rather than spending money to develop its own, unique, fit-for-purpose sensors.  

As the service is conducting market research on this evolving electronic warfare architecture, it’s still pursing the signals intelligence system development, which is more mature than the electronic warfare portions.

Strayer said the Army was “pretty close” on the Stryker-based signals intelligence system configuration, formerly TLS-BCT, at the operational demonstration last year. Officials will look to continue refining that effort with a customer test this year and a follow-on demonstration next year before getting it into the field.

On TLS-EAB, the Army started bifurcating the electronic warfare and signals intelligence capabilities based on lessons learned from Europe, despite initially envisioning it as one system that does it all. That program initiated after the brigade version.

As a result, that effort is also going down two pathways: signals intelligence and electronic warfare.

Given the new approach with the electronic warfare architecture, the Army has asked the vendor to prioritize the signals intelligence portion of the system. The vendor is working on a hands-on physical integration of the desired signals intelligence architecture that could be a 20-foot container for the first prototype, allowing it to be mounted in different ways.

That prototype is scheduled to be delivered to the Army in early calendar 2025 but could slip to second quarter.

On the electronic warfare aspect, officials are using this system as the main component for defining and demonstrating the initial EW architecture, given the BCT portion of the program went so far with a demonstration and design on an integrated platform.

The EAB program will be publishing the requests for information concerning the architecture, that will eventually deliver it back to the BCT version for integration.

Once developed, the architecture will have the ability to tailor for the need at each echelon.

Next year will be a focal point for the effort, with demonstrations planned and the goal of selecting a common architecture by the end of 2025. It will then be instantiated in some physical prototypes in 2026 for both the EAB and hopefully BCT as well, according to Army plans.

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PHILADELPHIA — Following years of development, the Army intends to break up its integrated signals intelligence and electronic warfare platform into two distinct variants.

The Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team was designed as the first integrated signals intelligence, cyber and EW platform devised roughly six years ago. It has 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. As initially conceived, it was to be mounted on Stykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes.

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.

The Army awarded a middle tier acquisition contract to Lockheed Martin for the platform five years ago. Officials explained that the breakup of the TLS-BCT demonstrates the benefit of this MTA approach — which at the conclusion could lead to rapid fielding, transitioning to a major capability acquisition, continue prototyping through other means, or termination — and the authorities Congress has granted the Army.

“It’s the beauty of the MTA process. It allows you to learn what’s not going to work or what’s not going to be successful in the fight. That kind of aggregation of SIGINT and EW physically located presented a multitude of challenges. The reality was that the best path was to have them separated, not on a single platform,” Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in an interview at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting in Philadelphia this week.

That existing MTA will conclude next year, meaning there will not be a rapid fielding decision on TLS at that time. The Army will continue prototyping on both an electronic warfare and signals intelligence variant over the course of a 12 to 18-month period outside that MTA period to refine what those capabilities look like.

At the end of that time frame, depending on how far the Army has progressed from a prototype for each variant, a decision will be made determining if one or both of those platforms is mature enough to go into a rapid fielding or transitions into a major capability acquisition.

The changing nature of the EW environment

Currently, the more stable of the two systems is the signals intelligence system from a requirements and platform standpoint, which would simply require the removal of the electronic warfare payload from the platform.

The Army has been undergoing a years-long rejuvenation of EW following significant divestments at the end of the Cold War. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 spurred a hastening of those efforts after it was determined their systems and concepts were in many cases more mature than those of the Army.

Conversely, for decades, the Army has had a series of platform-based signals intelligence systems, such as Prophet, a ground-based tactical SIGINT system.

One of the critical and ongoing lessons coming from Ukraine is that the EW environment is changing rapidly. The Army’s chief of staff is directing the service to prioritize electronic warfare equipment to soldiers to experiment with via a concept called “transforming in contact,” where the Army plans to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — to allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

“We’re learning that the EW landscape is changing everywhere between three weeks and three months, and so that we need to be more flexible in our approach … The battlefield is changing really, really rapidly,” George said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April.

While the European theater had been the priority for a long time, the Army is now beginning to turn its focus to the Pacific as well, where the Department of Defense refers to China as the pacing threat.

Given that the threat — both in Europe and the Pacific — is changing, combined with the terrain in each theater, a relook at capabilities is necessary, officials have said.

Moreover, larger platforms such as Strykers and AMPVs don’t island-hop as easily in the Pacific, which includes thousands of islands spread across thousands of miles in maritime and jungle environments.

“This is one area where the technology just isn’t necessarily there. The prototyping actually creates a demand signal back to industry to go, ‘Hey, our challenge is a couple of things,’” Alex Miller, chief technology officer for the chief of staff, said in an interview at the Technical Exchange Meeting. “One, we have some older kit that has really proprietary interfaces and control mechanisms, and we don’t want that. We want something that’s more open. Two, when you’re on a vehicle you have access to a lot more power [and] we want you to be able to use that power to create either the effect of protecting or the effect of attacking.”

He noted that at experiments such as Project Convergence, the Army saw a lot of newer capabilities such as robotically mounted or small drone-mounted electronic warfare, that were promising.  

“That’s the real truth is we need help on that technology on that mounted, high power, mobile type of EW kit versus the Manpack, which is a little bit more low power,” Miller said, adding they can throw an electronic warfare kit onto a pickup truck or an Infantry Squad Vehicle that is more mobile and transportable through C-130 or C-17 lift.

The Manpack version he mentioned was envisioned as a complement to the TLS-BCT system encompassing a series of two systems dismounted soldiers can use for jamming, signal direction finding and signals intelligence. The Army awarded a $1.5 million contract to Mastodon Design, a CACI subsidiary, last year.

There has been a rapid fielding decision made on the Manpack with first unit equipped scheduled for later this year, Barker said, adding: “When you think of it in terms of that transforming in contact, this is the real first piece of kit that we’re getting in the hands of folks.”

Miller also explained that the Army is trying to get out of the business of “gold-plating” requirements where “perfect” becomes the enemy of “good enough.”

“Part of the reason that the IEW&S team were forced to make the decision is because the alternative was try to get it perfect and never revealed anything. And that’s wrong. Soldiers deserve better than that,” he said. “Being able to say the operational environment has changed, we need to stop gold-plating requirements, we need to get the smallest requirement out the door so [Barker] can prototype — that’s another part of it. And that goes back to the transform in contact and how do we iterate on requirements and how do we give a piece of kit to soldiers and formations so they can give feedback more rapidly?”

On the acquisition side, Barker noted that Doug Bush – assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology — has been clear that he would rather have these types of conversations now during the MTA and realize this is something the Army doesn’t want, instead of going through a major capability acquisition and trying to deliver something to the field years later that doesn’t meet the need.

“One of the key criteria they enter into an MTA is the ability to demonstrate a successful prototype. That’s what the vendors are held accountable to. If it appears that we won’t have a successful prototype, then then the Army has the right to recompete if we want [or] if we need to,” Barker said.

Moreover, the service is rethinking what it means to field something, which historically had very specific acquisition and programmatic connotations.

“We’re getting so much new and useful kit to soldiers so often that it’s no longer a pickup game on a soldier touch point once a year. It is now, ‘Here’s this kit, you keep it if it’s useful to you,’ and they use it and they provide feedback until the next piece of kit comes and they’re using that. That’s the continuous transformation,” Miller said. “The notion that, hey, you only see the output five years at the very end of the MTA — that’s no longer the case. As soon as there’s something useful, we want feedback.”

Additionally, the Army Force Structure Transformation plan that was released in February also made changes to electronic warfare forces regarding the placement of EW companies and platoons at certain echelons, which will inform changes to the platform.

Part two of this series will focus on how the Army is evaluating electronic warfare technology, who is in charge and how to get kit into the hands of soldiers faster.

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As the Army is undergoing a review of all of its electronic warfare tools, it is furiously developing a family of capabilities to deliver much needed jamming power to troops.

Since its divestment of systems after the Cold War, the Army had primarily relied upon EW and jamming tools to block signals of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With adversaries becoming more adept within the spectrum, the Army needs more advanced technologies to be able to sense and jam. The service has been relying solely on quick-reaction tools delivered to units to address gaps in capability, and it’s still working on developing its first real program-of-record jammer.

The first program-of-record system in the family is known as the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team. This system, being developed by Lockheed Martin, is the first integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform. As initially conceived, it was to be designed for Stryker platforms, however, acquisition priorities shfited.

The system recently underwent an operational demonstration, which the program office differentiated from an operational test because it’s a prototyped system being developed under an other transaction agreement.

The Army learned a lot both operationally and technically about the system during a recent demonstration at Fort Huachuca, Ken Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told DefenseScoop at the annual AUSA conference.

He noted the hardware performed as expected and is pretty stable, though there are a long list of software updates they are looking to perform. Those fixes involve mostly the architecture and user interface.

There’s a lot of operational lessons the Army is taking from the system demonstrations, especially considering it’s the first time the service has built an integrated electronic warfare and signals intelligence capability.

“The unit is learning how to function together with these two different skills because it feeds two different chains within the operational brigade operation on the battlefield. How do they relate to one another?” Strayer said. “Then just standard techniques and procedures out on the battlefield — they’re learning a lot.”

There continue to be ongoing discussions within the Army regarding how to align the platform or if there needs to be variants focused on signals intelligence or electronic warfare — given concerns of sending a top secret intelligence platform into the field that could be captured by the enemy.

“We’re learning through going through this operational demonstration what is the synergistic benefit of having an integrated system versus what you lose in terms of placement on the battlefield. There is also challenges because the current system operates as a SIGINT platform on a different security classification,” he said. “If you’re checking any discussions in the Army about division becoming the unit of action, they want to pull a lot of that high-end capability up to the division and out of the brigades. So, that all goes into the calculus about the final product, what classification it will be at and exactly where in the formation they end up getting fielded. [That’s] all in the discussion right now.”

Other challenges include integrating the system onto the platform itself. These platforms have significant size, weight and power constraints, and integrating new capabilities and technologies can be difficult.

“We believe we got a good integrated solution for the Stryker. There are other things we would like to put on that platform that there’s just not enough space right now,” Strayer said. “I had PM for Stryker … down at our operational demo, looking at his Stryker with our mission payload and he gave us some good ideas about how we can give greater power, how we can fix some of the [size, weight and power] challenges we had.”

The Army is also beginning design and integration for armored units on the Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV). Strayer said Lockheed is trying to work on configuring the TLS system for the AMPV given it is a different platform than a Stryker and things are in different places on the vehicle.

For lighter units, the Army has developed the TLS Manpack, a dismounted solution for lighter units that can conduct sensing and jamming away from the platform. The Army altered its procurement for TLS-BCT to account for the manpack version, which is meant for lighter units now and is cheaper than the Stryker variant.

The Army has simultaneously been pursing another possible route for light units with the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry (TEWS-I) prototype effort. Initially a quick-reaction capability, this system, built by General Dynamics, is a smaller version designed for infantry vehicles.

“A couple of years ago, the Army decided to defer the IBCT solution and replace it with a manpack to start with, and that’s the procurement we’re going to be pursuing in [fiscal] ’24. But I think there is definitely a demand vehicle for more mobility and agility,” Strayer said. “I think we’re going to learn a lot by this [quick-reaction capability], and that could definitely … cycle back into the program in later phases.”

Strayer said they’ve built six TEWS-I systems and are getting ready to roll them out to the XVIII Airborne Corps to see how they perform.

The next major event for TLS-BCT will take place in fiscal 2025 with an operational assessment. The Army plans to do multiple soldier touch points between now and then.

In terms of the first unit to receive the system, Strayer said that could happen after that assessment. Since this has been a prototyping effort, things have been a bit different than traditional acquisitions. The system will likely remain at static locations and the Army will bring units to it rather than the other way around.

“We’re probably going to leave the systems at the various test centers where they’re at, bring soldiers in periodically throughout the year to get multiple sets and reps on that system, so that for the operational assessment in ’25, that unit will be well-trained, well-familiar about how to operationally employ” it, he said. “I would expect coming immediately out of that operational assessment, the unit would either keep the equipment or go to some other unit immediately after that. Those prototypes will be ready to go to the field.”

The next capability in the family of systems is the TLS Echelons Above Brigade. This system, also built by Lockheed, is designed primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater ranges than its brigade counterpart.

The Army altered its approach to the system, opting to tailor it to theaters rather than building a one-size-fits-all capability.

“We did an initial design iteration on TLS-EAB, which for the 1st MDTF in the Pacific, the feedback we got was that it’s too big, too much capability given their operational environment. [It’s] probably an excellent solution for Europe,” Strayer said. “We’re doing another design iteration with that MDTF to come up with a more disaggregated approach in smaller, more mobile solution set for them for TLS-EAB.”

For aircraft, the Army has been working on the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large (MFEW) for a number of years. The Lockheed-made system was designed to be pod-mounted to an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone as the first brigade-organic airborne electronic attack asset that can also provide limited cyberattack capability.

In the fiscal 2022 budget request, the Army zeroed out procurement funds for the system, essentially forcing the program office to prove out the technology through further demonstrations and development.

“Maybe a couple of years ago, the procurement was zeroed out, because the Army hadn’t seen the demonstrated capability. But I think we’ve turned the corner on that and the funding levels are right where they need to be,” Strayer said.

He added that the Army is fully committed to the system now, however, quantities could be more limited than previously conceived at the outset of the program.

“The numbers we were looking at is something less than all the aviation brigades. We’ve been in this ‘prove it’ mode for a while so we’ve got to get this new capability out there,” he noted, saying it could be viewed as a high demand, low-density asset.

The 10^th Mountain Division has been doing a lot of testing with the system recently, including during a demonstration at China Lake.

“We’ve been in a number of exercises out there and really matured how EW feeds into the fires chain, with the 10th Mountain really is the diversity in the division, artillery that has really grabbed on to this concept of being able to do long-range targeting with MFEW,” Strayer said. “Within our portfolio, it provides you the deepest look of any system we have that’s directly owned by a maneuver commander — and that’s been a valuable impact into the unit’s operations.”

While the pod could be flown on any platform that can hold and power it, there still is no demand to put it on anything other than a Gray Eagle for operations. During demonstrations, it has flown on surrogate vehicles.

The Army has flown it on special Gray Eagles and expects to put it on conventional Gray Eagles for air worthiness certifications this year.

“We will get official certification and air worthiness this year, so we will be ready to roll out in ’25. There is going to be a couple more formal tests in ’25, and that will be on the conventional Gray Eagle fleet,” Strayer said.

Editor’s note: This story is part two of a two-part series. Click here to read part one here.

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In September, the Army awarded a $1.5 million contract to Mastodon Design LLC, a CACI subsidiary, for the Terrestrial Layer System Brigade Combat Team Manpack, the first dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct jamming on the move.

TLS-BCT is the first brigade-organic integrated cyber, signals intelligence and EW system that as initially conceived, was to be based on Stryker platforms and later armored vehicles. TLS Manpack is meant for infantry units.

The award encompasses three systems: two Beast+ and a Kraken. The Beast+ systems are small backpack-based capabilities that weigh around 20 pounds. They can be broken up further into a handheld capability for direction finding targeting, depending on the need, or with the electronic attack capability added on. Kraken is the more “brick and mortar” variant that can be put in a vehicle and taken out and inserted into a backpack if needed, Todd Probert, CACI president of national security and innovative solutions, told DefenseScoop at the annual AUSA conference. It has more analytic capability with more range and around four times as many signals as Beast+.

These systems are already programs of record with U.S. Special Operations Command and have been used in the field previously. This means the Army won’t have to start from scratch to build something new and do a series of soldier tests.

Probert said the fact that it’s a program of record already with SOCOM “100 percent” expedites the timeline to field.

“The hardest thing to do is to go certify a piece of hardware. The hardest thing you got to go through all sorts of soldier touch points. It’s not just the functionality of the technology, but then it’s equally the functionality of how does it work with gloved hands and how does it fit, or how heavy it is or what do you do from a battery management standpoint,” he said. There are about 1,200 sets of these already in use, he noted.

“All those things were taken care of in the SOCOM program of record … What the Army likes, it’s a [technology readiness level] 9 system, it’s fielded, so the SOCOM folks would have taken it into the field, like real-world kind of stuff, proving it out. When you field the new system, the authority to operate the [developmental test/operational test] cycles, we’ve really moved through all of that. And largely now we’re just upgrading software.”

The Army had said from the start it wanted a commercial-off-the-shelf solution for the TLS Manpack.

“We sought out a COTS solution. We knew there were options out there. We looked at multiple solutions,” Ken Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber within Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told DefenseScoop at the conference.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Army divested of much of its electronic warfare systems. It has been on nearly a decade-long journey to reinvest in new capabilities as well as new concepts given the importance of the spectrum. However, it has yet to deliver a program-of-record capability, relying solely on quick-reaction technology to address gaps primarily in Europe.

Strayer noted that there was no business case to go away from some of those quick-reaction capabilities, namely Versatile Radio Observation and Direction (VROD) and VROD Modular Adaptive Transmission system (VMAX) — the former surveys the field from an electromagnetic perspective, and the latter provides a limited electronic attack capability. But now, there’s a mature solution.

“With TLS-BCT we now have mature commercial products that have exceeded what we could do from the government perspective. And more importantly, as we’re leveraging the whole rest of the community and the detectors and the capabilities that they invest in, that product line will be able to sync back into the Army,” he said.  

As the Army has realized that large, vehicle-based systems likely will be too bulky to operate in the Pacific, which consists of many small island chains and dense vegetation, it developed a smaller, man-packable solution for infantry units that can also be tied to a vehicle if need be.

Probert said the system is very adaptable, which is what the Army asked for, and can be upgraded with software tweaks. He added it’s the lowest size, weight and power system he’s ever seen for a capability like this.

It can be tailored for the mission if soldiers are just doing a signal detection mission or need to conduct jamming. It doesn’t have to be a monolithic, hardware based, all-in-one backpack capability. Soldiers can jump with it out of airplanes as well.

“When the Army came and said, ‘Hey, we want something that looks like this,’ there were other frequencies or other waveforms that we needed to basically build into it to allow us to go after that. Because it’s adaptable, because it’s got a software-defined radio, which is pretty simple to go and make that happen,” he said.

The system ties into existing frequency and signal libraries to make it easier for soldiers to identify a signal they detect and affect it.

There will be an operational demonstration in November to validate the system before the Army goes into production, Strayer said.

Probert noted that they have to make a few modifications for signals the Army in particular has asked for, separate from the SOCOM system. “We’re being told around numbers 30 to 50 systems,” he said. “It’s a five-year program with IDIQ kind of constructs, so we are hopeful that the Army orders a whole bunch more of them going into the out years. But they’ve got 25 brigade combat teams that are looking to get out.”

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