NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Air Force is moving away from a platform-centric view of electronic warfare to more of a system-of-systems approach as it revamps its EW arsenal.

The service has been a platform-centric organization historically — meaning it has relied on systems such as aircraft to perform both its mission and contribution to the joint force — but the modern electromagnetic spectrum environment and threat landscape are demanding a new paradigm.

“Most of our electronic warfare programs are platform centric, so there wasn’t a unifying focus on this area as a whole. My own experience suggested that this is a historically neglected area that can have oversized impact, but doesn’t compete well in our internal budget battles relative to other priorities,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last week at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

The Air Force — much like the rest of the U.S. military — has been on a multi-year journey to modernize its outlook on electronic warfare, with officials acknowledging the airborne electronic attack mission for years was driven primarily by the Navy. Similar to other services, at the end of the Cold War it divested in many of its advanced capabilities, such as the venerable EF-111A Raven. Now, the Air Force has set off on a journey to reinvigorate its EW approach and capabilities.

Those at the AFA conference were encouraged by the attention electronic warfare is now getting at top levels of the service after years of neglect.

“I am excited with the direction the Air Force is going,” David Gaedecke, senior executive advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton, said in an interview.

Gaedecke, a retired two-star general who prior to retiring most recently served as vice commander of 16th Air Force, led the service’s major study over six years ago, known as the Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team, that sought to dive deeper into electromagnetic spectrum issues and develop reforms. That study led to clear changes that the Air Force has implemented, such as new organizations and commands.

“We went from an ECCT at the direction of chief of staff of the Air Force … to yesterday, where I’m sitting in a suit in a room and I’m listening to the secretary of the Air Force and I knew how important the [operational imperatives] were and then for him to say, ‘Hey, there’s four other things that I need to focus on, and the two I’m going to mention today are mobility and EW,’” Gaedecke said. “I was like, that alone is progress. I mean, that’s significant progress that the secretary of the Air Force is on the stage acknowledging that, because we all know that. Everybody heard him say it. That matters.”

Kendall and other officials described how the service has added electronic warfare as a cross-cutting enabler for its seven operational imperatives, undergoing a study associated with that effort. As a result, the Air Force is trying to utilize a more holistic approach to EW that takes into account other tools and capabilities beyond just the aircraft it flies.

Officials said the new Integrated Capabilities Command — which will work on operational concepts, new requirements and modernization plans so commands can focus on warfighting – and Integrated Capabilities Office — which is focused on improving acquisition — will play a huge role in the future when it comes to disaggregating electronic warfare from platforms and getting to a place where the right capabilities are used for the right missions.

“Having that type of functionality and those people taking a look to how we counter any type of adversary data links, communication … part of the data links, obviously, cyber systems, intel, surveillance — all of those type of things to counter that effectively with offensive EA has to be a collaborative effort,” Brig. Gen. Leslie Hauck, director of the electromagnetic spectrum superiority directorate within the A2/6L, said in an interview at the AFA conference.

There are space and cyber capabilities that can be utilized to defeat what officials call “kill webs” from the adversary, enabling tools that involve communications systems and networks that contribute to finding a target, tasking a weapon and engaging that target kinetically or non-kinetically.

“The rule and prominence of electronic warfare in the war in Ukraine provided additional incentives. What the team discovered was incredibly important. We believe we can counter advanced adversary kill webs by integrating a combination of electronic warfare tools, operationalized cyber capability and other elements. I’m excited to see us making fast progress on this mission area for the Department of the Air Force,” Kendall said.

He later told reporters at the conference that electronic warfare also extends to space and vice versa, noting that officials identified “very promising” technologies through the cross-cutting operational enabler study over the last year. Although Kendall said he couldn’t provide much detail given the classified nature of the effort, he suggested the department is looking at integrating cyber and electronic warfare together for greater effect.

Some sources indicated the Air Force’s emerging cyber-enabled air superiority concept — the service’s attempt to build its own tactical cyber capabilities separate from U.S. Cyber Command and focused solely on Air Force missions — will play a role here.

“There are a number of things that I think offer a lot of potential for us that we’re trying to explore. I think writ large, you can expect more emphasis on electronic warfare going forward,” Kendall told reporters.

Others noted that in order to affect adversary kill webs, the Air Force must shift to a system-of-systems approach vice a platform approach.

“When we look at collectively, the pacing threat China, it’s all about kill chains. It’s about enabling the blue kill chain, it’s about disrupting the red kill chain. And [in] the future fight you can’t just do that with a platform-centric view,” Joshua Niedzwiecki, vice president and general manager of electronic combat solutions at BAE Systems, said at the conference. “We’re excited that with the ICC and things like the Integrated Capability Office, there now becomes a mechanism for us to look at the problem differently and integrate capability across multiple platforms and multiple systems … Today everything is spec’d and designed in a platform-centric way, and so the requirements are defined for each platform. What that creates as a bit of a gap is the ability to leverage capability and to drive costs down across platforms.”

He noted his hope for the ICC is there’s a mechanism to push alignment across various platforms and capabilities.

It all comes down to reducing costs and getting the biggest return on investment for the Air Force.

“EW traditionally has been an area that has had a little bit of trouble competing with platforms and weapons and other things, but it’s incredibly important on the battlefield. As the war in Ukraine is showing, that’s becoming even more so,” Kendall told reporters.

Hauck explained that when the service engages with industry, requests are based on which part of the kill chain is most beneficial that will allow the military to win and to dominate across kinetic and non-kinetic warfighting realms, emphasizing it is a cross-cutting, collective effort.

“Back to the return on investment, so that then we can go to the Office of [the] Secretary of Defense and DOD writ large and show that we’ve got a good plan collectively to spend money in the right places, that’s really what it allows us to do,” he said of these new organizations the Air Force is creating that will seek to bring a more collaborative approach between industry, acquisition officials and operators.

Doing more with less

Currently, the Air Force has a limited number of dedicated electronic attack aircraft. The revamped Compass Call — now designated the EA-37B, outfitted to a Gulfstream G550 business jet as opposed to the EC-130H — was only just delivered to Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, in August to begin pilot training. While extremely capable, this platform will become a high-demand, low-density asset given the limited number of aircraft and budget constraints.

Earlier this year, the previous commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. John Aquilino, told Congress the new Compass Call provides great capability and he needed more for that region than what the Air Force was funded for. He noted the only caveat to that would be if there was another mechanism to deliver the capability Compass Call provides, in which case Indo-Pacom could do with less EA-37Bs. But “we do need the capabilities that currently reside in that aircraft,” he said.

“The EA-37B represents one of the major Air Force EMSO modernization efforts, and it’s a great move, along with electronic warfare capabilities integrated with our 5th-gen-and-beyond aircraft systems. The real issue is that we need more EA-37Bs than the current budget allows,” retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said in a September podcast. “If the nation is really serious about being able to execute the current national defense strategy, we’re going to need more.”

In that limited budget environment, the Air Force will have to figure out how to make other platforms capable in the spectrum, either with their internal self-protection capabilities that have electronic attack — albeit less powerful than dedicated jamming platforms — or possibly unmanned systems such as collaborative combat aircraft.

“The Air Force is still buying Compass Calls trying to figure out what that number is. Then what do you do otherwise? What do you do about putting that capability on something else that will reach out, reduce the threat range of an adversary, so that you can drive in closer to drop your ordnance, so you can support your weapons all the way to the target?” Chuck Angus, director of business development in naval power at Raytheon, said in an interview at the AFA conference.

He noted that if the Air Force has platforms with a lot of persistence such as a drone or even a bomber, they can be useful for enabling kinetic operations.

“If you had a platform that had a lot of persistence — think about a UAS, think about a bomber that can fly for hours and hours and hours — then you probably have a platform that is very useful in this space … You can not only fly it in the area, but when they drop their weapons, you support those weapons all the way to target,” Angus said. “Magazine depth is really important. This non-kinetic electronic attack will increase that magazine depth because you have to shoot less. Those weapons will get to the target better, be more successful and then you can move to another target.”

The Air Force is looking at how to marry these capabilities with overall cost in mind, in a constrained fiscal environment.

“We’re trying to collectively look at the system with the force design that the A5/7 team has been working on to figure out how we do this the most affordable, but then also achieving the objectives that we need, but not buying the exquisite platform necessarily that’s going to — as we’ve heard the secretary and others say and the chief — that’s going to last forever,” Hauck said.

Dedicated electronic attack platforms such as the Compass Call are very good at what they do, he added, but the Air Force has to have the collective enterprise doing electronic warfare and some level of electronic attack. They must understand what the right number of platforms to purchase are and where to invest for the best bang for the buck.

“If you’re talking about a platform that’s putting a pod on, it could be important, depending on what that platform does and depending on the cost,” Hauck said. “We couldn’t just isolate ourselves and figure out a single electronic warfare solution that connected against one part of the adversary’s kill web. It has to be something that knows what the B-21 might be able to bring, that knows whatever other platform, [Next-Generation Air Dominance], CCA, you name it, might be able to bring to the fight and where they’re going to be in the flight.”

Similarly, Gaedecke explained that reading the tea leaves from what senior leaders have said, the approach is integrating different capabilities across the breadth of platforms and systems.

“How do you take these existing capabilities and integrate them across portfolio? How do you have the requirements that are integrated to solve multiple problems, versus one-off solutions for all of these different things?” he said. “When I was in uniform and I did the ECCT, I think a lot of people thought that I was going to help them solve the EF-111 replacement … [but] that’s tougher in the budget environment for the department to be able to do that. If you can’t do that with a solution, how do you do it? Even when you listen to the secretary talk about NGAD and the family of systems, again, I think through the family of systems and the capabilities you integrate versus the dedicated platform.”

All that tied to a robust battle management of the electromagnetic spectrum will be paramount to ensure forces aren’t jamming themselves, and the right platforms in the right areas are being utilized.  

“You need electromagnetic battle management capability to orchestrate which platforms are going to provide which electronic fires, similar to an air battle manager,” Niedzwiecki said. “Every platform fights the threat environment as a one-versus-many fight. Every platform has to be able to close the kill chain itself and it has to be able to address all possible threats that it will face to deny red [forces]. As we look forward with things like counter-C5ISRT, it really drives the need to build collaborative, coordinated effects across the battle space.”

DefenseScoop reporter Mikayla Easley contributed to this story.

Part two of this series will focus on how the Air Force is maturing and exercising its reprogramming enterprise.

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After divesting much of its capabilities after the Cold War and lacking any program-of-record offensive or defensive EW equipment during the post-9/11 wars, the Army is now poised to begin fielding a raft of capabilities to its forces and formations.

With the introduction of these new systems, the service needs concepts of operations for how those tools — which will include ground-based jammers for formations above and below brigade, backpacable jammers and airborne jammers — will be deployed and used within formations.

“The Army’s plan is to develop and employ integrated EW capabilities that provide ground commanders at echelon with the ability to see themselves, see the adversary, and affect the adversary through the” electromagnetic spectrum, Col. Gary Brock, Army capabilities manager for electronic warfare at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said in response to questions from DefenseScoop. “The overall objective is to develop EW capabilities that serve as a force multiplier to counter extant and emerging threats. We must take advantage of opportunities to detect, deny, deceive, disrupt, degrade, and destroy EMS capabilities upon which our adversaries rely, while also maintaining our own EMS awareness to ensure freedom of maneuver in contested and congested environments.”

As part of a Warfighting Forum that took place at Army Cyber Command in late-February, documents detailing how the Army will fight with electronic warfare tools at the corps level and above, and division and below, were drafted and presented to Army Cyber Command, Cyber Center of Excellence and senior service leaders, according to Brock. The documents were developed with input from the operational and institutional forces and are living documents that will be continuously updated as new EW systems are approved and fielded, he added.

The concepts were completed as part of the Army Capabilities Development Integration and Development System (ACIDS)/Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process from 2013 with an organizational relook in 2016. It differs from the past as it’s taking a holistic look at the EW systems architecture the Army is crafting, as opposed to individual programs. Officials want an integrated system of capabilities that fit into a battlefield architecture with other Army systems.

It is also the first electronic warfare concept-of-operations document since the Army updated its doctrine for conducting battlefield operations, Field Manual 3.0, in 2022 that defined the division as the unit of action, not the brigade as it had been over the last 20 years.

The concepts will differ depending on complexity and echelon. For example, corps will focus on integration with joint and international partners, with divisions focusing on tactical engagement and maneuvering while enabling brigades.

Battalion and below formations will be transforming with electronic warfare integrated into new and emerging technologies such as robotics, drones and launched effects, Brock said.

“EW must remain adaptable and flexible in response to evolving threats in the EMS … The CONOPS also must maintain pace with the technological adaptations and advances,” Brock said. “The Army plans to equip Soldiers with modular EW equipment that can be rapidly updated to meet the threat and adapted to integrate with varying platforms, whether it is a manned aircraft, unmanned aircraft, or a robotic combat vehicle. Expendable and attritable systems will offer persistent EW coverage and make the battlefield more survivable.”

Brock noted that at the theater level the electronic warfare fight will largely be executed through the multidomain task forces, bringing another layer to the concept as they support the theater commanders’ anti-access and area-denial degradation priorities, which refers to the combination of advanced radar and long-range missiles that will push U.S. assets farther away from adversaries.

The MDTF concepts have theater-specific variations, Brock said, to include the Europe-based land scenario vice the Indo-Pacific scenario.

Corps will support divisions with long-range electronic warfare — to include high-altitude and long-range launched effects — but also through protection such as securing lines of communication.

Then, at division and below, the EW fight will focus on optimizing electronic warfare payloads to platforms to generate desired effects on targets, with integration at the machine level into the command and control and fires ecosystems at echelon remaining an imperative.

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In the cat-and-mouse game of electronic warfare or 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.

For the Army, the challenge is that sending those signals back over the network to engineers in labs away from the battlefield not only requires significant bandwidth, which may be limited, but also poses its own electronic warfare vulnerability itself.

“When we go into contact … we don’t have … reach back. You fight as an isolated force within your bubble that you were put at the edge to do,” Col. Gary Brock, director and Army capabilities manager for electronic warfare, said during a presentation at TechNet Augusta Tuesday. “If you go to radiate to send all that data back, you become the target.”

As a result, the Army is working to get the developers to the battlefield to prevent sending signals back and forth and also speed up the delivery of capability.

“How do we prevent that? It’s exactly that. We put the green suitors in the reprogramming seat, we put the green suitors in the tailor and the techniques at the edge seat and we put them with the EW capabilities, and we mission tailor those based on the performance that we’re required to do within that commander’s footprint,” Brock said.

The Army initiated a pilot in 2021 called Starblazor that looked at this issue. However, Brock told DefenseScoop that not much came from the pilot at the time.

“Starblazor was the initial effort to study what it is the Army needs to do to get after this problem across the entire Army. What is the service solution,” he told DefenseScoop in an interview at TechNet.

This was partially due to the fact that at the time, the Army didn’t have many developers, known in Army nomenclature as 17Ds.

Now, with more of these personnel trained and going to the force, they can start to revive the effort.

“As we’re starting to get capabilities to the field, we’re relooking at it, because we didn’t have 17 Deltas at the time,” Brock said.

He noted the Army is taking lessons from the Air Force and its 350^th Spectrum Warfare Wing, a first-of-its-kind unit activated in June 2021 to enable, equip and optimize the fielding of electromagnetic spectrum capabilities.

Brock said the 350^th has placed signals intelligence professionals, electronic warfare personnel, platform developers and technique developers under a single commander.

“Think about the power of that. You want the entire enterprise, which for the Army exists between secretariat levels under a single operational command,” he told the conference.

With the right mix of Army developers coming on board, the service is looking at how to apply the 350^th model to the Army, especially since the Air Force’s personnel are typically away from the battlefield, which isn’t how the Army would fight.

“What we’re doing on the reprogramming side is how do we get that under an operational command such as ARCYBER with the green suitors in the loop,” Brock told DefenseScoop. “Not only the arsenal forward, which would be the techniques that are matured, but the reprogramming enterprise and close that loop from right now — eight to nine months — to get a technique to days.”

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The JEC, as it is known, will aim to raise the readiness of the joint force within the electromagnetic spectrum, serving as the heart of the Defense Department’s EMSO, according to a spokesperson. It will work to restructure accounts for force management, planning, situation monitoring, decision-making and force direction while focusing on training and education with capability assessments.

This new center will also support combatant commands with EMSO training, planning and requirements support.

The organization derives its creation from the implementation plan of the DOD’s 2020 electromagnetic spectrum superiority strategy.

The U.S. military has been on a path of aggressive modernization within the spectrum in recent years after it divested much of the advanced capabilities it possessed throughout the Cold War and waged the post-9/11 counterterrorism campaigns. Now, as sophisticated adversaries have discovered the necessary reliance on spectrum for communications, precision weapons and navigation, the battle for supremacy in this invisible sphere has commenced.

“The activation of the Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Enterprise Center at Offutt Air Force Base represents a significant achievement and is an important day for the nation,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired electronic warfare one-star general with the Air Force, said in a statement to DefenseScoop. “As a career electronic warfare officer in the U.S. Air Force, I entered Congress deeply concerned about the significant decline in the capabilities and readiness of our electronic warfare forces.”

Bacon didn’t believe the DOD had moved fast enough to address those concerns.

“The JEC is a product of the work that we’ve done in the [National Defense Authorization Act], frankly. We have forced putting people in the lead that we can hold accountable,” he said during an event hosted by the Hudson Institute July 18.

Bacon has been firm in the past that without Congress forcing certain issues on the Pentagon to take action, certain necessary steps to modernize in the spectrum from strategies, organizations, leadership and command-and-control relationships, would not have happened.

He added in an emailed statement that the standup of the JEC is a “significant milestone in our journey to ensure the Joint Force is prepared to compete with and — if necessary — defeat any adversary in any domain.”

Officials have previously explained the new JEC would provide operational leadership in assessing joint force readiness within the spectrum as well as standardizing the joint electromagnetic spectrum operations cells that exist at each of the combatant commands to provide planning expertise for commanders. The center would also serve as the operational sponsor for the electromagnetic battle management system (EMBM), which is a tool that will allow commanders to visualize and plan operations within the invisible spectrum.

The JEC will be led by Brig. Gen. Annmarie Anthony, who told DefenseScoop via an emailed statement that the center will transition to initial operational capability this summer.

She added that the center will be comprised of two additional elements aside from the headquarters at Stratcom: the Joint Electromagnetic Warfare Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and the Joint Center for Electromagnetic Readiness at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“Throughout this transition the all three organizations under the Joint EMSO Center will increase their staff to perform the additional, assigned responsibilities. We expect to reach full operational capability in FY25,” she said, referring to fiscal 2025.

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“One of the main reasons we started looking at that is, this has been territory that our adversaries have been operating in with impunity lately,” Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, A2/6, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview. “That blurring of competition, crisis and conflict … they’re operating in an area that’s below that threshold of armed conflict. Russia and China are doing this right now and not only are they doing it, they’re combining it with traditional military activities and trying to do it with impunity because there’s been no ramifications.”

Last summer, the Air Force created an information warfare (IW) strategy and in December, it finalized an implementation plan. However, both are classified and thus out of public view.

“What the Air Force IW strategy does, it gives us a path to advance our own IW capabilities in order to try and gain and then maintain, preserve our dominance,” Simpson said. “What we’re looking at … is critical resource and investment decisions to be able to organize, train and equip scalable, cross-discipline and integrated IW capabilities to get convergence or synergistic effect between those capabilities.”

Simpson said the classification is necessary because the strategy, and more so the implementation plan, get into specifics regarding organizing the force, modernizing infrastructure and utilizing cross-cutting tools and capabilities.

He also clarified that this is the Air Force’s information warfare strategy, and not that of the entire Department of Air Force, which also includes the Space Force.

Simpson explained that the proliferation of information technology has forced a paradigm shift essentially. The logic of war has sought to alter human behavior by imposing one’s will on leaders and the general population. That traditionally had been done through physical force. However, IT now provides the opportunity to instantly deliver tailored effects not just to populations, but also at the individual level, which is a significant change.

“It’s not a population that makes decisions. It’s an individual; and what do we know about the individual?” he said, adding that “the level of detail that you need to know your potential adversary or your target audience, the level of fidelity that you need now is much, much greater.”

“That individual may be an iron worker that lives in a city, that individual may be a national leader, that individual may be a battalion commander that is coordinating attacks in Bakhmut against Ukrainians,” Simpson said. “Those are the types of audience that you would like … to conduct influence operations against, but the level of intelligence you need to be able to shake that is much greater than you would need or you had needed in the past.”

Fundamentally, information warfare capabilities underwrite all of the Air Force’s core functions, Simpson said, referring to air superiority; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control.

Since there is no joint definition for information warfare, the Air Force made the decision to place five functional areas under the IW umbrella: ISR, cyber effects operations, electromagnetic spectrum operations, influence operations and public affairs. 

Over the past few years, the services, in one form or another, have sought to address information warfare in their own way, issuing strategies and their own lexicons based on how they fight.

Simpson said the Air Force did coordinate with the other services when crafting its own strategy to get as much broad guidance as it could, given the Air Force must fight as part of the joint force under a four-star combatant command. There was agreement in some areas and disagreement in others with the sister services, he explained.

To succeed in a future conflict, the Air Force and the greater military must adapt to changing tactics and modern approaches, Simpson said.

“I like how one of the folks on our team put it: If we fail to adapt and we hope to win with capabilities and tactics from the last war, then we are destined to defeat,” Simpson said. “If we do this right, and we get it right, we have an integrated employment of those IW capabilities … we’re going to have unmatched domain awareness with an information advantage to be able to drive that in the future.”

At the operational level, this has culminated with the foundation of the 16^th Air Force, the service’s first information warfare entity. Created in 2019, it combined the Air Force’s ISR and cyber units into an integrated formation that Simpson called the “competition force of choice right now because of the capabilities that they present.”

With a single commander overseeing all aspects of information warfare, Simpson said the force is realizing synergies they didn’t know were possible previously.

“One of the huge benefits is seeing opportunities that we didn’t know really existed before and then under one commander being able to quickly go, ‘Hey, I’ve got an authority shortfall in this area in being able to get after those,’” he said. “This organizational structure helps present forces in a way to be able to try and execute much more quickly, and then removing some of those barriers that have slowed us down.”

Developing information operations professionals

The Air Force has been working to integrate its cadre of information operations personnel more broadly across the force.

The 14F work role was developed for information operations officers. The deputy chief of staff for operations, or A3, technically owns the 14F as the functional authority, and the A2/6 loaned them a senior executive service civilian to be the functional manager for the information operations career field to lead developmental teams and do the talent management. That official is Elizabeth Chamberlain, associate director for cyberspace operations and warfighter communications, within the A2/A6.

While this is a small career field — officials in the past said it will only have around 500 or so personnel and Simpson said that hasn’t grown — it is having an impact already.

Simpson provided a couple of examples of how they’ve contributed to operations. In the first, 14F personnel examined how the Air Force was executing B-2 bomber operations to see how they could deceive adversaries to modify the true destination of the aircraft disrupting that nation’s intelligence against where the B-2 was going.

In another example, 14Fs along with U.S. Air Forces in Europe and European Command used exquisite intelligence developed messages about Russia’s military build-up ahead of its invasion of Ukraine last year and publicly discredited Russia’s narrative that it wasn’t planning anything.

“I’d say that actually had a pretty good effect, because look where Russia is now compared to where Russia was there when it comes to world opinion,” Simpson said, adding that it’s possible with more successes like these in the future to grow demand signal.

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In September, the Air Force announced a sprint within its office of the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, A2/6, to do analysis on gaps and requirements concerning the electromagnetic spectrum and electromagnetic spectrum operations, or EMSO.

“EMSO, unfortunately, it’s been one of the most neglected mission areas for the past three decades and it was a victim of the fight that we evolved to go after,” Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, A2/6, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview. “Now, against a peer competitor, those kinds of threats, it needs to be reenergized. But those muscles — they atrophy a lot more quickly than we’re able to build them back.”

Following the Cold War, the services divested and deprioritized electronic warfare systems, especially during the counterinsurgency wars against a technologically inferior enemy.

Now, with the return of so-called great power competition, all the services are recognizing the importance the spectrum will likely play in future conflicts.

As Air Force officials briefed Secretary Frank Kendall on the state of play within EMSO, Simpson said the service leader recognized its criticality and requested an effort on par with his seven operational imperatives for the force, which are his top modernization priorities.

Kendall request “an EMSO cross-cutting operational enabler team to take a look at gap analysis … [and] prioritize EW capability recommendations that goes after their gaps, specifically to inform resourcing,” Simpson said, paraphrasing the secretary.

“We have an EMSO strategy, but tell me what we need to buy. And it needs to be something more than a self-protection jamming capability for some of our fighters,” he added, again, paraphrasing the directive from the service leader.

Since then, the A2/6 has been moving out mirroring the operational imperatives, developing an operations team, acquisition lead and conducting an in-depth intelligence and threat-informed baseline for comprehensive gap analysis. Officials will work to develop priorities of recommendations to bring to the Air Force secretary and chief of staff.

Right now, some of those priorities include offensive capability investments that disrupt adversary kill webs, while defensive capability investments seek to protect friendly and allied assets.

The sprint is looking more at investment decisions for actual capabilities as opposed to new force structure. In 2018, the Air Force embarked on a multiyear journey under what it called the Electric Warfare Enterprise Capabilities Collaboration Team, to study spectrum superiority. At that time it believed it was falling behind adversaries such as Russia and China.

That study produced three non-materiel solutions, to include the establishment of an EMS superiority directorate within the Air Force headquarters, consolidating EMS services and software programming into a single organization — which culminated in the creation of the 350^th Spectrum Warfare Wing — and creating education programs to develop an EMS “warrior ethos.”

The Air Force is beginning to budget for some of these new capabilities and systems for the sprint.

“Our Secretary is using those to drive [program objective memorandum] decisions and how do we take some of the Air Force money to get after what he sees are shortfalls of capabilities, to be able to mitigate the shortfalls,” Simpson said, referencing how the Pentagon does budget planning in five-year increments. “When we get done with [fiscal year] ’25, now we’re going to have to start working on FY 26. This is one that is going to take a lot of continuous effort to keep moving it down the path.”

Simpson said several of these efforts will remain classified, shielding them from public releasability.

He did offer that the Air Force team is working across the joint force with sister services to take advantage of investments already being made.

“It is a joint approach,” he said. There’s “heavy integration with the Navy right now and then a lot more with the Army, and [we’ve] been starting to with the Marine Corps from their capabilities they have from a ground-based perspective,” he added.

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Electromagnetic superiority takes the holistic view across the entire spectrum as opposed to focusing on singular areas. As a result, one of the areas that has been neglected and overlooked over the years is electronic protection, said David Tremper, director for electronic warfare in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

Electronic protection, which notionally fits under the larger banner of electronic warfare, has historically involved the defense of radars, communications systems and systems that deal with position, navigation and timing (PNT). Conversely, these are typically outside the purview of electronic attack — the art of jamming systems — and electronic support, which deals with sensing the environment. Taken together, those two concepts have been commonly referred to as electronic warfare, often excluding electronic protection.

“Historically, what I’ve been seeing is that when we have a conversation about EMS survivability, it immediately migrates towards EW and the question is [with] EW, how are you going to achieve EMS survivability and how does our EW map against their EW? What I’ve been pointing out is that our EW systems don’t attack their EW systems; our EW systems attack their radars, their comms and their PNT,” Tremper said at a virtual event hosted by the Hudson Institute Wednesday. “The question we should be asking is: How do our systems stand up to EMS/EW attack, right? How do our radars perform, how do our comms perform, how do our PNT perform?”

Tremper has championed electronic protection since taking his position, noting that it often gets cut from budgets and overlooked because it isn’t thought of until conflict starts and enemies begin actually jamming friendly systems. Contrast that with the use of jamming and sensing systems during the so-called competition phase of operations short of armed conflict, which the U.S. currently finds itself in with top competitors such as Russia and China.

Tremper pointed to the conflict in Ukraine, noting the importance of assured communications and how they are a particularly important aspect of warfare.

With the new strategy and subsequent implementation plan, finalized last year, electronic protection is coming more into the fold.

“When you start to see that and we see things like EMS survivability showing up in the requirements process and we see exercises showing what the vulnerabilities are when our EMS-using systems are exposed to EW, now we’re starting to get that senior-level attention, we’re starting to get the requirements that people’s feet are being held to the fire that they need to address EMS survivability,” he said.

The superiority strategy and implementation plan created a senior steering group that focuses outside of electronic warfare and creates connective tissue across the electromagnetic spectrum communities, Tremper said.

Prior to this, the electronic warfare community would talk about challenges to radars and communications systems, but there wasn’t a cross-cutting organization to work together to communicate the issues.

Now, the electronic warfare executive committee can take lessons learned about what electronic warfare effects had on radars and communications systems and bring them to the senior steering group to share with the other electromagnetic spectrum communities, Tremper said.

“From a programmatic perspective, we’re seeing the requirements migrate to EMS survivability so that now the EW community can highlight where we have EP vulnerabilities and now we have the infrastructure created through the implementation plan that allows that message to be propagated across EMS users and then action to be taken and not perceived as an aggressive move on one community or another,” he said.

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