Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, who heads program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, is retiring July 24, according to a post on LinkedIn. In his place, Brig. Gen. Kevin Chaney will be taking over. Chaney is currently the acting program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks.

Barker has held the role since April of 2023, having been the deputy for two years prior, capping off a 34-year military career that started as an enlisted soldier.

PEO IEW&S is perhaps the most expansive and diverse organization of its kind, responsible for delivering, among other things, electronic warfare; biometric systems; intelligence capabilities that span ground and air domains; position, navigation and timing gear; space systems; and offensive and defensive cyber tools for both the Army and the joint cyber mission force at U.S. Cyber Command.

Chaney comes to IEW&S with a long history in the acquisition community, most recently as the program manager for Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft.

Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor will take his place at C3N, a familiar face there. Taylor will take over effective June 30, according to a spokesperson.

C3N is currently delivering on the chief of staff of the Army’s number one priority, Next Generation Command and Control, which aims to provide commanders and units with a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures.

Taylor comes to the job having just been chief of staff for the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. He’s had multiple stints at the PEO, previously serving as program manager for Tactical Network and product manager for Tactical Mission Command.

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Specifically, that effort is for the forthcoming Spectrum Situational Awareness System, or S2AS, 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. Army officials have said this is an important capability for operations in a complex future environment where forces will have to adeptly maneuver within the invisible electromagnetic spectrum.

That program is a new start in fiscal 2025, with the Army requesting $9.3 million in research-and-development funds for integration, testing, and technical and program management support.

However, with the continuing resolution and budget impasse on Capitol Hill, development is more challenging.

Thus, the Army is using ongoing efforts associated with its Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade (TLS-EAB) — initially designed as an integrated EW and signals intelligence platform primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater distances — to run risk reduction for S2AS.

“There’s been other efforts within EAB that allowed us to understand what software capabilities are out there to get after that type of spectrum situational awareness. We’ve made those investments and I think what you’ll see is upon the [middle tier of acquisition] initiation, once the CR is lifted and the program is running, that will move really quick,” 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.

“I’m thinking inside of 12 to 18 months, we could probably be at a rapid fielding for that software from an S2AS standpoint,” he added. “We’ve taken the opportunity that if we’ve had implied and specified requirements within other programs, specifically EAB, that meet the need of S2AS, we’ve used that to burn down that risk so that once S2AS was initiated, we didn’t have to spend another year, year and a half, doing the analysis to get us to that point where we can make a rapid fielding decision.”

Last year, the Army decided to spilt up the signals intelligence and electronic warfare portions of its TLS family of systems, which also include the EAB’s smaller cousin, the Brigade Combat Team system. Barker said that ultimately was the right decision for the Army to make.

The service is on track to deliver signals intelligence prototypes for both TLS systems by next spring, while platform electronic warfare from a jamming perspective is still pre-decisional and the Army is still examining what that might look like, Barker said.

The Army is taking a hard look at its entire electronic enterprise and capabilities as it seeks to potentially take on sophisticated nation-state adversaries in large-scale combat operations.

“The nature of the fundamental of everything is going on within our portfolio from an EW standpoint, is rapidly changing. The challenge within the EW portfolio is the fact that the decades of [counterinsurgency] operations, we just did not necessarily have to be in that fight to the degree to which we think we’re going to be in it today,” Barker said at the Association of Old Crows annual symposium Thursday. “We kind of had to start clean because we didn’t really have the capabilities that were needed from an EW standpoint. We’re building that up on a daily basis and trying understand what that means across the not just the materiel side of the house, but how do you train EW?”

Elsewhere within the electronic protection and management space, the Army is still figuring out what its Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum System (MEMSS) program will look like. MEMMS stemmed out of a prior science-and-technology effort called Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum Deception Suite (MEDS) and will be a new start in fiscal 2026.

“How do we confuse the enemy? It’s really about creating those types of dilemmas that impact their decision space. How are we providing our commander freedom of maneuver to do the things that they need to do, to provide them the time to either move or make decisions?” Barker said, adding his office is working across the Army to help figure that out on the requirements and materiel side.

“We got to be very conscious within this space to make sure that what we’re doing is going to impact the adversary’s targeting cycle. But we also have to be conscious of what the range of options are that we want to present to the Army,” Barker said. “It can be anything from attritable sensors that emulate all the way up to the potentially the emulate a command post. But there’s costs associated with that, and so we’re trying to be very, very conscious of that.”

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Those units are part of Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s so-called transforming-in-contact concept, where the service plans to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield.

According to George, there are three areas where the Army needs to be faster and more adaptable when it comes to delivering equipment to forces, due to how challenging the threat environment is and the cat-and-mouse aspect of countering opponents’ moves: unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare.

Those transforming-in-contact units include: 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division — the first mobile brigade combat team — 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division and 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

Given the rate of change in the electromagnetic spectrum, enabled by software-defined systems that can be altered as fast as a patch is able to be developed and delivered, the Army wants to prioritize tools that can be fielded rapidly.

“My number one talking point in terms of our equipping for the future is our focus on doing limited prototyping and rapid fielding of mature [commercial-off-the-shelf/government-off-the-shelf] products,” Kenneth Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber at program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in an interview previewing his remarks that he’s slated to deliver Wednesday alongside the Army capability manager for EW at the TechNet Augusta conference.

“The pendulum consistently swings and we’re going back towards the need and the desire to get equipment, limited prototypes, in the hands of units very quickly so that they can learn, they can iterate, and we can get early, good enough capability out to the field,” he added. “We’re looking at off the shelf. We don’t want to do all the development in house. I don’t think we need to because there’s now a competitive marketplace out there to be able to buy ready products or things that need minor modification and integration. Long, long list of vendors who are offering some very effective capability for remote sensors and [software-defined radios] and digitization.”

Part of that change is necessitated by observations from Ukraine in which the cat-and-mouse game of systems being countered and counters being countered, are occurring in hours or days as opposed to the Cold War paradigm of weeks, months or years.

The Army is now trying to get out of the business of major programs that take years to develop through lengthy requirements, tweaks and user tests, shifting the way it talks about strategies and prioritization, but Strayer declined to quantify the ratio or percentage of commercial versus major government-run programs in the future. In some cases, though, these exquisite systems are necessary to build for specific needs.

One such system is the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large (MFEW) that serves 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 Lockheed Martin-made technology is a pod-mounted capability on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone. It has been under development for roughly seven years.

“It’s not like I can go out and just go buy a pod that does this. It required a lot of detailed engineering and testing and packaging. That’s part of the reason why MFEW is taking perhaps longer than some people hope it would because there are problems out there that requires that level of engineering and acquisition,” Strayer said. “We would prefer, whenever possible, to not go down that pathway.”

Strayer said he’d like to get MFEW in the hands of a transforming-in-contact unit following the system’s limited user test next year, but that might be a ways off. Currently the program is getting ready to perform airworthiness certification on the Gray Eagle. Once that’s completed, officials will perform a developmental test at the beginning of next year with a limited user test at the end of the year. Pending the results of that, Strayer said he’d like to get the initial pods in the hands of a unit in 2026.

MFEW has done some support at Fort Drum, New York, with the 10th Mountain Division to demonstrate the payoff of having that high-capability airborne, long-range platform. There were favorable comments from the unit during their recent exercises, Strayer said.

One of the best examples of the new approach is 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.

The system, made by Mastodon Design, a CACI subsidiary, was previously used by U.S. Special Operations Command, allowing the Army to shrink down the timeline for much of the necessary vetting and testing of a new program. The Army awarded Mastodon a nearly $100 million procurement and fielding contract earlier this year.

“It was a huge win for us. I mean, we went from good idea to a fielded product in about 24 months, which is unheard of in acquisition cycles. A lot of that’s because it was a mature baseline. We had a lot of tests and performance data, not only with Socom, but other services and units who had been buying this product over the last couple of years,” Strayer said. “Another good example of how [in] industry there’s now a very robust industry community who’s developing what I call off-the-shelf products that we view more as a catalog buy than a developmental program.”

Strayer said 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division received some of these systems — albeit on loan — during its rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center this month, to test the system and provide feedback.

Overall, the Manpack system received enough funding in the fiscal 2024 appropriation to purchase enough for two brigades. Pending the fiscal 2025 appropriation, the service will have enough for another eight brigades, with the eventual goal of total Army fielding.

In addition to the Manpack, 2nd Brigade, 101st is also experimenting with the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry (TEWS-I) at JRTC, a quick-reaction capability built a few years ago by General Dynamics, serving as a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles. While there won’t be any future production on that system given it was a quick-reaction capability, Strayer said it has generated discussion on requirements for light and airborne forces for mobility.

“Because it’s more tightly integrated into a platform, you get some of the advantages of the tactical mobility and the power that comes with that. We’re really interested in getting the feedback and seeing where we go,” he said. “If there is a requirement for this lightweight mobile kit, then we have to look at the payoff as to whether you need some of the more higher-end capability that comes on TEWS-I or if it’s really a Manpack, which is maybe up-gunned and more fully integrated into a vehicle platform. I think those are two different approaches you could take to the problem.”

Strayer noted that other transforming-in-contact units have begun to experiment with other capabilities, although he declined to specifically identify those units. One includes pre-prototypes of a Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS), 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 program office also hopes to get emerging systems into the hands of the these units. Those include the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT) Next, 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 “Next” effort 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 emerging systems also include representative products associated with a new electronic warfare architecture the Army is developing, once established.

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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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The CACI subsidiary will provide systems for the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack, 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.

It is associated with the TLS family of systems, which include:

• TLS-BCT: As initially conceived, this was to be the first brigade-organic integrated cyber, signals intelligence and EW system designed for Stryker platforms, however, acquisition priorities shifted and the effort will now likely be split into two distinct signals intelligence and electronic warfare variants. The Lockheed Martin-made capability will be a key enabler of Army priorities — considering the service has been without a program-of-record jammer for decades — and support multi-domain operations.
• TLS-EAB: Designed primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater ranges than its brigade-level counterpart, the tool is also being built by Lockheed Martin.

Mastodon was awarded a $1.5 million prototype other transaction authority agreement for the system in September, based upon its Beast+ and Kraken technologies that have been used by special operations forces.

“The efforts to demonstrate, test, and rapidly procure a COTS-based product significantly accelerated the procurement timeline and will result in early capability to the field starting this year. The TLS BCT Manpack is a mature, well-adopted system that will make a significant contribution to winning the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) fight,” Ken Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber within program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and Sensors, said in a statement.

CACI officials have maintained that given their system has been in use by special operations forces, the Army’s approach to use a mature system shortens the timeline for fielding the equipment to conventional soldiers.

“We are making the transition to production after successfully completing prototyping and conducting demonstrations with multiple soldier touchpoints. Through TLS BCT Manpack program, CACI will deliver to the Army a tailorable, modular, low [size, weight and power] solution that integrates and delivers significantly improved SIGINT and EW capabilities to soldiers at the tactical edge,” Todd Probert, president of national security and innovative solutions at the company, told DefenseScoop in a statement.

“Our fully configurable system can conduct radio frequency survey, collection and direction-finding operations, electromagnetic attack and force protection operations, and EMS visualization and scanning/surveying operations. CACI’s Manpack solution leverages hardware that is qualified for use by the Joint Force with a software defined radio architecture specifically designed to meet the Army’s mission requirements. This contract further reinforces our leading position within the tactical EW & SIGINT market,” he added.

The Army program office noted that the Manpack system received approval to transition to Middle Tier Acquisition and rapid fielding with a first unit issued is slated for 2024.

Over the past two budget cycles, the Army has shifted its spending approach for TLS-BCT in funding and quantities to prioritize the Manpack capability. The program office has sought to accelerate the procurement and fielding of the Manpack to include 52 systems in fiscal 2024 and 51 in fiscal 2025, an increase from last year.

The Army has moved to rebuild its electronic warfare arsenal after divesting much of its capabilities following the end of the Cold War.

To date, such dismounted systems were quick-reaction capabilities in response to urgent operational needs. The technology is essential, as the only other EW systems in development are either designed to be airborne or mounted on large platforms such as Stryker vehicles. Dismounted capabilities will be needed to allow soldiers to be more mobile and agile, especially in theaters such as the Pacific with dense terrain and many islands.

The Army has also added a counter-drone requirement to the Manpack program given how pressing that challenge is, as evidenced in Ukraine.

The Manpack system participated in the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 4 event earlier this year, an Army and joint effort to prototype concepts and capabilities in a real-world combat scenario to test the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) concept for how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders for better and faster decision-making.

Officials at the exercise noted the Beast+ system in particular successfully relayed electronic signals from soldiers on the ground at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, to the command center at Camp Pendleton, California, for them to take action against. This was a big milestone for those teams to be able to find signals of interest and transmit them to higher headquarters to better understand the electromagnetic spectrum environment and, if needed, allow more advance time for reprogrammers to make adjustments to those signals of interest.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the contract value for the deal that was awarded to Mastodon Design LLC for a dismounted electronic warfare system. This story was updated on July 1, 2024, at 12:50 PM, to reflect the correct value.

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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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Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George has noted that the three areas the service needs to accelerate in and be more flexible are UAS, counter-UAS and EW.

Officials envision a layered approach of so-called hard kill — essentially shooting down drones with missiles or guns — and soft kill, which includes using “non-kinetic” methods such as electronic jamming.

For electronic warfare, tools can jam the communications link between drones and their operators — causing them to either return home or hover, or force them to crash.

As the Army is developing an arsenal of EW program-of record systems that will be ready for the battlefield over the next few years, it maintains those weapons do have counter-drone applications.

“C-UAS remains a critical priority for the Army. Electronic Warfare and radio frequency defeat capabilities are a critical component of a wholistic, layered defeat and protection approach. Although not primarily designed for C-UAS, all Army EW systems have direct and derived requirements to contribute to the overall C-UAS fight,” the Army’s program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in response to questions from DefenseScoop.

Forthcoming systems include:

• The Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large, a pod-mounted capability on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone for airborne electronic attack and limited cyber, made by Lockheed Martin.
• The Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team, the first integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform that will be mounted on Strykers and eventually the Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle, also made by Lockheed.
• The TLS-Manpack, the first dismounted electronic attack capability that soldiers can use to conduct jamming on the move, made by Mastodon Design LLC, a CACI subsidiary, based upon its Beast+ and Kraken systems that have been used by special operations forces.

Lockheed Martin declined to comment for this story.

CACI said counter-UAS was a requirement the Army added to its Manpack program.

“What we’re doing is looking at how to integrate some of the counter-UAS capabilities from like that we did [with] DARPA, into that Beast+ so that it can then provide that counter-UAS capability to the soldiers are carrying,” Erik Grant, vice president for counter-UAS solutions, said in an interview. “It gives them something where they’ve got a backpack capability, they can do multiple things — one of them being detecting and determining that’s a drone, and then they can go provide that jamming capability against the drone.”

He noted that the Army has recognized that it needs to have more on-the-move capability. And with a system that’s already able to look out in the RF spectrum, they can double dip.

“It’s like, ‘Hey can you just add some of your other capabilities that are able to detect these drones so we don’t have to buy a second box?’” Grant said.

The electronic warfare and drone environment in the Ukraine-Russia war has been a cat-and-mouse game of maneuvers and counter maneuvers from each side.

“What we’re starting to see though, is adversaries who understand how those technologies work, are adjusting the way those UAVs work in a way that they can get through that jam. Again, that’s what you see in Ukraine on a regular basis,” Grant said. “We see that where some of the jammers have limitations where you start to create some vulnerabilities, because people will understand what your counter can do and then they’ll adjust the UAV. It’s a cat-and-mouse game is really what we’re seeing in Ukraine and other places.”

Capabilities to counter improvised explosive devices that were deployed during the post-9/11 war on terror, included U.S. forces using jammers to block the signals of detonators (in fact, senior Army leaders have referred to UAS as flying IEDs). However, those tools were very rudimentary and indiscriminate, resulting in the jamming of friendly communications and signals.

Since then, electronic warfare tactics have advanced to be more surgical and the Army has been working on applying EW to counter-drone efforts for many years.

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The directive on enabling modern software development and acquisition practices, released in March, aims to make sweeping changes to how the service approaches software from requirements, testing, procurement, sustainment and personnel.

“Software more than ever before is becoming or is already a national security imperative,” Margaret Boatner, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategy and acquisition reform, said Friday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If you look at the past, software has been an enabler of a lot of our hardware-based capabilities. And now it’s really the main driver of those capabilities. Everything from the goggles we put on our soldiers these days to our radars and our missiles … all the way to our tanks and our helicopters.”

The service wants to be able to go faster — be it buying new systems or making tweaks to existing ones — in this new digital world where the legacy hardware- and platform-centric model is outdated.

With modern software updates occurring on more frequent timelines than hardware, and as the Army faces sophisticated threats that aim to exploit software vulnerabilities, the service wants to be capable of staying ahead of the curve in combat.

“The ability to rapidly develop and deploy and, importantly, enhance those software capabilities over time is really going to make a difference on the battlefield. That’s really what we’re trying to get after with this new policy,” Boatner said. “Those modern and agile and iterative approaches are what’s going to enable us to rapidly upgrade all of our capabilities. That’s why we wanted to do it now.”

In some instances, officials are seeing changes in a matter of weeks.

“We’re seeing instances now … coming out of the European theater where we’re having to adjust to, in certain portions of the fight, we’re on a two-week cycle where we’re updating things and making sure that we’re accounting for new and emerging threats,” Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said.

“We also have examples within the CENTCOM [area of responsibility] where some of our programs of records that are operating on an IT Box and have had this kind of ability to adjust quickly. Sometimes it’s days. I mean, we’ve even seen 24-hour turnarounds on the ability to adjust to a threat technique, a change in the threat’s TTPs,” he added, using an acronym to refer to tactics, techniques and procedures. “It depends on where you sit and depends on what tools you have in place from an agile standpoint. And if you have all that in place, that’s what really lends you to be able to have that type of agility.”

Notably, the policy exempts cyber operations conducted by Army Cyber Command.

Reforming the institution

Aside from moving faster on the battlefield, the directive is also aimed at improving how software is developed, delivered, acquired and dealt with across the entire service.

“The goal of the policy is to really just broaden that scope so that everybody can move with agility,” Boatner said. “The bulk of what the policy does is it actually seeks to reform a number of institutional and legacy Army processes that are in place right now so that we can actually do modern software development … The challenge is really in adjusting our own legacy system to accommodate for modern software development.”

One of those key improvements the Army is looking to make is changing the requirements process for software to make it less prescriptive.

“We’re trying to shift away from these very, very detailed and prescriptive requirements documents to much higher-level concise needs statements,” Boatner said. “By making that shift and writing our requirements at a much higher level, I think that it will open the door to more vendors to propose commercial solutions that meet that higher need, as opposed to a 600-page requirement document that is so prescriptive that it almost inherently drives you to a custom solution.”

The Army is also looking at evolving how it tests software capabilities, moving away from clunky singular test events to more regular occurrences.

“What we’re implementing — and it’s really a series of smaller test events, and when we see the opportunity now to use vendor data to fill in the gaps, that’s what we’re going to do. Think of it in terms of a test, fix, test, aspect of things — and you iterate,” Barker said.  

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The Command Post Integrated Infrastructure (CPI2) initiative aims to make command posts more mobile and survivable.

The Army had previously outlined contracts for CPI2 to initially be built on Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles variants, which are very large. Now, it’s scaling that back.

“Our CPI2 program and our command post capabilities that we’ve built, which is today FMTV [expandable] van, really at the halt or at the stop sort of planning function — how do I get my staff elements together, how do I build a robust network? What we’d like to do over the next year or two is build more modular and tailorable command posts,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical, told DefenseScoop at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting Dec. 12 in Savannah, Georgia.

As adversaries have proven adept at finding and targeting units on the battlefield, one of the Army’s top modernization initiatives, dubbed command-and-control on the move, aims to ensure units are more mobile, faster and require less time to establish connectivity.

“Since the global war on terror, the Army has pivoted to large-scale combat operations and what does it mean to do C2 on the move and how critical it is to enable large-scale combat operations,” Col. Matt Paul, project manager for mission command at PEO C3T, told DefenseScoop at the Technical Exchange Meeting.

The directed requirement from the Army focuses on mobility as the chief mechanism for survivability, meaning that going forward, command posts must be designed to most fast while establishing communications.

“What we’ve learned from the experimentation is that we can make strides in improving mobility, we can make strides in helping organizations through the integrated infrastructure in place, and displace faster and provide commanders and staffs more opportunities to tailor their command post as needed,” Col. Charles Ford, Army capability manager for mission command/command post, who is in charge of requirements, told DefenseScoop. “The next steps for us … is that we’re actually doing a single concept of employment that looks at the C2 system holistically. And then from that, we want to then start drafting what we think an updated requirements document would look like.”

Kitz said the Army recently released a request for information to industry asking for options on modularity of command posts so that it’s not just an FMTV establishing communications at the halt.

The plan is to release a request for proposals with the intent to award next year for a competitive prototyping effort on modular approaches with dispersed, more survivable options for CPI2, Kitz said.

The Technical Exchange Meeting is allowing the Army to meet with many companies one-on-one and provide them with a blank slate to help the service pave the way ahead.

In fact, this eleventh Technical Exchange Meeting is the first such event where the Army actually brought hardware for vendors to see and provide ideas.

“Here in the TEM, we actually have some hardware, we have a [joint light tactical vehicle] configured for at the quick halt, so that you don’t have to set up a tent, that you can do collaboration right internal to your JLTV,” Kitz said. “We’re already starting some of that experimentation, but [for] our on-the-move experimentation we’re going to leverage some of the work that the Marines have done. They’ve done a lot of experimentation with the on-the-move command posts.”

The Army hopes to actually start experimenting in third quarter of this fiscal year regarding CPI2.

There have already been a series of experiments focused on solutions for on-the-move comms for armored units — a difficult challenge given those platforms have significant size, weight and power concerns. Another follow-on pilot is planned for fourth quarter of this fiscal year.

Tailoring for units

Essential to enabling command-and-control on the move is allowing units to tailor capabilities based on their needs.

I Corps, based in the Pacific, for example, has units with multiple command posts on multiple island chains leading to huge dispersion and creating challenges for targeting and collaboration, Kitz said, as compared to units in Poland that might have more condensed command posts at the halt doing planning and pre-positioning.

“CPI2, that hardstand, is one option for commanders. Another option might be inside their Stryker brigade, they have a more robust tactical network or they have a more robust way of at the stop, at the quick stop, setting up,” he said. “What we’d like to do over the next year with industry … and some operational units — is [figure out] how do we get to this modular command post — whether it’s dismounted off my tactical vehicle, whether it’s at the quick halt, or whether that’s purely on the move — how do I give them a robust capability to do that?”

This doesn’t mean creating distinct networks and solutions for each unit type, which becomes infeasible and creates significant interoperability and sustainment concerns. Rather, it is a family-of-systems solution.

“What we need to do is just have like almost like your family-of-terminals design. We need a family of command post kits, for lack of a better term, that can then be mounted in a family of vehicles,” Matt Maier, project manager for interoperability, integration and services at PEO C3T, told DefenseScoop.

This family-of-systems commonality approach, however, requires collaboration across the entire Army to include the platform community to ensure communications equipment will fit and won’t overload the power on vehicles — an issue the Army has encountered previously.

New initiatives such as open systems architectures is helping to solve that. The Army in 2025 will be starting a program of record dubbed Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR)/Electronic Warfare (EW) Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) Mounted Form Factor, or more simply, CMFF. That program will essentially provide a common chassis on all vehicles in which electronic gear and equipment will simply be loaded on with a card.

“The goal would be to have a series of command post systems that include mission command, that include transport, that include some kind of bandwidth virtualization type functionality. Probably include some kind of a lower tier stuff, … radios even, so that we can have dismount capability, all those in a package. Then we would slot that into a common A-kit architecture on actual vehicles, whether it’s Stryker or [Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle] or JLTV,” Maier said.

This will enable the Army to swap new capabilities much easier and faster.

“Every platform is different. Strykers got dozens of variants. JLTV. It’s different every time. That limits us from a pivot [and] speed perspective. Our ability to go fast — integrations is our” limiting factor, Paul said.

The new approach will allow Army units to be more flexible because they can mix and match and plug and play with capabilities depending on their missions.

“Different formations may get slightly different solution. They get the same box, but what cards they have inside their box may be a little bit different based on their mission and the unit type and what they’re going to go do,” Paul said. “They may not need an [electronic warfare] card because there’s no EW threat. Take the card out, put another radio card in there, whatever. It offers the commonalities with tailorability. It offers modularity, plug and play, and you only have to integrate once. It’s like you set it and forget it. Then you don’t have to worry about power.”

Spectrum concerns

Chief among the Army’s command post concerns deals with how units emit and can be found within the electromagnetic spectrum.

One of the service’s major takeaways from Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, was Russian forces’ ability to locate Ukrainian command posts and fire upon them, just based on their electronic signatures.

The Pentagon’s Russia New Generation Warfare study in 2017 spurred several modernization efforts still ongoing today to improve signature management, reduce the size and complexity of command posts, and develop better electronic countermeasures and jamming capabilities.

To best enable units’ command posts to be on the move, mobile and survivable, they need to understand what their footprints in the spectrum looks like and have the ability to deceive adversaries of those footprints.

Two new programs aim to do just that. One is Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS), a new start for 2025 for Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, which will provide sensing and visualization of what units look like in the spectrum.

“It allows you to kind of see, in near real-time, what you look like, how you’re being affected by friendly [forces], how you’re being affected by enemy, coalition, ISR assets, and all that,” Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for IEW&S, told DefenseScoop.

The other program is Modular Electronic Spectrum System (MEMSS), a new start slated for the 2026 time frame, which supports command post survivability through employing techniques in the spectrum to confuse and deceive adversaries while also disrupting their targeting cycles.

“It goes back to understanding how you look and are there ways to lower or raise noise levels to better hide in plain sight,” Barker said of MEMSS.

MEMSS, which stems from an earlier science-and-technology effort dubbed Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum Deception Suite, could leverage inexpensive, disposable decoys or small emulators to replicate the footprint of a series of radios or even a command post in the spectrum, Barker said.

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Electromagnetic spectrum operations have gained significant prominence in recent years, after decades of neglect from the U.S. military and conflicts that did not place a premium on agility within this invisible space.

In such a dynamic realm in which concepts and technologies can rapidly change — as evidenced in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine — how can the Army ensure that it stays relevant and not have to keep developing new tools?

The answer is modularity, a baseline level of commonality and tailoring for region and echelon.

Officials explained that there ‘s no one-size-fits-all solution, and systems must adhere to an open systems architecture.

“If we don’t do that openness from the sensor standpoint and the software standpoint, then that’s where we’ll lose that battle,” Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told DefenseScoop in an interview at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting Dec. 12 in Savannah, Georgia.

The Army has been pursuing open systems requirements under something it calls Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (C5ISR)/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS). CMOSS allows for capabilities to be inserted, updated and swapped on hardware platforms — harnessing the modern abilities of software.

Tailoring for theater and echelon

The Army currently does not have a program-of-record jammer fielded. However, the service has been developing such a capability for several years and it’s expected to be fielded soon.

Additionally, the department has started thinking about other needs in the spectrum for forces to be successful against adept adversaries such as spectrum analyzers, spectrum management tools and deception capabilities to disguise forces within the spectrum.

Given the uniqueness of units and theaters, the Army can’t provide everyone the same gear like it did in previous years. For example, the Pacific region is rife with thick jungle foliage and vast distances, while Europe is more mountainous — all of which pose unique spectrum challenges. Light infantry, airborne and vehicle-based formations such as Stryker or armored units, also have different needs.

According to Barker, some level of commonality will provide a baseline to build capability, but then the PEO must be flexible enough to tailor on top of that “foundational capabilities. And then there may be specific new theater needs to get at ranges — PACOM versus EUCOM as an example,” he said, referring to U.S. forces in the Pacific and Europe.

The Terrestrial Layer System-Echelons Above Brigade (TLS-EAB) system — a signals intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare capability designed primarily for divisions, corps and Multi-Domain Task Forces to sense across greater distances — is a case in point.

The Army came to the determination that this solution would likely have to be tailored based on theater and thus, not provide a single solution to users.

“A lot of the conversation has been what are the commonality, what’s the commonality that could be generic enough, applicable to all — and then starting to look at the specific requirements that may be applicable to specific” areas of responsibility, Barker said of the EAB capability, which is still in early development with the Army and vendor Lockheed Martin.

It also gets to the notion that TLS is a family of systems, with a manpack version for soldiers to carry jammers while dismounted and the smaller Brigade Combat Team version that will be mounted on Strykers and eventually Army Multi-Purpose Vehicles — each for a specific unit or region.

All this tailorability and adaptability needed to stay ahead of adversaries in this dynamic environment requires the Army to work across communities to ensure systems and concepts work together.

“As we iterate with the materiel, everything that we learned on the materiel side needs to be fed back to the” Army capability managers, Baker said, referencing the personnel that generate requirements. “We have to move together [across the Army].”

Moreover, the capability managers and various PEOs have to be in lockstep, especially from a platform perspective. If a platform is designed without enough power or space for electronic warfare systems from the beginning, it will involve much more work later in the prototyping phase that will cost significantly more money in retrofitting and redesigning after the fact.

Much of these changes are making their way into contracting language, codifying their importance.

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