Electromagnetic Warfare: –
The United States must innovate and operationalize electromagnetic warfare (EW) capability across the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) or U.S. national security will be at risk. Superiority in the EMS maneuver space is a fundamental precursor that enables the Department of Defense (DoD) to successfully operate in all domains and achieve the goals of the National Defense Strategy. The ability to operate freely within the EMS – at the time, place, and parameters of the nation’s choosing – is no longer guaranteed within today’s geopolitical environment. While acute threats like Russia pose significant EMS threats, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) presents the United States with its most significant pacing challenge. China fuses innovation across civil and military spheres, which enables it to make technological advances quickly. To maintain EMS superiority, the United States must remove roadblocks and impediments that slow EW innovation and prevent EW operational effectiveness.\
During the 2022-2023 academic year, twelve field grade officers and civilians attending National Defense University’s Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy examined impediments to EW innovation and barriers to translating innovation into EW operational effectiveness. They examined the EW ecosystem across the triple helix of government, industry, and academia and developed resourced recommendations for the DoD’s consideration to bolster innovation and accelerate operational effectiveness.
This paper addresses six areas that could be improved to boost EW innovation:
- Leadership: lack of EW operational expertise and misaligned authorities
- Data science: lack of data scientists and data standardization
- Open system architecture: implications for innovation and new technology adoption
- Classification: the barriers created by over-classification that prevent collaboration
- Domestic demand signals: the implications of the industry’s inability to access classified EW data coupled with the DoD’s failure to provide clear EW demand signals
- International collaboration: impediments to allied interoperability and shared innovation
Innovative systems and processes are only helpful if they can be translated into operational effects. This paper also addresses four areas that could be improved to enhance EW operational effectiveness:
- Doctrinal alignment: EW needs to be clearly defined and integrated into joint capstone and keystone documents to provide consistent guidance across the joint forces
- Electromagnetic spectrum management: commercial interests are often in conflict with DoD operational requirements for EMS planning and real-time spectrum management
- Realistic EW training: operators at all levels need EW system training, but training options must mitigate adversary opportunities to observe and exploit U.S. capabilities
- Data sharing: the electronic warfare integrated reprogramming (EWIR) process must move at an operationally relevant pace, and new methods for data sharing can help
Ultimately, the U.S. EW ecosystem evolved out of decades of direct investment as well as growth in related and supporting industries, and it is meeting military’s current needs. But in order to maintain EMS superiority in the future, the DoD must remove the roadblocks identified in this paper and continue to critically examine the U.S. EW ecosystem to maintain collaboration, creativity, innovation, and operational effectiveness in the future.
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