Professional military personnel sometimes refer to electronic warfare (EW) as the forgotten discipline — they also remind NATO allies of its importance.
Electronic warfare can have significant mission impact – even in the simplest possible scenario. For example, having an adversary monitor one’s communications or eliminate one’s ability to communicate or navigate can be catastrophic.
Likewise, having an adversary know the location of friendly forces based on their electronic transmissions is highly undesirable and can put those forces at a substantial disadvantage.
Electronic warfare (EW) is a broad category of technical capabilities focused on the strategic use of the electromagnetic spectrum against an enemy in a military conflict.
Not long ago the Pentagon published an Electronic Warfare strategy that calls for increased investment in advanced electronic warfare technology designed to defend U.S. assets and proactively use the electromagnetic spectrum against enemies.
Today, current EW tools consist of devices for jamming, eavesdropping and using radio waves or laser light to confuse or disable an enemy’s electronics. But in actuality, despite the tendency for some to overlook its importance, electronic warfare is a rapidly evolving field.
It may not be long before the technology exists to cloak military aircraft and Naval vessels and make them vanish the way the Klingons did it in Star Trek.
Within 10 years, many experts are forecasting EW modalities will include multispectral, multimode and multifunctional capabilities. For instance, active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs) are already multimode but over a narrow band. Totally digital arrays are on the drawing board where the electronics (behind every element in the array) are digital and the array can be controlled in every aspect at the element level.
Machine learning will most likely be the driving force behind these advanced arrays so they are capable of learning on the fly to be cooperative or disruptive whenever they need to be.
Want to learn more about electronic warfare? Tonex offers several EW courses.
Additionally, Tonex offers nearly 400 classes, seminars and workshops in close to four dozen categories of systems engineering training.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.