New Adversaries Bring a New Focus on Electronic Warfare for the DoD
When the Global War on Terror began, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) found itself facing a different type of adversary – an asynchronous threat that lacked sophisticated weaponry and systems. With this two-decade-long conflict at its end, aggression from Russia and China forced the DoD to once again prepare for great power competition.
Unfortunately, the military is finding that 20 years of fighting against an asymmetrical threat has resulted in the atrophy of certain skills and capabilities that are necessary when facing near-peer and peer adversaries. Chief among those skills and capabilities is defensive and offensive electronic warfare, which near-peer and peer adversaries can use to compromise our military’s ability to sense, make sense, and act on the battlefield.
We recently sat down with the CEO of Sigma Defense Systems, Matt Jones, to discuss how this stagnation of electronic warfare within the military and its industrial base is impacting our ability to keep pace with modern adversaries. We also asked Matt about his company’s recent acquisition of electronic warfare specialist, EWA, which is poised to bring this capability into the 21st Century.
Government Technology Insider (GTI): Can you tell our readers a bit about EWA? What electronic warfare capabilities did the company have in its portfolio? Which agencies/services did the company work with?
Matt Jones: EWA has been around for more than 40 years, building and supporting electronic warfare capabilities for the U.S. military. For the past two decades, they’ve also been developing capabilities for the cyber and space domains.
Today, EWA designs and develops space and cyber capabilities to support multi-domain operations. It provides combat systems training, position navigation and timing (PNT) threat systems, and a number of other electronic warfare and space systems across a wide RF spectrum.
The company has traditionally worked with PEO STRI, the Army Test and Evaluation Center, and all of the DoD’s ranges, including White Sands. They’ve also worked with the U.S. Navy, NAVSEA, and the U.S. Space Force.
GTI: Why is electronic warfare so important today? How does the shift to sophisticated peer adversaries increase the importance of EW? Is this a challenge for all services?
Matt Jones: Electronic warfare is the use of the electromagnetic spectrum – radio frequency and beyond – to employ tactics to deny, degrade, and deceive in that spectrum. Electronic warfare is used to deny an adversary’s ability to conduct operations. This can include directed energy and cyber, or any other kind of attack that can degrade, deny, jam, or otherwise impact an adversary’s capabilities.
When you look at the world, and the military post-9/11, the adversary that our military was facing was not a sophisticated adversary. They were an asymmetric threat that used guerilla techniques to fight a more sophisticated enemy. We were not battling against near-peer adversaries that had the ability to utilize sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities.
With the end of the War on Terror, we’ve shifted our focus – as a nation – to new, emerging threats. These threats are more sophisticated, near-peer or peer adversaries that have the ability to leverage electronic warfare to deny our capabilities.
Just look at what’s happening in Ukraine – hyperspectral, hypersonic, and directed energy attacks are all being used against the Ukrainian defense. As a military, the U.S. hasn’t had to be concerned about that for 20 years.
Because it hasn’t been a concern, many of the electronic warfare warriors that existed in our military have retired. Many of the companies that specialized in electronic warfare solutions and capabilities in the defense industrial base (DIB) either stagnated or shifted their investments and portfolios to other solutions and capabilities.
This is a challenge that affects all services and the entire DoD – as well as its coalition partners.
GTI: How does the increased importance of electronic warfare impact EWA? Why are their services so important today?
Matt Jones: As we discussed, there was an arc with electronic warfare. It was incredibly important for decades until about the mid-90s. Then, electronic warfare lost its luster as we shifted focus to asymmetrical threats and non-peer adversaries during the Global War on Terror.
Now, the DoD is looking to identify the pockets of electronic warfare advancement and innovation in the DIB. It’s looking for ways to invest in and rebuild the DIB’s electronic warfare capabilities and focus. It’s also trying to identify electronic warfare capabilities that still exist today that can help the DoD maintain a strategic advantage over its adversaries.
Electronic warfare had almost become a lost art, but companies like EWA prevailed during this period. Today, they remain one of the few companies with expertise in this area that can play a key role in the future fight.
Ultimately, the modern DoD needs to sense, make sense, and act. They also need to do those things in domains that are invisible or outside of our immediate line of sight – like cyber, spectrum, and space. It’s easier to fight when you can see, but we need to be prepared to fight with the lights out.
The electronic warfare capabilities that companies like EWA deliver can help us visualize those domains, protect our capabilities in those domains, and continue to operate should those capabilities be denied.
GTI: Why did Sigma Defense need to add electronic warfare capabilities to its offerings? How does it synergize with existing Sigma Defense capabilities?
Matt Jones: Half a decade ago, Sigma Defense decided that CJADC2 would be the underlying pillar upon which our company would be constructed. Part of that pillar involves linking the “sense, make sense, and act” capabilities that are inherent in CJADC2. We’re committed to helping the military identify how that data interacts and works together.
Electronic warfare is an essential component of CJADC2 today. An enemy’s electronic warfare capabilities can negate our military’s ability to “sense” and “act.” Therefore, adding these capabilities to our portfolio is just common sense.
What’s more, electronic warfare is a chronically underserved market where a cutting-edge partner base does not exist for the DoD. Our dedication to innovation, when applied to this area, can help us truly make a difference for the DoD.
GTI: What can Sigma Defense’s customers expect now that EWA has been acquired by the company? What about EWA’s customers? How are they all benefiting from this partnership?
Matt Jones: Sigma Defense Systems customers will see increased capabilities and innovation in areas that have been stagnant for a long time.
Pre-acquisition, Sigma Defense was working to support CJADC2 for the DoD by helping the military effectively move data – with a focus on moving and making sense of full-motion video data. This is our first foray into methodically and deliberately moving into the domain beyond full-motion video.
Sigma Defense has demonstrated the ability to move full-motion video data from unmanned aerial vehicles. This capability is both incredibly complex and essential for the DoD. The file sizes involved are massive, and the data must be clear and accurate to be effective. We’re able to meet that mission requirement today.
With the addition of EWA, we’re now telling our customers that they can connect and move the data from these unmanned aerial vehicles and the electronic warfare sensors deployed in the same areas and AORs. We’re opening the door to linking electronic warfare sensors performing tactical edge processing. That’s what Sigma Defense Systems customers can expect.
EWA was a world-class builder of electronic warfare systems. However, many sensor companies and manufacturers operate the same way—they develop a sensor that functions and meets requirements in the field but don’t work to ensure that it can communicate or connect with other systems. How that sensor communicates with something else on the battlefield is somebody else’s problem.
Adding EWA’s capabilities to Sigma Defense will solve this problem by extending connectivity to electronic warfare sensors and giving users an inherent ability to move the data on their sensors to other places. It will also give electronic warfare customers a software-enabled DevSecOps environment in which to develop their capabilities.
Many sensor manufacturers build their software without the ability to quickly, confidently, and securely update that software in the field. Bringing the EWA codebase into a DevSecOps infrastructure that extends to the tactical edge will enable users to deploy new security updates, keep the code relevant, and make changes to algorithms in real-time.
GTI: Sigma Defense recently announced that it secured a Task Order from the U.S Army for an AI Powered Virtual Training Environment. What is this environment and what will it do? Why is this needed today, and why is Sigma Defense uniquely qualified to deliver it?
Matt Jones: The future fight is one that you can’t see. Visualizing the future fight is essential for a modern military against near-peer and peer adversaries. Our partner for this task order, Brightline Interactive, is an industry leader in this area. They’ve identified a way to take all of the data flowing through our Olympus Infrastructure and display it in a meaningful way for the operator.
There has been a century-long push for a common operating picture. However, as the battlefield becomes more complex and the pace of warfare accelerates, the military needs to start thinking about the fight in three dimensions. This is where spatial computing plays a role. By partnering with Brightline, we’re bringing synthetic data generation, spatial computing, and GPU computing together into a visualization that makes sense for the battlefield.
This will initially be applied to training environments to visualize how our systems are performing. However, we believe this solution has the potential to change how operators fight.
