This article originally appeared on Government Technology Insider.
Fighting a war against a peer or near-peer adversary is a challenge to begin with. Trying to win battles when weapon systems are unpredictably failing or malfunctioning is a nightmare that only adds to the struggle. Unfortunately for Ukrainian soldiers battling against the almost three years-long invasion of their country by Russian forces, this is very much the reality.
According to a recent article by Business Insider, “Drone operators flying uncrewed aircraft over Ukraine are constantly running into invisible shields, causing them to suddenly lose control of their drones as signals are severed. Everything’s normal, and then suddenly, the controls are dead, feeds are out, and it’s gone.”
These soldiers are battling to protect their homeland from a larger, better-equipped force, and they’re losing some of their best weapons to threats that they can’t even see. This frustrating situation is a result of Russia’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities – which interfere with, deny, or degrade the signals that modern militaries rely on for communications, command and control, and other essential use cases.
Unfortunately for the United States, any peer or near-peer adversary that the Department of Defense (DoD) has to face in the future will have sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities at their disposal. This means understanding, preparing for, and countering the electronic warfare threat will be paramount to ensure victory and mission success.
To truly understand the disruptive threat that electronic warfare capabilities pose, we have to look at their impact on the battlefield and their ability to negatively impact how our military operates.
Fighting an Invisible Foe
Electronic warfare is one of the most difficult types of warfare to fight because it involves electrons, and it’s difficult to fight what you can’t see. Because of this, a significant amount of energy is being expended to simply identify and understand the electromagnetic spectrum, and better understand how the spectrum is affected by electronic warfare.
Electronic warfare is a cross-domain solution that enables the enemy to set the conditions for preemption control of the battlefield. For example, let’s look at position, navigation, and timing (PNT).
Denying PNT signals – such as the signals from the GPS constellation – through jamming or spoofing can have a tremendous impact on any military. The military has become dependent on the GPS constellation to deliver accurate and reliable PNT – using it to coordinate troop movements and positions and even relying on it for the precision timing needed for effectors and communications networks.
Any system that the military relies that heavily on is a critical vulnerability. The adversary knows that the GPS constellation is vital to multiple systems, missions, and operations, and will look to deny it. Unfortunately, that is easier than our military would like – GPS signals are relatively weak and unencrypted, making them incredibly easy to jam or spoof.
This is just one way in which electronic warfare can disrupt military operations at the tactical edge, but it’s far from the only way. Electronic warfare can also help adversaries find troops and “watch” troop movements.
Even if troops operate in an area where the adversary has limited intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, or they’re moving at night under the cover of darkness, their electronic signatures or “electronic footprints” are visible. By finding areas with a significant concentration of electronic signatures, or watching as those electronic signals move across the landscape, adversaries can identify troop locations and movements.
Together, this means that electronic warfare can not only make coordinated troop movements difficult but can also make them visible to the adversary. Also, considering the importance of PNT signals like GPS on communications networks and weapons systems, electronic warfare can leave troops unable to move, hide, communicate, or shoot.
But I’ve mainly focused on the use of electronic warfare to deny capabilities. There is another more sinister electronic warfare capability that our adversaries possess – the ability to spoof signals and make it impossible to trust the signal sets they’re receiving. This is all too possible with GPS signals, which can be easily spoofed by transmitters that are physically closer and sending out stronger signals than the actual GPS constellation.
In this environment, soldiers attempting to maneuver might not know if they’re going where they think they’re going, or being manipulated by an adversary’s signal set. The warfighter may not even know they’re getting bad information or intelligence, because they simply can’t see the environment around them.
So, what can be done to ensure signals can be trusted and acts of electronic warfare are unsuccessful?
Learn, Harden, Train
Each of the services has made electronic warfare assurance a top priority – which is essential on today’s modern battlefield. As a result, each service is actively working to track its information and signals and embrace technologies that can help to protect this information as it’s delivered to the warfighter at the tactical edge.
That’s important, as this problem will only become more critical in the era of CJADC2, as the military more widely embraces sensors at the tactical edge that enable it to “sense, make sense, and act.”
The DoD is increasingly reliant on sensors at the edge to help inform decision-making. But they could find themselves making decisions on bad data if the signals from the edge aren’t coming from these sensors, or if it’s being manipulated by the adversary.
Ultimately, as sensors and data become more essential to military decision-making and the execution of the mission, it’s beyond imperative that systems are hardened against electronic warfare. It’s also essential that the warfighter is trained to detect, identify, and counter an adversary’s electronic warfare capabilities.
In my next article on Government Technology Insider, I’ll take a deeper dive into the training requirements of electronic warfare and how soldiers can be prepared to fight back against an enemy they can’t see and an attack they might not even know is happening.
