What is Electronic Warfare?
Since the employment of two-way radios and radars in World War II, electronic warfare (EW) has played a vital role in military operations around the world. EW is broad – its effects and impacts essentially play a role across the entire range of military and intelligence operations. The more rigorously a military exploits EW capabilities, the more capable it is of preempting, detecting, and responding to enemy activity.
EW’s Role in Military Operations
EW operations generally fall within three categories: attacking, protecting, and supporting. While these activities often overlap, they individually play key roles in enabling military operations.
Attack
After identifying adversary targets, militaries can then attack by jamming radio frequencies, sabotaging digital transmissions, spoofing navigational and other spatial data, or even exploiting enemy electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) emissions to conduct a kinetic strike using Anti-Radiation Missiles.
At the operational level, infrared sensors can help identify enemy targets, while specialized aircraft, such as the EA-18 “Growler,” can jam enemy radars and communications networks, allowing for follow-on kinetic strikes.
Protect
Militaries can protect against enemy EW attacks, while simultaneously ensuring allies’ and partners’ unfettered access to the EMS. This can be accomplished through electronic countermeasures defending against enemy jamming attempts, ensuring cybersecurity of digitalized information flow, and encrypting friendly communications.
In Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have extensively used EW to counter drones. This includes using high-powered microwaves to disable drones’ internal mechanisms, jamming techniques to disrupt links between drones and operators, and even radio frequency spoofing to disrupt location accuracy.
Support
Support is a crucial aspect of EW operations, to include identifying and cataloguing both friendly and enemy EMS emissions, to either defend friendly emissions, or target and then attack enemy emissions.
Strategically, EW plays a vital role in intelligence collection. Satellites collect immense amounts of geospatial data, signals intelligence, and electronic intelligence, all while simultaneously relaying information across commercial and military networks alike. Degradation or destruction of these satellite systems can play an impactful role in dictating execution of military strategy and operations.
The Challenge
In an increasingly digital, electronic world, our systems and networks—both commercial and military—are increasingly vulnerable to EW. Critical infrastructure, such as telecommunications, power grids, and transportation networks, can be a target itself, but it can also become collateral damage during attacks against military targets. While the US boasts extensive EW capabilities, its expertise was honed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria at the tactical level countering improvised explosive devices (IED). Meanwhile, China and Russia were developing their EW capabilities specifically to combat peer adversaries.
How Tier Tech International, Inc. Can Help
EW, like so many challenges today, provides both risk and opportunity. Tier Tech International, Inc. (TTI) offers our Strategic Design Approaches (SDA) to help organizations deal with the most complex challenges. As an example, through TTI’s Risk Prioritization and Mitigation (RPM) process, your organization can identify which risks matter most and buy down risk associated with EW and related cybersecurity challenges. By prioritizing risk, your organization can best prepare itself for mission success by ensuring both proper defense against EW threats and integration with US offensive EW capabilities. Contact TTI for more information.
