Our adversaries are formidable and the battle for control of the electromagnetic spectrum gets harder every day. The signal environment is dense, and adversaries’ electronic warfare (EW) systems are increasingly complex and resilient. They use a broader range of the spectrum, advanced waveforms, and networked capabilities, and have access to rapidly reprogrammable high-performance hardware.
Gone are the days of years-long development cycles and extended periods of developmental and operational testing. Complex digital threats evolve at a much faster pace than classic EW development.
For the warfighter, speed is life. The Department of Defense (DoD) and industry must pull together to get effective EW capabilities into their hands as quickly as possible and must continue to deliver advanced capabilities through iterative improvements and continuous mission learning. We need to react faster, often with less information up front. We also need to be able to adapt our work when we get new information and/or requirements change – which is a new way of thinking about traditional defense acquisition.
While we don’t know everything on day one of a program, we know enough to get started, and how to work with our partners, customers, and supply network to collaborate across boundaries to deliver flexible capabilities that can evolve at the speed of need.
Effective capabilities
Operational analysis is a critical component of EW design and development. Each EW capability must earn its way into the arsenal through demonstrated performance. That starts with tactics development where the capability is challenged in model form to achieve mission success against new and postulated threats.
EW models are educated by real-world data captured at the leading edge of the battlespace and analyzed for performance and limitations.
By working with the customer community to better understand emerging threats, missions, and tactics, we are better prepared to fully utilize effective modeling and simulation and data-driven development, creating a continuous development and improvement flow.
Open architecture – fieldable mission software suites
Open architecture is critical to EW development because it enables agile software-defined radio (SDR) capabilities that can rapidly evolve to meet the changing threat. The push for open architectures is about standardizing requirements and interfaces to drive faster development timelines and enable rapid capability sharing across multiple platforms with minimal effort. Ported capabilities can increase operational effectiveness without reinvention.
BAE Systems is actively developing modern open architecture standards in collaboration with industry and defense partners. We have been building SDRs for years, and are now focusing on making them more open, modular, and configurable. We have a significant amount of fielded hardware today. With minor firmware/software updates, we can unlock its potential.
Open architecture, like the core design of our Storm EWTM spectrum warfare suite, opens the aperture for software developers to run applications. Today, a growing number of companies and research labs (including our FAST Labs™ research, development, and production organization) are building highly portable and effective apps and mission capabilities. Broadening the pool of available developers enables and encourages competition and speeds the delivery of innovative new capabilities to the fleet.
Creation of EW applications by independent industry developers (or the DoD) amplifies a need for a capability integrator whose role is to ensure harmonious operation, cyber resiliency, and resource management to meet overall mission objectives.
While open EW architectures evolve and become outdated, the core tenets of capability against threats and flexibility do not. The use of open architectures drives the DoD and industry to continuously adapt throughout the life cycle of an enduring fleet.
Leveraging military electronics – hardware for operational overmatch
The reuse of common core EW hardware will also be critical for accelerating capabilities to the field. BAE Systems is working on a common suite of highly capable, highly produceable multifunction mission systems and software. These common hardware building blocks can be customized for specific platforms and missions, leveraging years of engineering and manufacturing expertise and cutting costs. Leveraging existing hardware provides customizable, platform-agnostic EW systems for existing fleets – including those of our allies – and provides access to a growing library of software capabilities.
Custom and COTS hardware
Highly capable EW suites will require a blend of custom, high-performance military hardware with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. There is a time and place for COTS, and there are absolutely cases where highly specialized hardware is critical to mission success.
Commercial computing power continues to rapidly improve and is accessible to adversaries. COTS hardware is good for some applications, but is not always the best solution for EW systems where performance and latency matter. The highly congested electromagnetic environment has intense processing demands, and EW systems need to respond rapidly to threats when lives are on the line.
Custom military electronics make sure that our warfighters have overmatch capabilities against the adversary across the spectrum – faster response, higher power, and embedded functions unmatched by COTS.
Adaptable EW
Not every system in the strike package needs to be able to defeat advanced adversaries on its own. As tactics and networked EW capabilities evolve, swarms of platforms of varying sizes will collectively deliver EW effects on the battlefield. Transceivers and EW hardware in the future will come in all shapes and sizes. They will need to deliver capabilities on tight timelines, and in many cases, must fit into tight spaces. Those systems will help the government do more with what’s already been developed and will have the flexibility to empower the platforms of the future.
Continuous testing & training
Capability integration, validation, and testing will also be critical for delivering effective mission capabilities at the speed of the fight. Continuous testing and training readies warfighters for effective mission operation, exploring every corner of performance via high-fidelity simulations and real-world operations to ensure the equipment, capabilities, and most importantly – the people – are ready for the fight.
By Mike Roske with Mark Daly, Communications