Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) Integration

We all depend on access to the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) in our everyday lives to communicate, access the Internet, listen to music and enjoy a myriad of other wireless enabled capabilities on offer. Our military users do too, but they also have requirements to understand, deny, deceive, manipulate and exploit the EMS.

The Cyber and Electromagnetic Environment (CEME) pervades all aspects of military operations, across all domains, meaning that to exploit it to the best advantage we must consider an integrated approach. Our ability to master this increasingly complex and congested environment will be critical to achieving and sustaining advantage over our adversaries. To do so we must pay attention to how we provide and orchestrate our Cyber and Electromagnetic Activity (CEMA).

So what is new? After all, defence and security organisations have long been involved for years in collecting, analysing and competing in the EMS, for example Radar, Electro-Optical sensing and communications. But things have changed; the degree of EM activity has exploded globally with a corresponding acceleration of technology and cyber activities in our connected world have created a complex state of perpetual competition or warfare. Multiple distributed sensors, multiple platforms and multiple threats need a greater degree of coordination. To succeed in such an environment we must be able to see clearly to act and be able to continuously adapt and improve.

CEMA Integration

BAE Systems believes CEMA Integration is key to enabling MOD to secure and sustain Information Advantage. In the diagram below we illustrate CEMA Integration as the intersection of the three overlapping circles of Cyber, EW and Security which are focused on the system function of; access and exploit, protect, collect and manipulate, complemented by integration with platforms and with people.

Cyber – This includes defensive and offensive cyber and wireless cyber; where knowledge of and potential manipulation at a data layer or above takes place.
Electronic Warfare (EW) – In this context EW relates to the understanding and exploitation of the EMS. It is different from wireless cyber in that it operates on a layer below the decoded data. Communications, sonar and electro-optical may be considered to sit within here.
Security –This covers protection of the capability. This includes elements of defensive cyber; protecting the information and the capability from threats and the likes of reverse engineering seeking to duplicate or identify vulnerabilities within.
Platforms – On which the CEMA capability is physically fitted (e.g. ship, aircraft) or hosted (e.g. a database, cloud).
People – People need to be fully integrated into the operation and capability development.

None of these capability components can be isolated from the others without compromising overall effectiveness. And to remain competitive, capability must be founded on the underpinning principles of open architectures and standards. Bringing these considerations together, is a challenge, but one that BAE Systems as a CEMA Integrator addresses.

To enable CEMA integration, we work with our customers to:

Understand and exploit a congested and contested EMS, where deception may play a part, through the use of equipment, applications, training and working with best in class partners
Integrate CEMA capabilities with the platform where numerous systems are interacting with the EMS and need to be coordinated assured and accredited (e.g. radar, communications, jammers, defensive aids etc.)
Architect CEMA and platform solutions to be secure and support effects delivery
Support the development of standards and CEMA Open Architectures to make sure systems are flexible and adaptable to provide for sustainable advantage and to support the need for multi-domain working across multiple distributed platforms
Support the development of national skills

Future Proofing ECM

New technologies such as 5G New radio cannot be defeated by turning up the power. BAE Systems modern ECM solutions address the data layers to enable future threats to be mitigated.

Software Defined Radios

SDRs are key to CEMA, providing flexible access to the EMS. Our SDRs are designed to open standards to support integration with multiple systems and applications.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Our data scientists are working to push intelligence toward the edge by applying machine learning analytics to military scenarios on real and synthetic data.