The need for cyber and electronic warfare dominance in today’s dynamic battlespace

Covering the full range of electromagnetic radiation including radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet and gamma rays, the EMS plays a role in everything from accessing the internet to listening to music and enjoying a myriad of other wireless enabled capabilities.

It is also critical to modern warfare – enabling both communication and sensing. But as the demand placed on it continues to grow, it is becoming increasingly both congested and contested. For example, cell phones use spectrum close to safety-critical radars, while in combat, commanders wish to deny their enemies' use of the EMS while guaranteeing their own.

This increasing complexity and interconnection of wireless systems has blurred the traditional lines between 'cyber' and 'electronic warfare', leading to the concept of 'cyber and electromagnetic activities' (CEMA).

Increasingly, CEMA is being seen as a distinct domain of warfare. Indeed, adversaries are increasingly using offensive and defensive CEMA in their operations, presenting a pressing requirement to defend against this growing threat and secure EM spectrum dominance.

Operational requirement

In today’s increasingly digital battlespace, our military leaders have requirements to understand, deny, deceive, manipulate and exploit the EMS. This in itself isn’t new. Defence organisations have long been focused on collecting, analysing and competing in the EMS through the likes of Radar and Electro-Optical sensing.

However, the degree of EM activity has exploded in recent years. A corresponding acceleration of technology and cyber activities in our connected world have created a complex state of perpetual competition and complexity. Simply put: there’s an information overload. Multiple distributed sensors, multiple platforms and multiple threats requiring a greater degree of coordination.

To succeed in such an environment, we must be able to see clearly in order to act and continuously adapt and improve. Mastering the increasingly complex and congested CEMA environment – which now pervades all aspects of military operations across all domains – is therefore critical to achieving and sustaining advantage over adversaries.

We must be able to leverage the full electromagnetic spectrum to detect, exploit, and counter advanced threats. Threats that typically appear simultaneously, along with battlespace information and responses from a large number of distributed platforms. This requires a CEMA enterprise that can operate with three key characteristics: speed, agility and versatility.

With the right CEMA capabilities in place, militaries can acquire, use and integrate information with physical actions to create an operational effect. What’s more, they can collect, manage and exploit battlespace information to drive successful conflict outcomes.

Ultimately, being able to understand CEMA, operate successfully within it and leverage it to gain an information advantage in multi-domain operations is a complex challenge that is best addressed by careful integration, synchronisation and coordination. This is what enables full exploitation of the wireless spectrum to protect troops on the ground, support better decision making and enable operational flexibility across multi-domain operations.

Our long-term commitment

BAE Systems Digital Intelligence has over 30 years' experience providing solutions to complex problems across the cyber and electromagnetic environment. Today, we are committed to tackling the CEMA and electronic warfare challenges facing our customers, as illustrated by our recent acquisition of UK-based CEMA specialist Kirintec.

Bringing together complementary technologies from BAE Systems and Kirintec, this acquisition enhances our CEMA product offerings and counter-IED and counter-UAS capabilities in the UK and abroad. 

By combining our battle-proven technology that protects military platforms and personnel from cyber and electromagnetic attacks – while accelerating technology development in key areas – the joining of our two companies will make us ideally placed to deliver EM Spectrum dominance and provide advanced, life-saving technology for the UK and allied nations’ Armed Forces.