Commentary on an article published in National Defense Magazine by NDIA: “BUDGET MATTERS: Electronic Warfare Spending on the Rise,” by Jon Harper; page 10, Aug 2019 edition
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/7/23/electronic-warfare-spending-on-the-rise
I read the article, “Electronic Warfare Spending on the Rise” with alacrity. Everything that was stated in this article is accurate (save the F-35 performing EW missions, but I cannot elaborate further on that). It is laudable and timely that the Department of Defense is attempting to increase EW spending. However, intent to increase spending doesn’t mean that spending will increase. Congress still has the right to fund programs as they see fit, despite what the President proposes in his budget. A vital element is missing from the hearts and minds of this country’s funding decision makers, and that is the omnipresent existence of the electromagnetic environment (EME) and how it impacts our daily lives.
What was not stated in the article is that EW spending is a top priority in a very long list of top priorities. For example, the Government is already spending huge dollars on revitalizing our nuclear force. Our nuclear deterrent is now, and has to stay, our #1 priority (there is an EW piece to that, but that is not directly supporting the conventional warfighting capability). The reality is, we are already spending $700B on defense and we haven’t gotten around to finding the money to promote EW capability. Furthermore, we have to continue buying F-35s and B21s, replacing ICBMs, and upgrading B-52s and KC46s. These are not small dollar programs. When you look at all these things one is compelled to ask, “Will the real top priority thing please stand up?” In other words, when everything is a top priority, nothing is a priority. What I see happening in the next 2-5 years is continued discussion about what we need to do, but no additional money going into the budget to do it.
What we have here is a case of, “Denial of Spectrum Denial (DoSD).” Although people understand EW is important, they don’t understand what it is and how it impacts their daily lives. This mindset can be summed up by the fact that people still assume EW means a jamming pod on an aircraft to protect it from a surface to air missile. The problem is much larger than that.
Denial of Spectrum Denial is the belief that access to the spectrum will always be there (for more information on DoSD, consult <https://warriorss.com/pr_20180213_denial_of_spectrum_denial> . The spectrum could never “be denied,” could it? Banish the thought! However, multiple forces exist today to deny us access to the spectrum, and it is essential that everyone know about them. Right here in the CONUS (continental United States), forces that will deter access to the spectrum include: sell-off and subsequent reuse and reassignment of spectrum frequencies, deployment of 5G, more and more civilian devices being used on the network, and new military technologies that utilize the spectrum in novel and potentially obtrusive ways. In theatre, there is the double threat of adversarial denial through jamming and intentional fratricide, and the unfortunate reality of friendly fratricide, where our own troops bring technology and devices to the fight without having previously coordinated frequency use.
How did we get here? Our military hasn’t yet congealed itself to operate cross-platform and cross-service. There is no doctrine and no real strategy (at the moment) to operate as a joint or coalition force within the EME. The right words are being spoken, the right documents are being written, but the right actions are not being taken. The services continue to enjoy commanding in their physical domains, employing strategy that meets their own mission needs. We need to start working together. The EME penetrates every inch of operating space (every domain if you will) that our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines operate in every day. Being able to operate seamlessly in this environment will take massive amounts of cooperation and collaboration BEFORE we show up to the fight.
With our near peer adversaries engaging in Information Warfare, or Informationized Warfare as Russia and China call it, we must completely change the way we plan to fight. This is going to take big dollars, and where is the funding going to come from to do things like reformulate warfare? Do we kill the F-35 program? What programs do we kill because we are not going to fight like this anymore? Just last month, Brig. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, Deputy Director of Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) and Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Requirements, recently remarked to a captive audience at Wright Dialogue with Industry, “We are going to have to make some big changes and it will take some serious decision making at very senior levels of the DoD to change the basic construct of how we conduct warfare.”
Until we get around to making big decisions like cancelling major, ongoing programs, we need to catalyze change. Short of going to real war or experiencing an international incident, this change can be realized by focusing on culture. In order to do this, the entire community must be educated. Culture change needed based on the education of the whole community, to include our legislators (especially Congress, the funding decision makers!), the DoD and the Services, and the general public. We need to educate everyone on what the spectrum is and how much we depend on it. Most importantly, people need a heathy respect for how the EME can be denied us. Then we can start realistically thinking about how we are going to change warfare, thereby focusing defense spending in the right way to enable warfighting capability in and through the spectrum.
What would this education look like? First, we would need to impart a “knowing” of what the spectrum is and how we use it without knowing it. We would use examples on how we use the spectrum on a day to day basis, minute to minute, hour to hour. For example, for a civilian user: when a cellular phone call is blocked – why is that? It might be that your data plan is out, but it could also mean you are being blocked by an RF jammer. When you are a ground troop using RF to get an update on where your team is because everyone is wearing a computer on their wrist – e.g. “My Blue Force tracker says the rest of my unit is here” – this information could be denied or worse – spoofed – so the data you are looking at is not accurate and you assume it is. And, I am not just speaking about RF – this education must also include the visible spectrum and every frequency from the infrared to the ultraviolet. Every frequency that we use can be denied, so it’s time to start looking at ways to ensure access to the spectrum, and training for the situation when it isn’t there.
In parting, I would like to leave the reader with a hefty thought: the only way we are going to reformulate warfare in the DoD and reconstitute Congressional spending is to designate the electromagnetic environment as a warfighting domain. It is here where our government is accustomed to organizing itself around spot-on decision making and investing prudently for the future fight.
By: Melinda Tourangeau, President and CEO, Warrior Support Solutions, LLC & Chairman of the Board of Directors of the RVJ Institute, Inc.
For more information or to contact Melinda: mtourangeau@rvjinstitute.org
Well said! I would like to add to your line “However, intent to increase spending doesn’t mean that spending will increase.” …or that it will be applied to the right need.