WASHINGTON: As the Joint Staff develops a Joint Warfighting Concept to guide America’s new way of war, All Domain Operations, it’s becoming increasingly clear that control of the electromagnetic spectrum is key to its success, says Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten. And that means setting spectrum requirements will be key to ADO.
“We have to be able to effectively fight and win the electromagnetic spectrum fight right from the beginning — that is, electronic warfare in every domain,” Hyten told the Association of Old Crows (AOC). Hyten chairs the Joint Staff’s Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team, and, in addition, is the “senior designated official for EMSO, electromagnetic spectrum operations, in the Department of Defense.”
“Information advantage,” as Breaking D readers know, is one of four subcomponents to the Joint Warfighting Concept, along with joint fires, all-domain command and control, and contested logistics. While JCS Chair Gen. Mark Milley tasked the Navy to flesh out the approach to joint fires; the Air Force, Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), and the Army, contested logistics, Hyten back in September said the Joint Staff itself is working to conceptualize “information advantage” because no service volunteered.
But, Hyten explained, controlling use of the spectrum — that is ensuring US forces have access for communications and at the same time jamming enemy access — is critical to establishing that information advantage. “Under information advantage is the ability to achieve spectrum superiority in all domains,” Hyten said. “We have to be able to do that. If you can’t do that, you will fail. You will fail in your mission,” he told the AOC yesterday.
The current plan, Hyten said, is for the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC, which he chairs) to finalize the requirements for each of the Joint Warfighting Concept subcomponents “in late spring.” This will include setting requirements for the services to meet in building capabilities for what DoD now calls ElectroMagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO) within the information advantage subcomponent requirements set.
EMSO, one expert explained, is a relatively new DoD term of art that encompasses spectrum management to ensure secure communications for US commanders and troops in the field and electronic warfare (EW) against adversaries. In the past, the expert said, those two things were the purview of separate, stovepiped communities within the services and combatant commands, which let to problems — including blue-on-blue jamming.
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