NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Ukrainian forces are exploiting gaps in Russian jamming and spoofing capabilities, opening seams during which they make noticeable gains on the battlefield, in response to a U.S. Air Force commander.
While the Russian military seeks to interrupt Ukrainian command and control and block access to the electromagnetic spectrum, used for communications and weapons guidance, amongst other vital tasks, Ukrainians are resilient and resourceful of their application of electronic warfare, said Col. Josh Koslov, the leader of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing.
“The agility being displayed by each parties, in the way in which that they’re executing operations within the spectrum, is awesome,” he told reporters during a discussion on the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. “Either side are doing the cat-and-mouse game very, thoroughly.”
The U.S. is observing the invisible back-and-forth and is taking notes because the Pentagon works to reinvigorate jamming and deception arsenals in preparation for potential conflicts with China or Russia.
The spectrum can be hotly contested in a fight with either.
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“In the long run, for us, if we do confront a peer, being agile and being rapid is the important thing to success within the spectrum,” said Koslov, whose team at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida works to quickly upgrade electronic-warfare tools aboard aircraft. “Not having control of spectrum results in fatalities, results in getting killed. And we’ve seen that point and time again in that conflict.”
The 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, established two years ago, is the primary of its kind and the outgrowth of an electromagnetic spectrum superiority study.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown this 12 months warned Congress the Defense Department was losing its ability to fend off attacks on the electromagnetic spectrum, leaving troops exposed. Prioritization of high-end electronic warfare systems fell off following the Cold War.
Koslov, in an interview last month, told C4ISRNET he agreed with Brown’s assessment and was working to deal with the difficulty.
“I believe where we have now to focus is on the highest-end or most-difficult problems, because I imagine within the lesser-included threat, which suggests if I could do it at the best end, I should have the option to adapt to lower-end threats,” he said on the time.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a every day newspaper in South Carolina. Colin can be an award-winning photographer.