NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Within the time it takes to look at Christopher Nolan’s dawn-of-the-nuclear-age opus “Oppenheimer,” one U.S. Air Force official desires to find a way to siphon threat information from the battlefield, retool electronic warfare systems with it and see the digital updates in motion on the front lines.
While 180 minutes may appear to be an extended time to take a seat in a theater, processing huge amounts of information and updating fighting systems in so short a period is a difficult goal for Col. Josh Koslov, the commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing.
“They’ve some wicked threats on the market, and it takes us just a little bit, working with our engineers, working with intel, to essentially crack the code,” Koslov said Sept. 13, chatting with reporters on the sidelines of the Air, Space and Cyber Conference at National Harbor in Maryland.
The 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing develops waveforms and updates jamming, spoofing and spying kits aboard aircraft reminiscent of the F-35. It’s an outgrowth of an electromagnetic spectrum superiority study conducted by the Department of Defense because it seeks to rejuvenate the military’s electronic warfare capabilities. At just 2 years old, the wing’s legacy to this point is brief. But its potential reach is long.
“Our goal, our moonshot, is three hours,” Koslov said. “For those who take into consideration attempting to get data to fighters, to bombers, to weapons, to countermeasures, to all of the things that we do, that’s a very good number.”
“The best way we used to do it was, type of, an industrial production-based model,” he said. “We updated B-52s and F-15s on this quarterly process, and that’s the way it worked, until we went to a conflict. Throughout the Cold War, there wasn’t a ton of conflicts where we were using those systems. So we got by with that.”
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Modern militaries depend on the spectrum to speak, navigate and guide weapons to their targets; the fight over it — access, manipulation and more — could make or break success. The associated U.S. arsenal atrophied within the years following the Cold War, but officials are reprioritizing in preparation for a fight with Russia in Europe or China within the Indo-Pacific.
“We had such overmatch previously, with the assets that we possessed, and our enemies possessed, that it wasn’t as emphasized. We not have conventional overmatch,” Koslov said. “The best way we’re going to win is by dominating the spectrum.”
At its Eglin Air Force Base home in Florida, personnel with the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing tinker with the newest software and code to counter what’s observed in the sector. Crews have hands on greater than 70 systems, by Koslov’s count, and every has a distinct timeline, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.
“For us, our key platforms are platforms just like the F-35, the B-21, our modern platforms. We get that data transported back to Eglin, then allow our engineers to work on it, after which push it back out to the sting as quickly as possible,” he said. “Our older systems are just a little bit clunkier than our modern systems.”
Updates in peaceful years past have rolled out frequently or in chunks, ultimately lacking the nimbleness the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing wants.
“That’s not ok in a rapid-and-agile spectrum world that we do live in today,” Koslov said. “So we’re changing.”
Key to the commander’s desired three-hour window are crowdsourced data, plucked from the newest sorties, and ensuring the correct info-shuttling networks are in place and insulated. Terabytes of data can be flowing, straining each pipes and parsers.
The Air Force is constructing what’s often called the Advanced Battle Management System, a part of the Defense Department’s larger Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort to attach forces across land, air, sea, space and cyber. By linking once-disparate troops and databases, the U.S. hopes to outwit and outshoot tech-savvy adversaries.
“We’re going to be in a contested spectrum environment. There’s little doubt about that,” said Koslov, who previously led the 609th Air Operations Center in Qatar. “It’s going to be critical that we now have a PACE plan, a backup plan, as a way to find a way to push data and track who has data and who doesn’t, right?”
Koslov doesn’t feel the necessity to scatter specialists across a theater of war to effectively execute the reprogramming mission. As a substitute, he said, there may be value in concentrating operations, as is now the case on the Florida panhandle.
“I don’t foresee putting reprogrammers out on rocks within the Pacific,” he said. “I feel that’s a foul idea.”
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 susceptible on the high-tech battlefields of tomorrow.
Koslov in a separate interview last month agreed with Brown’s appraisal and said his wing takes seriously the charge of constructing back the vital muscle memory.
“Everyone has recognized that the longer term of warfighting is about data, is concerning the spectrum. So we’re all rushing toward the identical objective of with the ability to fight and win within the spectrum,” he said on the time. “Each of them, our adversaries, have approached the issue just a little bit in a different way. But they’re definitely raising their game.”
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 each day newspaper in South Carolina. Colin can also be an award-winning photographer.