WASHINGTON — Bombs boom. Tanks trundle. Fighters fly. All are visible to the human eye and are familiar images of war.
But invisible battles are fought, too. And because the U.S. prepares for potential conflict with China within the Indo-Pacific or with Russia in Europe, the worth of the electromagnetic spectrum is proving paramount. Militaries depend on the unseen energy to speak, guide weapons, spoof and spy, and more.
The U.S. military in 2021 activated the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, a first-of-its-kind entity aimed squarely at spectrum dominance and related electronic warfare equipment. Headquartered at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the wing is staffed by engineers and EW specialists, including its commander, Col. Joshua Koslov.
In an interview with C4ISRNET, Koslov discussed the importance of his wing; its ties to the Pentagon’s connect-everything campaign often known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2; and concerns expressed by no less than one Air Force senior leader that the U.S. is losing its EW “muscle memory.”
The conversation below was edited for length and clarity.
What makes the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing special? Why was this wing essential?
There wasn’t a commander who was focused on Air Force electronic warfare varieties of activities. In order that they needed to place all that into one place, where we will develop the tactics, the techniques, the procedures, the thought processes and deliberately develop the people to have the ability to tell war plans and budgets in an effort to be certain that we gain the advantage that we’d like to within the spectrum. And that’s what the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing’s job is.
Now we have three primary missions. What we do is rapidly reprogram. We do goal waveform development, after which we do assessment. What that’s, is de facto a circle of the things we’ve to have the ability to do within the spectrum.
The adversary goes to react to what we’re doing, we’ve to have the ability to reprogram our systems quickly based on that response, and we’ve to develop latest capability in an effort to attack latest systems that come online from our adversaries, after which we’ve to have the ability to grasp, from a readiness perspective, from tooth to tail, on data production, data reception to data transmission, how good are we within the spectrum.
That’s the main focus of this wing, and that’s what’s going to make us win if we’ve to fight a peer competitor.
EW has been considered a supporting effort, not necessarily something that leads the way in which. Is that also accurate, or how has the considering modified?
That’s a very good query, and it’s at the basis of why we exist as a wing.
What has modified is the importance of the spectrum environment. After we were fighting in the worldwide war on terror, we were fighting against an enemy that basically couldn’t reach out and touch us. And so things got easier. And the way in which we use the spectrum was a special way than we’d like to against a near-peer, once we’re breaking down the door of integrated air defense systems, and like systems, which have the chance to or the flexibility to kill our forces.
So we realized we had a deficit, and we created the electromagnetic superiority strategy and identified numerous tasks that the Air Force and the Department of Defense, writ large, had to perform in an effort to regain complete advantage within the spectrum. A part of that’s an understanding that our systems and our adversary systems rely heavily on the spectrum.
This wing is a bit unique in a way that we give attention to the Air Force, but I’m a joint and coalition wing, and the spectrum itself is inherently coalition, inherently joint. It’s a standard. And our adversaries are constructing weapons systems that depend on it, similar to we’re.
When you can dominate and control it — whether totally or in pockets of excellence — you’re going to win engagements and battles and wars.
So I feel the way in which that I speak about it on a regular basis is that where we’d like to go along with the spectrum is: We are able to use EW to realize the joint force commander’s objectives across the dimensions of conflict, from competition to high-end conflict.
How have you ever and your team folded EW into Air Force and joint exercises recently? What does that really appear like?
EW, from a platform perspective, has at all times been a part of our training exercises. Nevertheless, what we’ve done recently is we’ve amplified the quantity of rapid reprogramming and data transfer in our exercises. I’ve attempted to have our blue forces pay a penalty — a stiff penalty — for not responding appropriately.
I view this wing as an operational warfighting wing; our weapon goes to be data, EW data. And we’re integrating that now.
A challenge for that’s that it’s very hard, within the EW world where things are highly classified, to essentially wring out all the tactics, techniques and procedures. So we’re also really influencing the event of a virtual environment that fully encompasses the way in which we will train and operate within the spectrum.
What makes training effective is with the ability to assess and debrief at the tip of the day. What makes that transition out of your query about ‘EW kind of being within the background and you may’t see it’ is the flexibility to evaluate after which, in debrief, provide tactics which are accessible and understood by the team, in an effort to construct that confidence, so which you could prove to the joint force commander which you could meet his objectives with using electronic warfare capabilities.
Air Force Gen. CQ Brown told Congress recently the U.S. was losing its EW muscle memory, which could leave troops vulnerable. Do you agree with that assessment, and what may be done to rebuild those muscles?
I absolutely agree with that, because that’s why this wing exists, to rebuild that muscle memory. That’s our charge. It’s, for america Air Force through america Air Force Warfare Center, to lift our EW game across the force.
We try this in a really focused effort based on our pacing challenge campaign plan. We try this through developing training, tactics and assessment procedures that increase the readiness of the force.
I feel where we’ve to focus is on the highest-end or most difficult problems, because I consider within the lesser-included threat, which suggests if I could do it at the very best end, I should have the ability to adapt to lower-end threats.
Is there any electromagnetic spectrum-related tech you see China or Russia or some other competitor or adversary developing that is especially troubling to U.S. interests?
Russia and China — China specifically — have invested very significantly in EW capabilities and other capabilities, like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and cyber, in places where they think they’ll find our soft underbelly of weakness.
Everyone has recognized that the long run 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.
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Each of them, our adversaries, have approached the issue a bit bit otherwise. But they’re definitely raising their game. Where I’d assess the places where we’d like to proceed to focus is on our attack capability and on our ability to rapidly change within the environment.
We’re on this era of JADC2. How do you see protection of those critical networks proceeding? How can the Air Force or EW operations help foster that widespread connectivity the Pentagon wants?
First off, defense is critical, right? My flippant answer to you is the perfect defense is a very good offense, and we’ve got to improve on offense, and we’ve got to improve at closing kill chains faster. That’s No. 1.
The second a part of that’s: I even have five things which are super critical to the success of this wing. And so they’re those foundational things that I talked about earlier.
The primary one among those is crowdsourced flight data. What that’s, is prioritizing the assets which have the perfect data collected off our adversary systems and getting them into one place so then I can manipulate that data and create latest capability against that data.
With a view to try this, it requires an information architecture, multi-classification that’s able to doing that and housing that data and allowing access to the parents that need it. Then an important a part of that’s what we affectionately call electromagnetic battle management, as a part of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System.
I want to have the ability to speak that data off those prioritized jets to the reprogramming centers and the aptitude builders after which have the ability to speak that back out to the warfighters before their next combat sortie. What is going to make that easier is a completely realized ABMS and ensuring that EW requirements are integrated into the Air Force’s ABMS and the joint force’s JADC2 architecture.
One among the ways in which we’ll have the ability to try this faster is a buzzword. It’s cognitive EW.
There are folks on the market that may speak about cognitive EW because it’s out at the sting of combat, and it’s making its own decisions and jamming things and that type of stuff. That future will occur. I feel it’s probably 10 to fifteen years away to occur at the dimensions that we speak about sometimes in articles and stuff.
But really what I’m talking about is once you’ve gotten all that data pulled up, and also you’ve communicated it using electromagnetic battle management — the algorithms to scroll through terabytes of knowledge quickly, to discover the critical things that we’d like to work on, after which have the ability to get that information back out to the sting as quickly as possible.
The ultimate piece, the fifth thing, is with the ability to assess that tooth-to-tail process, each for speed and accuracy, in an effort to have the ability to codify risk for joint force commanders once they’re trusting us to satisfy their objectives.
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.