R&I – FS
WASHINGTON: The US Army’s electronic warfare portfolio is maturing with critical electronic warfare capabilities scheduled for fielding or prototyping in the next year.
The service is in the midst of a multi-year effort to rebuild its EW capabilities, after largely not investing in those platforms since the end of the Cold War. Through several new platforms, soldiers at the brigade level and higher will receive systems that will enable them to do electronic sensing and attack, as well as give commanders a better understanding of the electronic environment on the battlefield.
Closest to fielding is the Army’s Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT), designed to allow a commander to better understand and visualize the electromagnetic spectrum on the battlefield during an operation. That should, in theory, lead to better planning choices and decisions on which EW system to apply to any given situation.
Ken Strayer, program manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, said that EWPMT is expected to request a full-deployment decision at the end of the current fiscal year with initial fielding scheduled for FY23. The initial plan is to upgrade units with earlier versions of EWPMT to the full kit.
“Up until EWPMT, we had no way to really understand and visualize the spectrum, whether that is the current environment from the commercial activity that’s out, or our blue friendly communications and red enemy communications,” Strayer told Breaking Defense. “Now a commander will be able to understand the environment and he’ll be able to do mission planning so that when he’s planning an operation he can understand how the spectrum and the terrain will be able to impact his ability to that operation.”
Bugs Marlowe