Better EMS Management Key to Electronic Warfare, Panelists Say

The key areas of electronics warfare (EW) that the Department of Defense should focus on are training and readiness, technology and leadership, Larsen said. One of the most important steps to take to improve the ability to control the spectrum is to improve EW leadership within the military services, at the joint level and within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he said. Lack of unified EW leadership is the No. 1 problem facing the military’s ability to control the spectrum, he said, citing research reports from the U.S. Strategic Command. A leadership structure for EW will create a more obvious career path for EW specialists and high-ranking leaders will have more clout when it comes to setting policy and fighting for resources, Larsen said.

Changes in leadership structure are necessary and each service needs to have a general or flag officer who focuses on EW, Larsen said. There should be a joint military organization to coordinate EW across the services and advocate for the budget for it, he said. The Defense Department should create an EW position within the Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to ensure there is appropriate attention on EW within the department, Larsen said. This type of leadership structure will ensure that as the immediate threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) fades, senior policymakers will be reminded of the importance of controlling the spectrum, he said. The most visible and publicized example of EW in the last few years has been the fight against IEDs in Iraq, Larsen noted. Insurgents there built IEDs which are detonated by simple devices like cellphones and garage door openers, he noted.

Larsen, co-chair of the Congressional EW Working Group, sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that requires the department to submit an EW report to Congress each year for the next five years. The law requires the report to include information on the department’s EW strategy, its EW leadership structure and the major EW programs it’s working on. The report was due last February but has not yet been submitted -- “we are going to continue pressing DoD to get this information to Congress, as required by law, as soon as possible,” Larsen said. “I have spoken with Chairman [Ike] Skelton, [D-Mo.], and believe that this report, when submitted, would be a good topic for a hearing early next year."

A core group of highly-trained individuals is needed to help each service identify threats to the spectrum, develop and deploy solutions to these threats and to coordinate EW systems in combat to ensure control over spectrum, Larsen said. Investment is important, he said, noting during times of peace, EW is one of the first places that get cut because it’s not as visible as ships, planes and tanks. An area for improvement is cooperation with allies on EW, Larsen said. “We need to continue to focus on making our relationship with NATO more ‘need to share’ and less ‘need to know’ so that we can work more with our partners to defeat insurgent weapons.”

Blair Levin of Aspen Institute warned of a spectrum crisis, a big threat to the U.S. economy. The cost of transmitting information will be higher “if we don’t get more spectrum into the marketplace,” he said, saying a lot of broadband policy focuses on the wireline network. If there was an investment company forced to invest money based on how it invested it 60 years ago, it would go out of business, Levin said. One of the best assets that the U.S. government can invest in is spectrum, he said: But in many ways “spectrum is being allocated not on the basis of markets, not on the basis of technology, not on the basis of consumer demand, but rather on the basis of history.” Levin noted the need for a secondary spectrum market mechanism, which would give the primary spectrum holders a chance to monetize the spectrum when they aren’t using it.

Security and privacy are big parts of spectrum use and management, other panelists said. Security must be built from the start, said Donald Boian, technical director with the U.S. Cyber Command. Establishing trust is essential for spectrum sharing, said John Chapin with MIT Research Lab of Electronics. It’s critical to find tools that can identify the sources of interference and ways to shut down the source of interference, he said. He also supports “substantial” spectrum allocation for commercial wireless use, dynamic spectrum access and spectrum sharing. Spectrum is going to be incredibly important as the industry moves to cloud computing, said Michael Nelson, visiting professor at Georgetown University. It’s likely that “we will have different policies for different types of spectrum,” said Kaigham Gabriel, deputy director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.