Essentials of 21st Century Electronic Warfare Course

Electronic Warfare may be enjoying a moderate “renaissance” due to increasing recognition among commanders at all levels that controlling the Electromagnetic Spectrum and ensuring its availability is critical to all other security missions.  The asymmetric conflicts in the Middle East, the growing reliance on “Net-Centric” warfare, increasing technological parity of foreign nations, unmanned operations, commercial-off-the-shelf technologies, spectrum congestion, and a host of other current trends are greatly shaping notions on what Electronic Warfare is and how it should be applied for future operations.  Increasingly, EW is becoming important beyond the sphere of combat operations, to include the full range of military operations and other national security responsibilities such as Homeland Security and network defense.

This course will provide an overview of Electronic Warfare from its roots in Electronic Combat to its contemporary EM Spectrum Warfare applications.   Although this is not a technical course aimed at engineers, certain technological principles will be presented in order to baseline attendees and help demonstrate the unique knowledge, skills, and abilities that warfare across the EM spectrum requires.   Lessons will include current information from DoD issuances, Joint doctrine, service program plans and roadmaps, analysis projects, and lessons learned from operations.

This broad-based review of the essentials of Electronic Warfare can help to inform anyone in the military, government, or industry who may be involved in strategies for capabilities development, test and evaluation, training, or operational support.

Course materials provided: Attendees receive a course notebook with hard copies of all slides and visual aids.

Topics Covered:

• Brief History of EW
• Current Doctrine, Policy and Lexicon
• EM Spectrum Concepts and Properties
• EW Organizations and Functions
• EW Planning Activities, Employment and Battle Control Concepts
• Technical Fundaments: Radar technology and applications, antennas and apertures, communications signals, EM sensors and capabilities, Directed Energy, and Electronic Attack techniques
• U.S. EW Capabilities
• Managing the EM Spectrum
• Intelligence Support to EW and EW Reprogramming
• Integrated Air Defense Systems (including current trends)
• Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)
• EW Applications related to Space, Cyberspace, and UAVs
• Navigation Warfare (including overview of GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems development and signal characteristics)
• EW Training, Testing, and Modeling and Simulation