Army Reintegrating Electronic Warfare Into Force
March 1, 2020
By George I. Seffers
The service expects significant progress this year.
This year the Army will take several steps in the march toward reintroducing cutting-edge electronic warfare systems capable of countering near-peer competitors.
The service already has made progress through its use of rapid prototyping, which will continue in the weeks and months to come. In late 2018, Col. Kevin E. Finch, USA, project manager for electronic warfare (EW) and cyber, along with the Rapid Capabilities Office, won a David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award for rapidly fielding prototypical EW technologies to Army forces in Europe. An operational needs statement called for tools that would enable ground troops to maneuver freely, even as adversaries manipulated the electromagnetic spectrum and targeted friendly force systems with jamming and interference.
This year, the team should be heading back to Europe to upgrade those capabilities. “As you give soldiers capability, they get very vocal on what they want. So, we took the feedback they gave us on the first round, and we’re going back in the second quarter of this year to field phase two capabilities to European units,†Col. Finch reports. “These are soldiers in areas where they can employ the systems in a more realistic manner than some of our continental United States-based units.†In the third quarter of the current fiscal year, the team will begin fielding equipment to other units under another operational needs statement.
https://www.afcea.org/content/army-reintegrating-electronic-warfare-force
