Soldiers' winning idea hides friendly radio calls in a sea of noise
Innovation competition draws new devices and new methods to a showdown in Hawaii.
JENNIFER HLAD | NOVEMBER 6, 2023
ARMY NAVY TECHNOLOGY
HONOLULU, Hawaii—A U.S. Army unit was preparing to go to the National Training Center last November when they discovered a problem: an adversary with electronic-warfare gear could “easily identify people talking on their radios…so they needed a way to counteract that.”
Lacking time to fix the problem, the unit handed it off to the Third Infantry Division’s Marne Innovation Team, said Capt. Chris Flournoy, one of the team’s innovation officers. Staff Sgt. Michael Holloway, an electronic warfare soldier, came up with a solution: a low-cost decoy emitter.
“Instead of trying to hide in the spectrum, we want to obfuscate the spectrum. We want to put so much emission into the spectrum” that an adversary “can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake,” Flournoy said.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/11/winning-idea-hides-friendly-radio-calls-sea-noise/391822/