Electronic Warfare

General Dynamics has put an "Electronic Warfare" suite in its new squad sized dune buggy the Army called the "Infantry Squad Vehicle." This post isn't about that vehicle in particular.

Instead, this post is a short gripe about the term "Electronic warfare" which generally obscures more than it elucidates. It is about as clear as saying "explosive material warfare" to refer to everything from bullets, to tanks rounds, to artillery rounds, to missiles, to bombs. It might be accurate, but it isn't informative.

Electronic devices can be used in warfare in all sorts of ways. They can be used to jam enemy communications and guidance systems, to locate enemy radar, to spy on enemy electronic communications, to locate the source of enemy communications, to determine one's own location, to determine someone else's location with radar or electronic device homing, to jam GPS signals, to do calculations and coordinate information, to communicate, and probably far more. In a vacuum, it doesn't tell you much that is helpful.

As explained in the article in this case:

The electronic warfare kit is part of the Tactical Electronic Warfare System-Infantry Brigade Combat Team, or TEWS-I, which was initially a quick-reaction capability built by General Dynamics, providing a smaller system designed for infantry vehicles. It was a prototype activity to serve as a risk reduction and requirements pathfinder for the Army’s program of record, the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team (TLS-BCT).

That system was designed as the first integrated signals intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare platform and as initially conceived, was to be mounted on Strykers and then Army Multi-Purpose Vehicle variant prototypes.

The service has now decided to split up the platform, separating the signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities and pursuing a new architecture for its EW suite. That leaves a gap in vehicle-borne systems given there is now a man-packable capability for direction finding and limited electronic attack, and a larger system in development for higher echelons. . . .

The TEWS-I ISV technology is “a middleweight fighter in the electronic warfare space because it has the capability at distance to have an effect and be able to sense at a distance. It has a wide frequency range that it covers. It has an extensive peer-relevant set of signals that it handles,” Derek Merrill, chief engineer for tactical signals intelligence, electronic warfare and NetC2 at General Dynamics Mission Systems, said in an interview at the annual AUSA conference. “It has the capability to detect, identify, locate, report and attack targets … It also handles software-based signals integration from the government, so they can give us a signal [and] we integrate it very quickly onto the platform.”

So, yeah, the terminology could be more transparent.