Electronic Warfare: What You Need to Know
It’s a term seen regularly in today’s newsfeeds, but what is electronic warfare and—more importantly—how and why does it affect your organization? The term electronic warfare appears regularly in media, blogs, and posts, and yet most people would be hard pressed to provide an accurate definition.
By Logan D. Selby, PhD, President, DataShapes (as featured in the Carahsoft Multi-Cloud Newsletter)
The term electronic warfare appears regularly in media, blogs, and posts, and yet most people would be hard pressed to provide an accurate definition. Most would equate it with cyber warfare, a term used to describe the battle currently being waged by malicious organizations and state actors seeking to compromise the security of data and operations on the internet.
Electronic warfare is similar to cyber warfare, but the battlefields and weapons are different. In cyber warfare, the battlefield is the internet and the weapon is software. In electronic warfare, however, the battlefield is the electromagnetic spectrum (light, radio frequencies, RADAR) and the weapon is the devices that produce and capture electromagnetic signals and waveforms. The most intense battle in electronic warfare today is taking place in the radio frequencies (RF) that are integral to our modern life.
Since the first radio was invented in 1901, the use of the electromagnetic spectrum has increased more than 1018 (that’s a quintillion times). Today our environment is saturated with electromagnetic waves. These invisible, airborne and spaceborne signals and waveforms power everything from the familiar (cellular service, mobile phones, GPS navigation, WiFi, Bluetooth, and satellite radio programs) to important human services (first-responder and law enforcement communications) to critical national security and defense offensive and defensive operations around the globe.
Unfortunately, things that are integral to human life often become targets of opportunity for groups and countries seeking to gain tactical and strategic advantage. The electromagnetic spectrum—particularly the RF spectrum—has emerged in the last five years as a critical battleground. As Forbes noted, “Electronic warfare has become a defining feature of future conflict.” (Forbes, July 8, 2023)
Technology is Catching Up with Fiction
Using the electromagnetic spectrum to impact an adversary is not a new concept. Who doesn’t remember Lt. Uhuru’s concern when a hostile ship cut off communications on the Enterprise: “They’re jamming us, Captain! We can’t get through.”
Warfighting has always sought to use technology to gain an advantage over adversaries, and electromagnetic technologies have advanced to the point where they have become a new class of defensive and offensive weapons—setting off nothing less than an arms race for dominance of electromagnetic and RF battlefield.
The Electronic War
In warfare, the stakes are high. According to Major Logan Selby (Reserves), president of DataShapes, “War used to be about ‘If I can see you, I can shoot you.’ Now, it’s about, ‘If I can detect your signal, I can shoot you.’”
Space Force, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine warfighters with personnel and assets in contested areas need to know, in real time, what is happening in the electromagnetic spectrum. They need to know what their own electromagnetic emissions are, what the enemy is emitting, and what the enemy is doing in the electromagnetic spectrum, and they need that information in real time. And they need to turn the millions of radios they already have into weapons by arming them with AI software that can provide real-time information about their tactical RF and electromagnetic environment.
Civilians Also Take Note
The need to identify RF signals is not limited to the military. The U.S. State Department needs to know when dangerous, high-powered microwaves are being directed at an embassy. When the President travels abroad or when meetings of leaders take place (like the recent APEC conference in San Francisco), the electromagnetic spectrum needs to be continuously monitored. And the U.S. Border patrol must be able to detect the radios that smugglers now use to coordinate their illegal activities.
And civilians, however far they are from war and battlefields, are not immune to the risks of electronic warfare. They face two risks: malicious attacks and congestion. Broad-based, denial-of-service attacks against WiFi, BlueTooth, and cellular networks—a well-known practice in cyber warfare—is feasible today in electronic warfare. And, unfortunately, what’s feasible will certainly tempt those seeking to do harm.
Today, the intense use of the RF spectrum creates its own kind of threat to civilian welfare. Carriers call it “the congestion problem,” and it is increasingly common in heavily populated areas. Almost everyone has experienced dropped calls or the inability to send a text or use the internet—even when their phone shows good connectivity.
Congestion is not just an inconvenience, it’s also a matter of life and death. On September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Towers were attacked, first responders were unable to communicate with each other, hampering rescue efforts, and compounding the tragedy.
Commercial carriers, as well as national, state, and urban security managers must know what’s going on in the electromagnetic spectrum in the areas and activities for which they are responsible.
The State of Electromagnetic Spectrum Intelligence
Electromagnetic and RF intelligence relies on highly trained experts who can interpret RF activity and identify a threat or problem. Unfortunately, this process typically takes hours or even weeks—not nearly fast enough. As one officer in DoD put it, “Our warfighters need real-time spectrum intelligence across the contested, congested globe.” (Dana Deasy, DoD CIO).
To meet this challenge, spectrum intelligence must be automated. AI is excellent at automating work that requires processing complex data, and it can often produce results far more quickly than humans. Today’s conventional AI is capable of successfully classifying RF signals, but, unfortunately, it is not at all suitable for electronic warfare because it requires:
Specialized computer hardware or the cloud. Not possible for the often disconnected, remote operations or with the DoD mandate for low SWaP (low size, weight, and power) solutions.
Huge amounts of training samples. Rarely available.
Long timeframes for training models. A luxury that’s simply not available in most instances.
Highly trained AI specialists. Expensive, scarce, and not scalable.
A Better Solution
Electronic spectrum intelligence is simply too important to leave to partial or ineffective solutions. Whether the risk comes from unintended emissions, from failing to detect an enemy attack, or from losing communications altogether, the stakes are too high to wait for scarce human experts or use AI that doesn’t meet the needs.
To be successful in electronic warfare and in commercial communications management, what’s needed is fast, adaptable, lightweight AI software that can be easily downloaded to the installed base of radios already in the field—software with nimble, hardware-agnostic AI that trains quickly from limited data, adapts easily to changing operations, conditions, and requirements, and produces trustable results in real time.
And that’s our mission at DataShapes.
About DataShapes
DataShapes creates real-time, few- and zero-shot, adaptive, hardware-agnostic, auditable AI software solutions for electromagnetic spectrum and RF intelligence. Designed for use on edge devices, our software can be embedded anywhere, on any device. To learn more, visit Carahsoft at www. Carahsoft.com/DataShapes or visit us at www.datashapes.com