In January 2018, the Air Force assembled a cross-functional group known as an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team to explore how the service will ensure electromagnetic spectrum superiority. The team was led by Brig. Gen. David Gaedecke, director, Cyberspace Operations and Warfighter Communications, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Cyber Effects Operations, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Arlington, Virginia.
According to Gaedecke, “The U.S. Air Force must maintain our competitive advantage in the EMS to achieve freedom of action while denying the adversary that same freedom of action.”
In January 2019, during a special meeting at the Weapons and Tactics Conference held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Gaedecke announced the results of the ECCT and noted, “In order to execute the Air Force’s five core missions, the Air Force should deliberately refocus efforts on electronic warfare and the EMS as a whole.”
Gaedecke briefed three enterprise-wide recommendations collectively required for rebuilding and increasing core competency in the EMS: leadership championing and enterprise management; establishing a bridge to advanced technology and competitive capability; and re-instilling a culture of EMS Awareness, the Air Force announced April 16.
To implement these recommendations, the Air Force is:
•Unifying and organizing corporate governance of the EMS enterprise by establishing an EMS Superiority Directorate in the Headquarters Air Force, led by a general officer, to oversee and manage enterprise-wide EMS priorities and investments which will be subsumed and managed as a single portfolio.
•Combining and consolidating EMS services, software programming infrastructure and expertise into a multi-domain organization focused on achieving real-time effects and enabling evolution to machine-to-machine adaptive and cognitive spectrum control. In order to win and control the EMS the Air Force will employ distributed systems and capabilities coordinated to defeat a sophisticated adversary of complex systems aligned to deny Joint Force capabilities.
•Developing and instilling an EMS Warrior ethos by building enterprise-wide education and training programs to lead, innovate, integrate, train and build EMS awareness in Airmen at all levels. Air Force operational concepts, tactics and doctrine, and institutional expertise as a whole, will progressively advance with renewed focus of a near peer in the EMS domain.
Gaedecke concluded, “Superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum is fundamental to the National Defense Strategy. To be a lethal force of the future, we need to lead in research, technology and innovation. Superiority in the spectrum underpins all of these.”
These insights continue to build on the foundation and traditions created by the Association of Old Crows, an organization for individuals who have common interest in electronic warfare.
Source: U.S. Air Force
By Loren Blinde
April 18, 2019
