Warrior Support Solutions – Q4 2018 Newsletter
Drafted: January 28, 2019
An expert report on the latest activities in the EW Community. Warrior Support Solutions is working to advance the practice and art of deploying EW/EMSO capabilities in all military operations to achieve superiority throughout the electromagnetic spectrum.
7th Annual AOC Pacific Conference:
Oct 9-11, 2018 | Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu, HI
Tango and Melinda attended this event held at the beautiful Hale Koa Military Resort in Waikiki Beach (yes, we took some much-needed R&R, and we are pictured here at a local Lu’au). The conference theme was Information Operations in the PACOM theatre of operations. Appropriately, many of the discussions were about the EMS and EMS Superiority, since the spectrum acts as the delivery mechanism for much of Info Ops data. This year’s conference had the highest attendance yet, and there was notable representation from the operational community stationed in this Area of Responsibility (AOR). This is likely because the operators understand the criticality and imminence of the threat of this region, and they are feeling the tension on a daily basis. Warrior Support Solutions attended as representatives of the Air Force to demonstrate the Air Force’s support to that community, to get a grasp of PACOM commanders’ issues, and to collect information to report back on critical EW activities. There was one day of classified presentations held at PACOM HQ, Camp Smith, the Marine Corps Base at Kaneohe Bay.
Tango delivered his Denial of Spectrum Denial presentation which was well received. A number of people came up to him after the presentation and agreed with his conclusions, including one of the professors from the Special Ops school, “It was about time someone made this statement in public.” The Commander and Deputy Commander of PACOM both delivered presentations showing that they completely understand the importance of EW capabilities in this AOR. That was encouraging!
CSBA Workshop #3 for the DoD EW Strategy Implementation Plan Development Team, Washington, DC, October 18-19, 2018
Tango attended this event representing the Air Staff (A5RE), the AF Capability Development Group, and the AF EW/EMS Superiority ECCT, to answer questions and to collect information. Representatives from all the Armed Services and industry were present. CSBA is under contract to the EW EXCOM to develop an Implementation Plan to support the DoD EW Strategy, which was published in late 2017. This third workshop focused on two capability areas: Electromagnetic Battle Management (EMBM) plans, capabilities, and technologies for implementing EMBM, as well as Modeling and Simulation (M&S) capabilities to support EW development, testing, and training. The workshop was classified, as have been the past EW CSBA workshops. These workshops are specifically designed to collect information from which members of the CSBA Team can write the Implementation Plan. At these meetings, it is important to reveal what is being worked on today, what is possible in the FYDP, and the art of the possible beyond that, because the Implementation Plan will be based on this information. For the Implementation Plan to be most useful and effective, it should lay out what technologies the DoD should pursue, in order to provide a capability further down the road. Previous workshop summaries can be accessed by clicking here.
A note for all of our industry partners out there:
Ideally, the Implementation Plan should influence POM line items for all the Services. This means business opportunities for your exceptional technologies. Stay tuned for additional details of the Implementation Plan, as they are allowed to be revealed.
GTRI BMC2 – Advanced Battle Management, Command and Control Conference, Georgia Tech Campus, Atlanta, GA, Oct 16-17, 2018
Melinda attended this technical conference on Advanced Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) to gather knowledge of progress and activities in BMC2 in the DoD, and its synergies with EW/EMSO. GTRI in downtown Atlanta is an excellent venue for academia, industry, government, operators, and R&D professionals to present and exchange ideas, and this conference exercised that benefit. The conference theme called for progress reports on Multi-Domain Command and Control, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. The conference was at the SECRET level, but only one comment was made at that level. Speakers presented the latest battle management concepts. Brig. Gen. Gaedecke was scheduled to speak on the morning of the first day but was called to Tyndall AFB at the last minute to lead crisis management efforts following Hurricane Michael. General consensus was that the entire operating community is challenged to make progress in BMC2 primarily because of culture (resistance to change), organization (lack of skilled leadership that “gets it,” and lack of effective authority assignments), and current technology was not designed to work together. While AI and Machine Learning are proper technologies to enable BMC2/interoperability, transmission of data (speed, accuracy, and trust), especially in congested and contested environments, remains a palpable barrier. It also remains a challenge to expect the Armed Forces to write requirements without money to fund them (DOTMLPF-P is still the order of the day), and to write them with enough foresight to predict needs 10-25 years out. There also appears to be a lack of consensus on what would be the best way to enable BMC2; operators, industry, and government leadership have differing ideas on it. One thing is agreed on: we do need effective and ubiquitous BMC2 to be victorious in the next engagement. As a community, we should continue to meet, collaborate, exchange ideas, avoid duplication of effort, and make progress where we can.
The Conference flyer and agenda re posted below for your reference.
Conference Flyer
Conference Save the Date
Conference Agenda
4th Annual Cyber Electromagnetic Activity Conference (CEMA), Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, Oct 23-24, 2018
CEMA is all about Cyber warfighting implementation throughout the EMS. At this classified conference, presentations focused on the new Future Force and the Army’s approach to integrate SIGINT, Electronic Warfare/EMSO and Cyber into “Big Army.” (read more about that by clicking here.
This task is difficult because Big Army is “really big;” the number of soldiers and units are many times what the Air Force has, and the task requires a huge cultural shift. It’s not that there isn’t agreement, it just takes a lot of time and a lot of money to equip every unit. Army leadership is bought in, but their issue is scale and scope. Even if they had sufficient budget, it would still be very difficult to train everyone. And even if they had unlimited budget, they could not field/produce enough systems fast enough. It is a limitation of industry and Army personnel resources to train other people in the Army to do it any faster. Tango doesn’t agree with the Army’s focus on Cyber over EW/EMSO, but he respects their actions. It is praiseworthy that they are moving out to field EW/EMSO capabilities to support their cyber mission. It was a very valuable conference for the troops because it had a lot of the Army senior leadership speaking directly to their field operators about their commitment to succeed. A number of 2 and 3-star generals attended the event, and they were seen communing with the audience and speaking from the heart. We were very impressed with this show of tour de force.
AMC Industry Day, 25 Oct 2018
We attended this event because it was AMC’s forum to present future requirements to industry. We were there representing the AF EW Capability Development Office to hear about these requirements and bring back the latest news in this area.
AMC Leadership arranged for meetings with industry to ask them for solutions. We were encouraged by this, as we saw the Air Force “putting their money where their mouth is,” when it comes to getting support and cooperation from industry. Warrior Support Solutions met with Lt Gen. Thomas, Deputy Commander of Air Mobility Command, Dr. Donna Sentf, Chief Scientist of AMC, Maj Gen Mark Camerer, Director of Strategic Plans, Requirements and Programs, and his staff. They had a number of requests from attendees for these 1-1s, so we feel honored to have been chosen for these meetings. We share with you here what we learned: AMC’s top three priorities: 1) Aircraft and Aircrew Survivability in Contested Environments, 2) Multi-Domain Resilient C4, and 3) Networked and collaborative capabilities, all of which require EMS Superiority. AMC Leadership is pushing things forward, and while AMC isn’t any further ahead (in fact, they are further behind), they recognize that, so they are aggressively pursuing solutions to ensure air platform capabilities in high-tension regions. Contact Tango for more detail on these efforts.
50th Annual A/TA Convention, held at The Gaylord, Grapevine, TX, 26-27 October 2018
Although not a themed EW event, as a former AMC EWO, Tango continues to familiarize himself with AMC’s needs. Topic of note: Air National Guard (ANG) briefed their plans for High-Value Airborne Assets (HVAA), as they are aggressively pursuing survivability enhancements for their tanker fleet. ANG’s tankers are part of the Air Force’s overall HVAA fleet, so they deploy to regions where AMC is called. Protection capabilities for tankers are critically needed in high-tension regions (call Tango for more information on this). Tango was heartened to see a large number of uniformed operational personnel in attendance (AMC always sends a ton of their personnel to their convention). Tango thinks this re-energizes the airmen – “you are critical to the mission; thank you for being here.” AMC leadership espouses this time and time again. Gen. Carlton “Dewey” Everhart retired just before this event and was not present. This is the first event in three years where Dewey wasn’t at the helm. As we all know, it is the Air Force way to transition leadership about every two to three years to carry on the mission. We wish Dewey (a long-time friend) and his wife, Michelle, the very best in their new-found retirement, and we wish the new commander, Gen. Maryann Miller, the very best in this new command. We look forward to working with her and her staff to ensure AMC’s mission success and survivability.
Tango’s impression on this event: interesting presentations, but no new revelations.
Air Force EW/EMS Superiority ECCT
All we can say about this at this time is the Team finished up their analysis efforts in preparation for Brig. Gen. Gaedecke’s briefing the results at WEPTAC on January 16, 2019 in Las Vegas, at Nellis AFB, NV. We know our readership is eager to have details on the outcome of this enterprise team; we recognize that many hopes are invested in EW opportunities for industry to support Air Force capabilities. We know industry and academia have been working very diligently on EW capabilities, and we have been very impressed with what we’ve seen. We’re hoping to have more information with which to define the future of Air Force EW capabilities once we attend the upcoming SDPE Strategic Interchange Meeting scheduled for February 19-22, 2019, at Joint Base Andrews, MD. Tango will be in attendance.
MIT/LL A2AD Workshop, November 14-16, 2018 at MIT/LL Lexington, MA
Tango attended this event representing the AF EW Capability Development office and the Air Staff to collect information and report back. This was a classified conference attended by a large percentage of operators from all services looking for technologies to ensure capabilities throughout the spectrum.
55th Annual AOC Symposium and Convention, Washington DC Convention Center, 27-29 November 2018
The theme of the conference was “Winning the EMS Domain.” We didn’t hear the term, “EMS Domain” used, so it would appear that calling the EMS a domain continues to be a point of contention for this community. Until the services establish that the EMS is a warfighting domain (and that we cannot operate without superiority in that domain), our forces will not be successful in a future fight. Congressman Bacon, however, did call the EMS a domain. This is encouraging because Congress is in a position to influence budget and development in EW/EMSO. Congressman Bacon, our money is on you.
Melinda had the privilege of writing up five sessions for the AOC Show Daily. These can be read by clicking here.
New Partnerships
Warrior Support Solutions is proud to announce two new partnerships with Keysight Technologies and Alaire Technologies. These companies are keenly focused on EW and EWMSO Test and Development, and WSS sees this area as being critical for mission readiness.
Next quarter, Q1 CY 2019, Warrior Support Solutions will be attending: CSBA Workshop #4 (Topic: Health of the EW industry), the AOC Surface to Air Missile Conference in Huntsville, AL, 5-7 February, 2019, the SDPE SIM 19-22 Feb 2019, AFA Air Warfare Symposium in sunny Orlando, FL, 28 Feb – 1 March, 2019, AOC Dixie Crow Symposium, where WSS is a Silver Sponsor, 26-28 March, 2019 at Robins AFB, GA. We are also attending the AOC Collaborative EW Symposium at Pt Mugu, CA, 2-4 April 2019.
We hope to see you at one of these prestigious EW events. Let us know how we can help you with your EW/EMSO plans and investments, so that together we can work to create exceptional EW capabilities for our warfighters.
If you would like additional information on any of these topics, visit our website: www.warriorss.com, or contact us directly: Steve Tourangeau, stourangeau@warriorss.com.
