One observation that has clearly come out of the
Ukraine-Russia war is the prominent role of electronic warfare (EW). We’ve seen GPS disruptions, weapon guidance
disruption, intercepted communications, unit localization using signals
intercepts, and probably many other aspects that are not yet common
knowledge. So, while the exact
manifestations of EW’s prominence are not yet fully clear, the overall thrust
is. EW is a major factor/force on the
battlefield and its influence is likely to continue to grow.
This is a naval blog so what does the EW lesson mean for
naval forces? Obviously, all the same
considerations apply to the maritime battlefield as the land battlefield. Enemy forces and weapons detection, weapons
guidance disruption, localization using signal intercepts, etc. are all vitally
important for naval forces.
Naval forces (and for the rest of this post we’ll focus on
US Navy forces unless otherwise explicitly stated) have had EW capabilities to
varying degrees for many decades now so what’s the big deal? The ‘deal’ is that naval EW has long been the
forgotten stepchild of naval capabilities (along with armor, large caliber
guns, survivability, robust steel construction, weapon density … boy, the Navy
sure has a lot of forgotten stepchildren, don’t they?!). EW has been an afterthought, at best. It is only recently that the Navy has begun
to belatedly, and even then only in a minor way, address EW with the SEWIP
modernization program.
Currently, each ship has its own small SLQ-32/SEWIP EW unit
and the units are constrained by space/volume/mounting requirements, power
limitations, placement challenges, manning constraints, training deficiencies,
etc. In other words, each individual ship
can, at best, take care of itself but is of little or no help to other ships in
the area.
If EW is so important, doesn’t it make sense to have a ship
that is a behemoth at electronic warfare?
An electronic battleship, so to speak?
Where is our EW ship that can electronically dominate the naval
battlefield? Where is the ship that can
electronically ‘swat’ UAVs and missiles from the sky? Where is our area EW as opposed to individual
EW? We wouldn’t dream of not having area
air defenses so why don’t we have area EW?
Where is the EW battleship?
What’s wrong with individual ship EW, you may ask? Nothing except that, by definition, it’s limited
to just the host ship and it’s haphazardly implemented and suffers from being
at the bottom of the ship’s training priorities because it’s not the main
mission of the given ship. This is the
same problem the Burkes face with ASW.
They are theoretically capable of ASW but they rarely train for it and
are, therefore, ineffective. Anti-air is
the Burke’s main mission so that’s what they train for on the rare occasions
that they train for anything.
Consider this historical example: the USS Stark incident was instructive as it illustrated
problems with the SLQ-32 performance, interface, false alarms, and lack of
training, as noted below.
The electronic warfare technician at the
SLQ-32 console heard the F-1’s Cyrano-IV again lock on to the Stark. The
lock-on signal ceased after seven to ten seconds.
Neither of the two SLQ-32 operators saw a [ed.
inbound] missile warning. The main operator at the console, however, had turned
off the incoming missile audible signal warning. He claimed later that the
alarm was typically set off too easily, and distracted him from performing
other signal analysis.[1]
We need a ship whose main – indeed, only – mission is EW so
that it gets the training that is required to achieve and maintain
proficiency. We need an electronic
battleship.
More than that, we need a multi-ship, coordinated EW
effort. Currently, each ship is its own
EW entity, separate and isolated from any other ship. There is no integrated, multi-ship or group
EW effort as there is with missile control and usage via Cooperative Engagement
Capability (CEC) and Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA). Navy air defense utilizes a central command
and control function typically located aboard the Ticonderoga class cruisers. Again, we need a group wide, area EW control
that integrates the EW of all the ships in the group. We need an EW CEC.
Further, we need the group’s chaff and decoy systems tied
into the EW control system.
Having established the need for an EW battleship and the
general concept of large scale, area EW let’s now look at the specifics of an
EW battleship.
EW Battleship
Analogous to a conventional battleship, the three main
categories and levels of ‘weapons’ for an EW battleship are:
- Main battery - electronic attack
- Secondary battery - electronic protection
- Tertiary battery - electronic support
More specifically, the EW battleship requirements are, in no
particular order:
- radar warning
- targeting support
- countermeasures
- situational awareness
- threat warning
- signal collection / SigInt
- direction finding
- laser warning
- drone/missile communications jamming
- false signal injection
- enemy GPS (GLONASS, BeiDou) disruption at point of attack
With the specific requirements in mind, what kind of
specific equipment (EW ‘weapons’) should an EW battleship have? An examination of the myriad existing aircraft,
vehicle, and ship EW systems provides a good candidate list while understanding
that each system would be significantly scaled up in terms of power and
antenna size (both sensing and emitting).
For example, a small EW pod on an aircraft might be functionally
duplicated for use on a EW battleship but would have, for practical purposes,
unlimited power and emitters/receivers many times larger.
To give a feel for the types of equipment, here’s a partial
list of existing EW equipment on various platforms:
Ship:
- AN/SLQ-32(V)2 – Initially the most common variant, the (V)2
expanded on the (V)1's capabilities with new receiving antennas for increased
radio frequency coverage. It added the ability to detect high frequency
targeting and fire-control radars, providing early warning against an imminent
anti-ship missile attack.
- AN/SLQ-32(V)3 – The (V)3 added antennas with electronic
attack capability, able to actively jam targeting radars and anti-ship missile
terminal guidance radars.
- Sidekick – active jamming in a smaller package as an
alternative to (V)3
- AN/SLQ-32(V)6 – Part of the Surface Electronic Warfare
Improvement Program (SEWIP). (V)6 provides enhanced electronic support
capability through upgraded antennas and open combat system interface. It is
made up of the SEWIP Block 1B2, SEWIP Block 1B3, and SEWIP Block 2, which
provide specific emitter identification (SEI), high gain high sensitivity
(HGHS), and electronic support (ES), respectively.
- SEWIP Block 1 provides enhanced EW capabilities to existing
and new ship combat systems to improve anti-ship missile defense, counter
targeting and counter surveillance capabilities. The upgrade addresses
obsolescence mitigation through introduction of electronic surveillance
enhancements (ESE) and Improved Control and Display (ICAD) as well as
incorporation of adjunct receivers for special signal intercept including
specific emitter ID (SEI) and high gain/high sensitivity (HGHS). The SEI and HGHS
capability provides improved battlefield situational awareness.
- SEWIP Block 2 provides early detection, analysis, and threat
warning from anti-ship missiles by providing enhanced Electronic Support (ES)
capability via an upgraded ES antenna, ES receiver and an open combat system
interface for the AN/SLQ-32. These upgrades are necessary in order to pace the
threat and improve detection and accuracy capabilities of the AN/SLQ-32.
- SEWIP Block 3 (AN/SLQ-32(V)7) will provide electronic attack
(EA) capability improvements.
- SEWIP Block 4 is a future planned upgrade that will provide
advanced electro-optic and infrared capabilities to the AN/SLQ-32(V) system.
- COBLU Command and Control Coordination - Integrates area
ship sensors and provides a common picture using passive sensors.
Aircraft:
- EA-18G Growler: ALQ-218 Detection Pod
- passive Radar warning receiver
for airborne situational awareness and signal intelligence gathering. The
AN/ALQ-218 detects, identifies, locates and analyzes sources of radio frequency
emission.
- EA-18G Growler: ALQ-99 High Band Jamming Pods -
radar and comms jamming
- EA-18G Growler: ALQ-99 Low Band Jamming Pod
- radar and comms jamming
- EC-130H / EC-37B Compass Call – electronic attack; disrupts enemy command and control
communications and secondary EA capability against early warning and
acquisition radars.
- MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAV - Multifunctional Electronic Warfare
(MFEW) Air Large is the Army’s first organic brigade electronic attack asset
mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone. brigade-level
airborne electronic attack asset and providing limited cyberattack capabilities
- RC-135V/W is the USAF's standard airborne SIGINT platform.
- RC-135S Cobra Ball is a measurement and signature
intelligence (MASINT) collector equipped with special electro-optical
instruments such an All Weather Tracking Radar and Medium Wave Infrared Array
(MIRA) designed to observe ballistic missile flights at long range.[24] The
Cobra Ball monitors missile-associated signals and tracks missiles during boost
and re-entry phases to provide reconnaissance for treaty verification and
theater ballistic missile proliferation.
Vehicles:
- Stryker - Tactical Electronic Warfare System (TEWS) which
combines cyberwarfare, signals intelligence and electronic attack.
The EW battleship combines all these functions, each in its own 'mount', on one ship.
Antenna Size
The key concept that makes the EW battleship work is the available
size and power of the various emitter and receiver antennae.
For example, passive sensing is a function of sensor
size. Inter-galactic frequency sensors
are massive in order to collect the faint signals from distant stars and galaxies. A man-portable - or even an aircraft mounted
– sensor is limited in size. A ship, on
the other hand, could mount Aegis sized sensor arrays, thereby vastly
increasing the sensitivity and effectiveness of the sensor.
Similarly, one of the problems with Army man-portable or
even mobile electronic warfare (EW) systems is that they are small and
inherently power-limited. Ship size
systems with, for practical purposes, unlimited power would eliminate this
constraint.
Dispersion and
Redundancy
One of the [many] limitations of small EW package systems is
that each package must execute several different functions, switching between
them as needed. On a ship, each function
can be its own ‘mount’ and, therefore, be continuously available with no need
to switch or ‘ration’ power. The
functions can be dispersed as stand alone, complete units.
Ships also offer the ability to have more than one of any
given function, just as a ship has (or used to have when we still designed
WARships) redundant guns. This allows
for both damage resilience and the ability to engage multiple threats
simultaneously.
Note: I’ve not specified any size for this EW
battleship. The term ‘battleship’ refers
to combat power, not size. If everything
needed can fit on a canoe, that’s great.
If it requires a ship the size of an Iowa class battleship, so be
it. My pure guess is that something the
size of Burke would suffice but I’ll leave it to the engineers to determine
that.
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