Alternative Stealth

How do you make an aircraft stealthy?  We all know the answer to that, right?  You carefully shape the aircraft and then apply low observability (LO) coatings.  The only problem with that answer is that today’s radars are becoming more and more capable of detecting stealth aircraft.  The radars operate at different frequencies and networked radars can compare returns and scatter (to put it simplistically) to pick out stealth aircraft.  Add to that the improvements in infrared detection (IRST) and stealth aircraft are becoming less and less stealthy all the time.

For ships, it’s a similar case of stealth being achieved by shaping and, to a lesser extent, coatings.

We’ve invested huge amounts of money into stealth and we’ve based our entire military on it.  For a relatively brief period in the 1990’s we had a monopoly on effective stealth and a major battlefield advantage.  Today, however, everyone has stealth and everyone is developing stealth detection capability.  Our advantage is disappearing.

In the near future war, two stealth aircraft are going to meet and their air-to-air weapons, having only small, relatively simple radars, will be unable to lock on to their opposite number.  At that point the engagement becomes a dogfight, no different than our WWI forefathers and the better aerodynamic aircraft will win (hmm… that F-35 isn’t looking so good now, is it?  But, I digress …).

So, is our stealth advantage permanently gone?

No.  There are alternate means of achieving stealth – something the military seems slow to recognize.  Here are some alternate means.

ECM – This is an easy one to implement and can be highly effective.  Electronic countermeasures (ECM) such as jamming, disrupting, creating false signals, etc., for the enemy’s sensors is effective and efficient.  If the sensor is disrupted, our asset gains a measure of stealth – in this case a bestowed stealth rather than an inherent one.  The challenge lies in staying current, given the pace at which the electronic signals world changes, and covering the massively broad range of signals.  Even more challenging, many weapons are built with frequency agility meaning that the ECM has to be able to counter almost the entire spectrum!  On the plus side, ECM is easily upgraded in terms of hardware and software and is small enough to be carried by almost any platform.  If the threat changes, we can upgrade the ECM of the entire force with relatively simple software changes.

IR – One of the ways stealth is being countered is through alternate detection methods like IR.  IRST sensors are one of the “hot” technologies, at the moment.  Thus, IR signature suppression offers another form of stealth.  Of course, like radar stealth, this is difficult to achieve and nearly impossible to upgrade over time.  Still, it is well worth the initial effort.  Ships, especially, need more attention paid to IR signature reduction.  The ubiquitous gas turbines that power ships generate immense IR signatures and while they offer obvious operating benefits they also impose survivability disadvantages.  Thought should be given to alternative power sources and to minimizing their IR signatures through careful design.  Measures such as utilizing the washdown systems can provide a degree of IR signature reduction.

Decoys – Simple decoys create stealth, too. Decoys can take the form of chaff, flares, floating radar-reflective targets, towed aerial decoys, towed Nixie anti-torpedo decoys, submarine noisemakers, dummy visual targets (fake tanks or aircraft, for example).  If incoming missiles "see" dozens or hundreds of fake targets (decoys) then the real ones have become stealthy, barring the bad luck to be the one "fake" target that a missile zeroes in on.  Decoys are generally cheap and easily deployed.

Obscurants – Smoke is a great visual obscurant but today there are multi-spectral obscurants – multi-spectral smoke, if you will.  We now have obscurants that can cover the spectral range of visual, near/mid/far infrared, centimeter/millimeter wave, and ultra high frequency. (1)  Laser weapons, laser ranging, laser spotting, and laser imaging can all be disrupted thereby providing “laser stealth” protection.

And so on.

We see, then, that stealth can be provided by means other than the shaping and exotic coating of the individual ship or aircraft. With the foregoing in mind, consider a giant commercial 747 or a commercial cruise ship. They're about as unstealthy as possible - easy detections and kills in a war zone, right? But, they can be made stealthy by other means. For example, if we could disrupt the terminal guidance of incoming missiles (ECM, IR signature suppression, frequency obscurants, etc.) or supply alternate targets in the form of decoys then the 747/cruise ship would be "unseeable" to the missiles and, thus, stealthy even though it contains no inherent stealth characteristics of its own.  Thus, a “stealthy” 747/cruise ship is achieved via other means!

The point is that there are multiple ways to achieve "stealth". We don't have to always go for the most expensive method. In fact, stealth shaping/coating is becoming less and less effective as technology develops multi-frequency radars, back-scatter analysis, multi-node radar networking, IRST, and other technologies designed to defeat stealth shaping.

The alternative methods of enhancing stealth also allow easier upgrades over time. It's very difficult/impossible to "upgrade" the shape of a ship or aircraft but it's easy to change the electronic warfare or decoy capability. We need to rethink where we're putting our "stealth" emphasis. This is not to say we shouldn't build stealth shaped platforms - we should because that's the minimal price of entry onto the modern battlefield - but that we should be emphasizing other approaches as opposed to the ever more expensive stealth shaping/coating path that produces less and less benefit and requires more and more exquisite care in manufacturing and maintenance.

At one point, I thought the Navy might be grasping this concept because they were looking at acquiring more electronic warfare aircraft (EA-18G Growlers) which could have been used to escort other aircraft and bestow stealth.  However, this does not seem to have happened.

Perhaps, in addition to our frantic effort to develop deep penetrating strike and aerial combat UAVs, we should be looking at developing basic, auxiliary electronic warfare UAVs – essentially, flying jamming pods controlled by EA-18G Growlers.  This would greatly extend the capabilities of the Growlers without requiring new, hideously expensive aircraft. 

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that it would be interesting to build a prototype, pure electronic warfare ship with, essentially, unlimited power and unlimited antenna size and numbers and see what it can do to provide area stealth just as Aegis provides area air defense.

We have been myopic about our stealth focus on shaping and coatings and we need to broaden our approach and recognize that there are alternative means of achieving stealth.

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(1)http://www.wood.army.mil/chmdsd/images/pdfs/Winter%202011/Chapman-Reichert.pdf

Russian Attacks On UAVs

Here’s some confirmation of one of the themes that I continually harp on.  The Russians are disrupting UAVs via electronic countermeasures.  C4ISR Net website reports,

“In one of the more startling displays of Russia’s capabilities, they have disrupted the unmanned aerial vehicles tasked by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine to chart the conflict.”

”These UAS [UAVs] were disrupted via surface-to-air missiles and military-grade electronic jamming, …”

“Live fire and GPS jamming were the two main factors for the loss of the drones.” (1)

What have we harped on?  -that UAVs are not survivable and subject to jamming.  Here is Russia showing us exactly that action and outcome.

True, these are not US UAVs and there are undoubtedly those who will blindly and naively claim, with no supporting evidence, that US UAVs are superior and will be immune to disruption but the evidence is clear that UAVs are just target practice and those that are not casually destroyed will be rendered ineffective due to electronic countermeasures.

We need to devote some serious effort to hardening the UAV communications (including GPS).  We also need to give some serious thought to rethinking our doctrinal and tactical use of UAVs relative to the threats they’ll face.

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(1)C4ISR Net website, “Threat From Russian UAV Jamming Real, Officials Say”, Mark Pomerleau, 20-Dec-2016,

http://www.c4isrnet.com/articles/threat-from-russian-uav-jamming-real-officials-say

Adaptive Electronic Warfare

Here’s an interesting project that caught ComNavOps’ eye.  DARPA is developing an adaptive electronic warfare (EW) software package (1).  The problem with EW in the past has always been that it was only effective against known, pre-programmed threats.  Today, however, many threats use frequency agile emitters with variable characteristics that we have no way of pre-programming for.  To counter this, DARPA is working with industry to create a software EW package that can analyze threats, determine their characteristics in real time, and produce a counter based on histories of what has worked in the past against similar threat profiles.  This is, potentially, a wonderful approach that offers a broad spectrum of counters without the need for perfect knowledge ahead of time. 

Of course, at the early developmental stage, like this, every project sounds great.  The reality is that few such projects actually make it to production.  Still, this is a technology that is well worth pursuing.

The next step is for DARPA to step away and one of the services to adopt and fund the program.  Unfortunately, this is where many potentially worthwhile projects die – not necessarily for lack of technical worthiness but because of politics.  The services each look at the potential project and play poker against each other.  Who will fund it?  If one service wants to use their money for another project, they may pass on it, hoping that another service picks it up, pays to develop it, and then they can hop on board when it’s mature.  Of course, politics means that they may all pass in favor of funding less deserving pet projects that they think have a better chance of getting funded by Congress regardless worthiness.

For example, the Navy has made it clear that they are going to fund the LCS no matter what.  If they come up short on budget because of that, they will not fund this EW project.  Sad but true.

Something like an EW package would be useful across all the services and should be funded at a DoD level, not at the individual service level.

Anyway, this is a potentially useful project.  It’ll be interesting to see if it gets fully developed by anyone.

_________________________________

(1)Defense News website, “Pentagon Looks To Adaptive EW Systems To Thwart Future Adversaries”, Valerie Insinna, 29-Aug-2016,

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/pentagon-looks-to-adaptive-ew-systems-to-thwart-future-adversaries

Russian GPS Jammer

We’ve talked a great deal about the US military’s blind obsession with electronics and networks and their susceptibility to disruption.  Despite this, the US continues to increase their dependence on electronics.  We’ve noted, in passing, the Russian’s heavy use of electronic warfare in Ukraine although details are sparse.  The US Army is certainly worried and is frantically initiating multiple electronic warfare measures and training – a belated good, for them.  Now, we see this article from a Russian website about deployment of a GPS jamming device called POLE-21.

“An integrated jamming system to screen strategic facilities from cruise missiles, smart bombs and drones using GPS, …” (1)

Any Russian pronouncement has to be taken with extreme caution but this development seems both plausible and inevitable.

The issue is not the absolute accuracy of the report but rather the fact that this is one more warning to the US military to begin weaning themselves off their electronic and GPS dependence.  Nearly every ranged weapon in the US inventory uses GPS.  An enemy who can effectively neutralize GPS signals either through jamming, disruption, false signal injection, or satellite destruction will have neutralized a huge portion of our weapon inventory.  Some of our weapons, especially the newer ones, can also utilize inertial navigation, terrain mapping, and other forms of guidance, however, the accuracy falls off significantly.

We need to begin developing other forms of guidance while simultaneously hardening the guidance systems we have.  The world is preparing for high end war and we’re preparing to fight idiots in the back of pickup trucks.  We need to wake up.

Related note:  Birds can navigate thousands of miles during migrations and wind up in the exact same spot year after year.  Salmon return to the exact spot they were born to spawn.  Nature abounds with examples of precision navigation that rival our best electronics.  There are other possible methods of guidance.  We would do well to investigate them!

 

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(1)Sputnik website, “Silent Protector: Russia Develops Hi-Tech Jammer to Block Enemy Electronics”, 25-Aug-2016,
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160825/1044633778/russia-jammer-electronics.html

SEWIP Update

ComNavOps is often critical of Navy leadership and programs and rightly so.  Navy decision making is so poor as to almost defy belief.  The wrong equipment is pursued.  The wrong policies are implemented.  And so on.  Frankly, it gets tiring and discouraging.  I’d love to present more good news and I do so when I can but the Navy gives me little opportunity.  So, I’m happy to present this bit of good news about the Navy’s Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP).

To refresh your memory, SEWIP is the evolutionary successor to the venerable, and now badly outdated and nearly obsolete SLQ-32 (Slick-32) electronic warfare system mounted on nearly every surface warship.  The old SLQ-32 is an electronic detection and warning system but has little or no ability to defeat threats.  It can see a threat (or could once upon a time) but can’t do anything about it, at least not directly. 

The Navy instituted a series of block upgrades to the system to bring it into the modern age and provide an electronic anti-missile capability.

• SEWIP Block 1 upgrade addresses obsolescence issues by replacing obsolete parts and installing improved control stations and displays.  It also adds additional threat signal receivers.  The system is in full rate production.

• SEWIP Block 2 upgrades antennas and receivers and improves the signal processing.  The system is in low rate initial production.  A second IOT&E test is pending after a failed initial test.

• SEWIP Block 3 provides active signal emissions to defeat incoming missiles.  The system is in development.

• SEWIP Block 4 is a future upgrade that will provide EO and IR capabilities.

This attention to electronic warfare is long overdue.  Setting aside the tardiness, I fully commend the Navy for implementing this program.  As we’ve documented in other posts, electronic countermeasures have proven far more effective than active missile defenses so this is a case of placing money, effort, time, and resources in a program that will assuredly pay off.

SEWIP

Of course, being a Navy program, there are problems.  DOT&E’s 2015 Annual Report notes that the SEWIP Block 2 upgrade has severe problems detecting and holding target tracks.

“Analysis of the available IOT&E data showed that, while the AN/SLQ-32 EWS equipped with the SEWIP Block 2 upgrade provides more capability in detecting and classifying threat emitters than the legacy AN/SLQ-32 EWS, the system generates multiple tracks from a single emitter source in addition to incorrectly categorizing emitter tracks and an inability to hold them after initial detection. … Until these deficiencies are corrected, the AN/SLQ-32 EWS equipped with the SEWIP Block 2 upgrade will not have operational utility.”

“… will not have operational utility.”  Ouch!  That’s a pretty poor evaluation.  Still, that just means there is more work to do.  At least this work is for a system that meets a need and there is every reason to believe that it will eventually be quite effective.

I’ve said before that I can accept developmental problems (that’s what “development” means!) and growing pains.  What I can’t accept is throwing developmental systems into production or developing systems that have no utility even if they work.  SEWIP is a rare example of a very good, if overdue, decision by Navy leadership combined with a proven need that is historically beneficial and should offer outstanding protection to the fleet.  The only reservation I have is that the Navy is somewhat pushing the production of the units before the development is completed.

Good On The Army - ECM

ComNavOps has long preached the impact of electronic warfare.  All of our weapon systems are highly susceptible to electronic warfare countermeasures (ECM).  This is bad but even worse is the Navy’s head-in-the-sand view of the problem.  The Navy is not testing its systems against realistic and extensive ECM to see what our weaknesses are and fix them.  We are not developing tactics for working in an electromagnetically challenged environment.  In short, we’re sitting around fat, dumb, and happy, secure in the misguided belief that our systems are somehow immune to ECM and all will function perfectly in combat.

Well, at least the Army has begun to get the picture and is now initiating a series of weapon tests against realistic (I hope!) ECM, as reported by Breaking Defense website (1).  In the first,

“… the US Army conducted an unprecedented wargame this spring to test its new air and missile defense network against advanced electronic warfare techniques. “

“The exercise tested an early version of the Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System, which links together sensors, launchers, and command posts. The idea is that a battery no longer has to rely on its own radar but can get targeting data from any radar in the system — even if the two weren’t originally designed to work together, for example a Patriot launcher and a THAAD AN/TPY-2 radar.”

That’s a great start.  Test the weapon system you’re betting your future on in a realistic ECM environment before you have to pay in blood to find out the hard way.

There is an ominous note, here.

“The original inspiration for IBCS [Integrated Battle Command System] was simple efficiency. It will replace a half-dozen different command and control systems for air and missile defense, and it will allow the Army to mix-and-match elements from different weapons systems as needed. But the Army also realized that IBCS could help defeat radar jamming. If one battery’s radar is jammed, spoofed, or hacked, IBCS allows it to stay in the fight using data from radars that are in different locations and/or on different frequencies. Better yet, IBCS will combine data from different radars into a single “composite track” of a given target, allowing radars with an accurate picture to correct radars that are being spoofed.”

Does this sound a lot like the F-35 which supposedly ties together every sensor on the aircraft in a single composite picture? Of course, that’s not working.  Further, remember the descriptions of the F-35 being a collating center for every sensor in the theatre, tying disparate systems and platforms together and directing their functions, allocating their weapons, and rerouting weapons in flight?  Sounds awfully similar, doesn’t it?

It’s not just the F-35, either.  Remember, the promise that the LCS fleet would be nodes that would establish a vast sensor network comprised of every sensor in theatre?  How’d that work out?

This also sounds a lot like the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) or its repackaged cousin, Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA).

On the plus side, if it can be made to work, who wouldn’t want a sensor system that ties together every system into one vast battle network?  On the other hand, one of the problems with such a system is that if the data from every sensor and function is concentrated into one central physical location, it becomes a single point of total failure.  Destroy the master control center and you’ve incapacitated an entire theatre of weapons and sensors.  Of course, one could create many duplicates of the central control system that would take over in the event of the destruction of the master but then the gain in efficiency is lost.  In combat, distribution of assets and capabilities equates to survivability.  We figured this out long ago but have steadily forgotten it.

There’s also an inherent contradiction at work, here.  The Army is testing their systems against realistic ECM because they’re rightly afraid that the systems won’t work as advertised.  In the same breath, however, they’re stating that their new system will flawlessly assemble data and commands from many separate systems, ignoring that the transmission of that data and commands is susceptible to the very same ECM that they’re testing against.  Unless the systems are tied together with hard lines (fiber optics), the data transmission signals are susceptible to the same ECM that the Army is afraid will affect the individual systems.

The overdependence on networks and data, and the inherent assumption that they are somehow invulnerable to ECM, is a military wide phenomenon although the Navy, in particular, seems especially fond of, and susceptible to, it.  The Navy’s dream is to tie every weapon and sensor in the world together.  Of course, if that network is disrupted you’ve lost everything – and that ignores the fantastic lack of success we’ve had doing this, so far.

So, we see again the tendency of the military to take a good idea and try to jam it well past the point of technological feasibility.  Oh well, at least the Army is going to be doing some realistic testing and that’s a vast improvement over the Navy.

The article points out the leap in ECM capability that has come from modern electronics.

“Traditional analog jamming can be effective, but it’s pretty obvious, Thurgood said: It just blasts out interference in selected wavelengths in a given area. But the Russians, Chinese, and others are using advanced digital jamming which attacks specific frequencies and can spoof the radar. Essentially, they record an incoming radar pulse and play it back in distorted form, confusing the radar receiver.”

The exercises also point out our own ECM shortcomings.

“The Army’s own electronic warfare arsenal is painfully thin, with offensive jammers not set to enter service until 2023.”

We’ve previously discussed that the Navy’s offensive and defensive ECM is being hugely, and unwisely, shortchanged at the altar of new ship construction.  The Navy needs to realize that all the shiny new ships in the world will be of no use if they can’t fight and survive in an ECM environment.

The time to figure all this out is now.

“That’s a problem the Army wants to figure out in wargames before it ever faces it in real life.”

Well, they got that much right!  Good luck to them and hopefully the Navy will take note.

(1)Breaking Defense, “US Wargame Pits Army Missile Defenses Against Russian Jamming”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., August 14, 2015

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/08/us-wargame-pits-army-missile-defenses-against-russian-jamming/

Combat In The Information Age

Proceedings has an interesting article about combat in the “Information Age”, as the authors put it (1).  The article is an odd combination of the authors “getting it” and “missing it”.  Let’s take a closer look and see what they have to say that we might learn from.

First, it should be noted that the authors are two active duty Lieutenant Commanders, one a Surface Warfare Officer selected for command and the other an Intelligence officer.  As such, they ought to represent a doorway into current naval thought and for this reason, if no other, their writing is worthy of consideration.

The authors discuss the recognition that weapons are becoming more lethal and that, as a result, there is a need to try to cut the kill chain further upstream.  They state that the implication of this is the need to manage our electromagnetic (EM) signatures “as never before”.  Of course, EM silence (EMCON) was the default state of naval units during the Cold War so the “as never before” statement rings a bit hollow and, to be fair, the authors point that out.  As they put it,

“In practice this means, among other things, controlling our EM signature while conducting any type of operations, with EM silence as our default posture.”

Again, this warrants a huge, “Duh!”, but at least they’re saying it.  They go on to say,

“While we became fairly proficient at emissions control during the Cold War, the lack of a meaningful blue-water threat since the fall of the Soviet Union and our vast accumulation of new EM systems have allowed us to forget.  Today, naval vessels and aircraft operate by default with multiple active radar, identification, datalink, and communication systems radiating.  Rarely are we forced to operate in a silent (or reduced) mode for any sort of extended period or while conducting complex operations.”

And there it is.  The authors summed up the entire EM issue.  We knew it.  We forgot it.  We don’t practice it.  You’ve heard me say this on a regular basis and now you’re hearing active duty, ranking officers saying it.

Could we even operate in an EMCON mode if we had to?  The authors, and ComNavOps, do not believe so.

“Similarly, in air defense, we so infrequently practice single-ship or group-restricted radiation operations in tactical scenarios that it is questionable whether we are proficient enough to use them in wartime.”

The lack of realistic training – another pet peeve of ComNavOps. 

The authors bring up another great point concerning the global, universally networked, all-seeing, infinitely datalinked, battle management system that the Navy is so enamored with and that is the awareness of what’s happening at the tactical level.  Allowing, for the moment, that this kind of mythical network can even work (it can’t), the authors point out a tactical level awareness problem.

“Much of the disruption effort will be executed by joint forces or at the operational level, so how will tactical-level Navy decision-makers know what is going on and how or when to exploit success?  For example, if the Air Force disables a sector of the adversary’s passive electronic-surveillance network, how will the officer commanding a surface action group 1,000 miles away know he is now in an advantageous position where his ship’s radars can be energized to locate and destroy an enemy platform in his vicinity?”

An excellent question and it again points to the need for realistic training so that these types of unforeseen problems can be identified and worked out.  Some might casually employ the hand wave and confidently assert that all levels of operation will seamlessly and flawlessly communicate to each other.  They might, or they might not, as suggested by the authors.

“We pay a lot of lip service to seamless joint integration, but it is specious to believe communications between operational and tactical-level commanders in a joint environment are either as fast or as thorough as required.”

Again, these are active duty, ranking officers saying this!

The flip side of the EM coin is also noted.  The enemy will be doing their best to control the EM spectrum and we must anticipate the loss or, at best, intermittent use of our comms, networks, and datalinks.  The implication is that we will be faced with fighting with a lack of higher level command and control – the opposite of what we have now where the movements and actions of individual soldiers can be monitored and ordered from the White House.  As the authors point out,

“In the Navy we are fortunate to be the heirs to a strong tradition of command-by-negation, distributed execution, and autonomous decision-making.  However, with the increase in volume of communications our ability to fight complicated scenarios with minimal or intermittent communications has almost certainly weakened.  We can regain it only with realistic and challenging training at all levels from fleet to unit and individual watchstander.”

Again, straight from the annals of this blog!

Well, so much for the “get it” portion.  Unfortunately, the authors still generally believe that the modern battlefield will be electronic, networked, datalinked, and comm’ed though, to their credit, not to the degree or with the effortlessness that the Navy thinks.  They fail to grasp the reality that modern combat against a peer will see all the magic devices on both sides come up well short due to a combination of countermeasures and the 100% certainty of weapons and systems being vastly overrated.  As a result, the combatants will quickly fall back on simpler, brute force weapons and systems with the resulting combat being closer to WWII than Star Wars.  Complexity is great for wargaming and public relations but when combat starts, simplicity will quickly become king.

We need to begin developing weapons and systems that can function without external inputs and we need to begin training for a state of degraded and lost external inputs.

(1) USNI Proceedings, “The Face of Battle in the Information Age”, Crooks & Robertaccio, July 2015

Center of Gravity

Although ComNavOps abhors the use of buzzwords and phrases such as synergy or center of gravity (CoG), some of them nevertheless convey an accurate image.  A center of gravity is just what it implies:  a major concentration of capability.  In the case of the military arena, a CoG is a concentration of a critical warfighting capability.  We attempt to identify the enemy’s CoGs and attack them but do we examine our own CoGs?  What are our CoGs and how might an enemy attack them?  China is undoubtedly devoting a great deal of time and effort to exactly this task and we would do well to anticipate their actions and have ready responses.

So, what Navy CoG do we want to examine today?  Well, I’m willing to bet that the Navy’s most important, least recognized, and, potentially, most vulnerable CoG is its vast system of networks.  By “network”, I mean all the weapons and systems that generate, collect, transmit, use, and manipulate data.  This would include GPS signals, Link XX, SATCOM, UAV comm links, weapon guidance signals, straightforward communication channels, and every other data transmitting or receiving device the Navy has. 

Consider that the Navy uses data transmissions of one sort or another to guide nearly every weapon it has.  How many weapons are GPS dependent, for example?  How many weapons use mid-course guidance signals?  We’re actively pursuing in-flight reprogramming of cruise missiles (though the benefit of that is highly debatable).

Consider the wondrous F-35 which will be a combination of E-2 Hawkeye, P-8, F/A-18G ECM, J-STARS, and fire control for every aircraft and weapon within a million mile radius.  Setting aside my mockery of it, its performance is predicated on seamless and flawless data flow (the Navy having all but admitted that it won’t be used as a frontline combat aircraft but, rather, as an enabler of other aircraft).

Consider the Navy’s next generation Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), the Navy Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA) which will tie every sensor and shooter system together in an impenetrable defensive network, according to the brochures.  This is nothing but data flow and data sharing on an immense scale.

I submit that data flow is the heart of the Navy.  It is the Navy’s CoG. 

And it’s vulnerable.

China knows this.  Do you think they aren’t working on disrupting our data flow?  Jamming?  False signals?  Data overwrites via signal injection?  Physical destruction of nodes?  Dozens of other electronic and cyber disruptive possibilities I haven’t even begun to think of?  We’ve seen them conduct their own anti-satellite missile tests so there go our GPS signals.  They’re continually practicing cyber warfare (hacking) on a daily and massive scale – and quite successfully, too, from what information is released publicly.

We need to look closely at our own COGs and their vulnerabilities and begin strengthening them. 

We need to develop better methods of data transmission, improve the security our data and comm lines, develop better methods of authenticating our data, and develop better means of handshaking our data to ensure that complete packets are received.  This is way outside my area of expertise.  I can see the problem and I know the general direction we need to go but the specifics are way beyond me.  The Navy, however, needs to work on this.

In addition to strengthening our networks, we need to train to operate in electronically degraded environments.  Conducting set-piece training exercises that utilize the full range of networking and data flow is worthless because none of that will happen in a real conflict.  Instead, we need to conduct every training exercise in the face of the best ECM and counter-data effort we can generate.  This will accomplish two things:  it will show us how to operate in a real world scenario and it will vigorously exercise our ECM and counter-data capabilities.  We’ll get two levels of training for the price of one, so to speak.

Finally, and related to the training issue, we need to think the unthinkable.  We need to consider designing less brilliant weapons.  Conceptually, which is more useful:  a gravity bomb that is unaffected by any jamming or cyber disruption or a GPS guided weapon that won’t do anything if it has no GPS signal?  We are so enamored of our technology and networking that we’ve forgotten that simplicity reigns once combat begins.

Both sides have CoGs and we need to recognize our own and anticipate their weaknesses so that when the enemy attacks we’ll be prepared.

Prowlers and Growlers

The EA-6B Prowler, based on the A-6 Intruder, is/was the Navy’s electronic warfare plane, providing ECM and jamming in support of attack aircraft.  The Prowler is being retired in favor of the electronic warfare version of the Hornet, the EA-18G Growler.

According to Wiki, 170 Prowlers were built.  Wiki also cites 114 Growlers as built or on order although reports suggest that the Navy is looking at additional orders.

Here are some comparative specs on the two aircraft.



EA-6B Prowler



Prowler

Max speed:  566 kts

Cruise speed:  418 kts

Range:  2100 mi

Electronic Warfare Hardpoints:  5

Crew:  4

EA-18G Growler

Growler

Max speed:  ?

Cruise speed:  ?

Range:  1275 nm (clean); 390 nm combat radius

Electronic Warfare Hardpoints:  5

Crew:  2

Specs are hard to come by for the Growler.  The only available data appears to be simply copied over from Hornet data sheets.  For example, the max speed that is commonly cited is not valid since the Growler will always operate with its hardpoints loaded with large, heavy pods.  Similarly, the range is undoubtedly invalid for the same reason.  To be fair, I have similar doubts about the Prowler’s cited specifications although a loaded Prowler and a loaded Intruder would probably have reasonably similar performance.

Unfortunately, electronic warfare performance assessments of the two aircraft do not exist in the public domain.  I remain highly doubtful that the four operators of the Prowler can be effectively replaced by two.

Two things stand out in a cursory look at the aircraft.  First, is that the Growler’s mission range appears to be much less than the Prowler.  Even granting the Growler the higher range figure due to a clean configuration only puts it at just more than half the Prowler.  Second, is that the Growler has been obtained in much smaller quantities than the Prowler.  We’ve repeatedly stressed that “quantity has a quality all its own”.  Further, modern combat is placing an ever-increasing emphasis on electronic warfare while, at the same time, the Navy has decreased its electronic warfare aviation fleet by 33%. 

Lacking any performance comparison, I have no particular problem with the Growler other than the range and quantity issues.  However, the Growler seems to be an example of the all too common trend of new platforms and systems that provide only limited benefits over their legacy predecessors despite large expenditures of time and money.  For example, the Growler uses the same legacy ALQ-99 jamming pods as the Prowler which would suggest no performance improvement in that respect.

One of the original justifications for the Growler over the Prowler was the increased speed – the concept being that the Growler could keep up with the strike aircraft.  That always seemed a bit suspect to me.  The Prowler had sufficient speed to keep up with strike aircraft at cruising speed.  Only at max speed would the Prowler drop off.  Given that the strike aircraft would cruise at a moderate speed to and from the target and the Prowler stands off during the actual attack run, the Prowler’s speed never seemed to me to be an issue.  Nevertheless, the Growler’s higher max speed was a justification. 

Setting aside the validity of that initial justification, we’ve now, in a relatively few short years, moved from a conventional strike package concept to very long range, manned/unmanned, stealth strikes.  The Growler, as a completely non-stealthy aircraft with limited range now seems like a poor fit as a supplement to the future strike package.  I’m not suggesting that we get rid of the Growler – they have many years of productive service ahead of them – but, rather, that we think very carefully before committing to any additional Growlers, as the Navy seems to be leaning towards.  It may be time to look at a stealthy, long range electronic warfare aircraft, possibly even unmanned if the technology and software are sufficiently advanced (I’m doubtful but it’s worth consideration).