The Electronic Battleship

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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[1]https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1988/may/stark-report

SEWIP Problems

The Navy has, historically, relegated electronic warfare (EW) systems (SLQ-32 and the evolutionary SEWIP) on ships to a decidedly lower level of interest and importance.  We’ve covered the developmental history of EW systems (see, “SEWIP Update”) and it’s depressing.  We’ve also noted many times that historical data shows EW to be far and away the most effective form of anti-missile defense.  That makes the Navy’s apathy all the more baffling.

 

Now, SEWIP appears to be having serious problems although, since DOT&E caved into pressure to hide test results, we have only tidbits of information that have leaked out from the unclassified but controlled version of the Congressionally mandated annual report.

 

The electronic warfare capability scheduled for installation onboard several classes of Navy warships experienced multiple problems while in use on an aircraft carrier during testing in April 2021 … [1]

 

… testing last year on the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford (CVN-78) showed the system reporting “extraneous contacts for the radio frequency emitters it detects” and misidentifying “non-radio frequency emissions as [anti-ship cruise missiles],” according to the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester.[1]

 

Unfortunately, I have no more information than that.

 

 

SEWIP Block III

 

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[1]Breaking Defense, “Disrupting the ‘critical linkage’: What is the Navy’s SEWIP?”, Justin Katz, 4-Apr-2022,

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/04/disrupting-the-critical-linkage-what-is-the-navys-sewip/

SEWIP Update

The first Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 3 production unit was recently delivered so let’s do a quick review of the status of the program.  You can read a previous post on the subject, here.

 

SEWIP, is the Navy’s project to improve the venerable and increasingly obsolete SLQ-32 system.  The project is divided into a sequence of four Blocks, each of which adds additional capabilities to the overall system.  Not all ships will receive all four Blocks.

 

Here are the SEWIP Block descriptions as summarized from the Navy website (4)

 

• 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. 
• SEWIP Block 2 upgrades antennas and receivers and improves the signal processing. 
• SEWIP Block 3 provides active signal emissions to defeat incoming missiles. 
• SEWIP Block 4 is a future upgrade that will provide EO and IR capabilities.

 

SEWIP Block 3 Array Undergoing Testing

 

Let’s check a brief history of the program by looking at the timeline.

 

1974 - Northrop Grumman’s (NG) AN/SLQ-32(V)1 (‘Slick 32’) was launched

 

2008 – Lockheed Martin (LM) received contract to develop SEWIP Block 1

 

2009 - LM received contract to develop SEWIP Block 2 (AN/SLQ-32(V)6)

 

2010 – Navy approves LM Block 2 design

 

2011 – General Dynamics (GD) begins full rate production of Block 1

 

2013 - LM began LRIP of Block 2 and delivered the first SEWIP Block 2 system

 

2015 - NG received a $92M contract modification to a previous contract for SEWIP Block 3 engineering, manufacturing, and development intended to produce two prototype units.(2)

 

2015 – DOT&E testing found that Block 2 had severe deficiencies in generating and holding target tracks

 

2016 - LM received full rate production contract for SEWIP Block 2

 

2019 - Dept. of Defense approved the SEWIP Block 3 Milestone C to enable the start of low rate initial production (LRIP)

 

2020 - NG received a $16M contract modification to an existing contract to provide support for two Low Rate Initial Production SEWIP Block 3 systems.(3)

 

2020 - Navy issued a contract to Northrop Grumman for SEWIP Block 3 production systems.

 

The $100.7 million base contract is for the first follow on production lot of AN/SLQ-32(V)7 SEWIP Block 3 systems. The contract has a maximum value of $1.16 billion. (1)

 

 

2021 - NG delivered the first production SEWIP Block 3 to the Navy

 

 

There are a few noteworthy aspects to the SEWIP program:

 

Priorities – For reasons unfathomable, the Navy has never considered electronic warfare to be of much value.  The original SLQ-32 served for 34 years with only minor improvements.  For the last decade or so, the SLQ-32 was so obsolete as to be almost useless.  In contrast, during the same time frame, the Navy poured vast resources and funds into Standard missile development, clearly demonstrating where their priorities lay;  this despite the overwhelming evidence that electronic countermeasures have, historically, proven far more effective than hard kill measures.

 

Even with the commencement of the SEWIP program, it has taken 13 years to get the Block 3 into initial service.

 

The Navy misguidedly and unwisely continues to place little emphasis on electronic warfare.  The time span and leisurely pace of development demonstrates that the Navy is not particularly serious about shipboard electronic warfare.  We’ve discussed how the Navy should be hugely increasing the size, scope, capabilities, and power outputs of ship’s EW systems and should be building dedicated EW ships.  One has only to consider the vast resources and wide variety of equipment and capabilities being put into ground combat EW systems (with Russia leading the way!) to see that the Navy simply does not prioritize EW defenses despite overwhelming evidence of their effectiveness (see, “AAW – Hard Kill or Soft Kill”).

 

Block 3 – This is the development that adds active output transmissions and provides active countermeasures.  This needs to be thoroughly tested under realistic conditions and widely installed across the fleet.  The distribution is a concern because the previous SLQ-32 system was not uniformly distributed.  Ships received different, less capable versions depending on the ship type.  Once upon a time, when some ships were cheaper and therefore more ‘expendable’ this might have made some degree of sense (not really!) but today, with every ship costing $1B+, every ship should have the maximum possible protection.

 

Testing & Reporting - The last report from DOT&E on the SEWIP program was 2016.  In that report, SEWIP Block 2 was reported as operationally effective but not operationally suitable or survivable due to myriad reliability, training, reboot times, and cyber vulnerabilities.  Reports mysteriously stop at that point.  I don’t know if that means that the Navy has stopped conducting tests, which would be foolish in the extreme though not without ample misguided precedent, or if the Navy considers the SEWIP program ‘finished’, which would also be foolish since the system has never been tested in anything approaching an operationally realistic manner.

 

 

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(1)https://seapowermagazine.org/navy-awards-sewip-block-3-contract-to-northrop-grumman/

 

(2)https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/621915/

 

(3)https://www.afcea.org/content/northrop-gets-contract-mod-continue-naval-sewip-block-3-support

 

(4)https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2167559/surface-electronic-warfare-improvement-program-sewip/#:~:text=The%20SEWIP%20Block%203%20program%20is%20designated%20as,is%20a%20future%20planned%20upgrade%20that%20will%20provide

Cruise Missile Characteristics Related To Detection and Engagement Range

The US Navy is committed to an anti-air warfare path of long range intercepts using the Aegis and Standard systems.  The wisdom of this is debatable for a variety of reasons.

Long range intercepts depend on being able to detect the target at long ranges.  You can’t engage what you can’t see!  For targets that obligingly fly at high altitudes, this is a viable approach.  For targets that fly at low altitudes or are less detectable due to small size and/or stealth, this approach is not feasible.  Unfortunately, the trend in anti-ship missile (ASM) technology is towards stealth and sea-skimming altitudes.  Many missiles have options for an initial high altitude cruise phase followed by a sea-skimming attack phase.  The question is how far out from the target does the cruise phase terminate and the sea-skimming attack phase commence?  If the cruise phase terminates and converts to the low altitude attack phase beyond the effective range of defensive missiles then the ASM is, for all practical purposes, a purely sea-skimming missile.  This is what seems to be the typical case today.  Thus, it is quite likely that a defending ship will never see, or at least not have the opportunity to engage, the attacking missile until it enters the radar horizon (20 miles or so).

Another problem with the Navy’s long range intercept path is that it’s very expensive.  For example, the Standard SM-6 costs around $4M each and has a claimed range of 150-300 miles.  Launching volleys of $4M missiles quickly becomes prohibitively expensive.  Of course, the cost of a volley of $4M missiles is, arguably, a bargain if it prevents the destruction of a multi-billion dollar ship!  Still, the price tag of Standard missiles does impact the budget and the number of missiles procured. It’s not just the missiles that are expensive.  The Aegis system that enables the Standard missile costs hundreds of millions of dollars and the developmental costs for the ever-changing software are astronomical.

Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to look at some characteristics of common potential enemy anti-ship missiles as provided by readily available open source information.  Note the attack altitudes and relatively small sizes.  These missiles will be hard to detect and engagement windows will be very short.

C-801

Speed   Mach 0.75

Flight Altitude  <20 m

Attack Altitude  <20 m

Range  40 km

Length  5.8 m

C-802

Speed  Mach 0.9

Flight Altitude  7 m

Attack Altitude  5 m

Range  120 km

Length  6.4 m

Exocet

Speed  Mach 0.92

Flight Altitude  2 m

Range  72-180 km

Length  4.7 m

P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22 Sunburn)

Speed  Mach 3.0

Flight Altitude  20 m

Attack Altitude  <7 m

Range  90-240 km, depending on version and flight profile

Length  9.7 m

P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 Shipwreck)

Speed  Mach >1.6

Flight Altitude  high

Attack Altitude  <25 m

Range  625 km

Length  10.0 m

P-800 Oniks (SS-N-26 Strobile)

Speed  Mach 2.5

Flight Altitude  high

Attack Altitude  10 m

Range  370 miles

Length  8.9 m

Kh-59 MK (AS-13 Kingbolt)

Speed  Mach 0.8

Flight Altitude  7 m

Attack Altitude  ?

Range  285 km

Length  5.7 m

BrahMos

Speed  Mach 3.0

Flight Altitude  high

Attack Altitude  5 m

Range  280 miles

Length  8.4 m

Even if not designed as stealthy airframes, ASMs are small and have an inherently small radar cross section.  A small missile, in sea-skimming mode, down in the wave clutter, will not be readily detected.  First detection is likely to be inside the radar horizon.  Even the presence of an airborne radar plane will not greatly increase the detection range of an incoming sea-skimming missile. 

Also, detection and targeting are two separate issues.  An airborne radar may detect a missile further out but being able to maintain a steady lock sufficient to guide a defensive missile is another matter and likely will not be achievable until the attacking missile has gotten much closer to its target.

What is the overall point of this discussion?  It’s that I suspect that the actual targeting detection range of most ASM’s is going to be very short.  That being the case, one can’t help but ask whether the Navy’s focus on very long range Standard missiles is appropriate.  It would seem that the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (RIM-162 ESSM) would be a more likely and useful defensive system.  ESSM range is given as 27 nm which would seem to be an appropriate match to the expected detection range.

In fact, I have doubts that intercepts at ranges of hundreds of miles are even feasible given the cruise characteristics of enemy anti-ship missiles.  What enemy missile or aircraft is going to fly obligingly high, straight, and level for an extended period while we guide a Standard missile to it?  Ballistic anti-ship missiles do fly predictable paths and, for those, long range intercepts are both feasible and desirable – but that’s another topic.

If my conjecture is correct and the vast majority of anti-ship cruise missile engagements are going to occur at radar horizon ranges, shouldn’t the vast majority of our defensive systems also be optimized for those same ranges?  Wouldn’t it be better to emphasize ESSM defenses over Standard missiles?

Further, given engagement ranges of radar horizon and closer, shouldn’t we also greatly beef up our short range engagement capabilities such as RAM, SeaRAM, and CIWS?  Sure, debris from a successful short range intercept may still impact the ship and cause damage but it will be a lot less damage than having an intact, functioning anti-ship cruise missile hit the ship.  Consider that most Burkes have only a single CIWS for close in defense and, for a time, Burkes were built with none.  Burkes do not mount RAM/SeaRAM.  Our short range defenses are lacking, to put it mildly.

We need to do several things to beef up our medium range (out to 30 miles or so) AAW capability.

1. Install multiple RAM/SeaRAM launchers on every ship.
2. Provide at least 3 CIWS for every Burke.
3. Focus on electronic anti-missile defenses (soft kill).
4. Develop radars/sensors optimized for medium/short range use.
5. Develop methods to effectively launch and utilize high density volleys of ESSM and RAM.  This would include the ability to track the incoming target even in the presence of high clutter returns due to near miss defensive missile explosions.  Given the short engagement window, it is vital that we can continuously track and engage rather than have to wait for the radar picture to clear after a near miss.  The traditional engagement sequence of shoot-shoot-look is no longer viable.  The engagement sequence has to be shoot-shoot-shoot-keep shooting!  We also need to be able to track the incoming missile in the presence of many outgoing missiles.

The last point also suggests that Aegis is likely not the optimum AAW radar.  We don’t need bigger and longer range AMDR radars (well, we do for ballistic missile defense but, again, that’s a topic for another post); we need very high definition, very rapid response, enhanced capability medium/short range radars combined with much greater numbers of medium range ESSM and integrated fire control systems.  We need to greatly reduce our emphasis on Aegis/Standard and put far more emphasis on medium range engagement.

We also desperately need to improve our AAW electronic countermeasure (ECM) capability.  The venerable – and never all that effective, according to reports – SLQ-32 needs to be enhanced far beyond even the current SEWIP (Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program) block improvements.  We need massively more capable and powerful detection and active jamming/decoy systems (remember our discussion about an electronic warfare version of the Zumwalt?).

In summary, future naval AAW engagements are not going to be the long range intercepts that the Navy has designed for – they’re going to radar horizon, close range, short window, affairs that require an optimized radar fire control system capable of operating a continuous fire defensive system, backed up by extensive short range and ECM capabilities.

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.