The Pentagon Has a Plan to Stop Enemy Lasers, EW & Long-Range Missiles

Video Report: Army Research Lab Develops AI-Enabled Robot Tanks

byKris Osborn– Warrior Maven

Here’s What You Need To Remember:This means countermeasures, electronic warfare (EW), interceptor missiles and straight forward offensive attacks upon enemy weapons systems once discovered, may be employed. Perhaps a cutting-edge EW system can block, jam or re-direct incoming enemy laser fire or guided ballistic missiles? Perhaps a network of manned-unmanned platforms can detect the launch of an anti-satellite system or find the electronic signature of an enemy air defense system and pinpoint the necessary targets for attack in a matter of seconds.

(Washington D.C.) The U.S. Air Force is looking at innovative ways to counter a new generation of enemy weapons such as lasers, anti-satellite systems, long-range missiles and advanced air defenses. One way the Pentagon hopes to deal with these weapons is by sharpening its focus on emerging methods of networking, sensor detection and countermeasures. 

Air Force General James Holmes, Commander, Air Combat Command, explained that countering these types of new threats will require the service to rely upon new technologies such as the now-in-development Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). 

“We are trying to find and destroy mobile, agile, intelligent hard to find targets such as mobile anti satellite systems, mobile directed energy systems, mobile long range fires and mobile integrated air defenses [that] in many cases they are shooting at ports and airfields which are easy to find,” Holmes told Retired Lieutenant General David Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in a special interview series. 

Holmes explained the dynamic in terms of a “battle of long range fires” requiring Air Force war commanders to help “close that kill chain.” He cited ABMS as the key conceptual and technical foundation upon which this kind of combat effectiveness can be achieved. 

ABMS is a future-oriented program immersed in leveraging, networking, innovating and uncovering a meshed web of warzone surveillance “nodes” able to find enemy targets with great accuracy at long ranges. Of greatest significance, the program is understood in terms of mission objectives, meaning that it may ultimately evolve into a series of specific platforms capable of performing the operations. The program initially emerged out of a need to replace the Air Force’s highly effective, yet aging E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) surveillance planes. What is needed now is a new platform or series of nodes able to operate at greater distances and operate in austere, high-risk environments.