by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
(Washington DC)
Why the EA-18G Growler Is So Important: Several years ago, former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert declared that whoever controls the electromagnetic spectrum will prevail in future wars.
Greenert’s statement resonated across the service, and to a certain extent, it anticipated the Pentagon’s fast-growing emphasis on electronic warfare (EW).
The U.S. Navy’s EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, for example, is achieving new dimensions of tactical significance, given the rapid maturation of EW technology and its ability to impact combat.
Technology Can Determine Outcomes
For many years, EW weapons have been equipped to find a line of bearing and identify enemy communications signals, radar, and even some electronic guidance. Passive EW can search for signals without emitting a signature and giving away its location, whereas active EW weapons can “jam,” or disable, enemy electronics.
It takes little imagination to understand the impact this can have on combat — blinding enemy communications and weapons-guidance systems could certainly determine an outcome in warfare. More recent applications of EW merge with cyber operations and AI-empowered computer systems. Advanced EW can now accomplish several key tasks. It can identify signals and deconflict the spectrum to a certain extent by distinguishing friendly signatures from hostile ones and even specifying which kinds of signals they are.
Antenna technology has also evolved to be more omnidirectional and tailor its signature to specific areas while not emitting a more detectable 360-degree signal. EW systems can also include frequency hopping capability, where weapons-guidance systems can, for example, jump from one frequency to another to evade enemy countermeasures and keep a weapon on track to its target.
Reaching the Target
This kind of technology is critical with the Growler, a longstanding platform that helps protect other aircraft from being jammed or disabled by enemy EW.
It can help establish a protective EW “bubble” in support of key attack aircraft, while also operating with a capacity for offensive operations.
Depending upon range, Growler-emitted EW might be able to blind enemy ship or ground radar, helping missiles reach their targets without being intercepted. EW is also increasingly able to identify and disable the radio frequency guidance systems directing incoming enemy weapons.
The more streamlined, narrow, and targeted an electromagnetic signal is, the less detectable it is, which is one reason weapons developers are engineering EW weapons to emit multiple pencil-like electronic beams.
This technology is critical to modernizing the Growler. It is being engineered with the cutting-edge Next-Gen Jammer technology, a system that can track and jam multiple signals at one time and operate on a greater number of frequencies. This multiplies combat options for both attack and defense.
Kris Osborn is the Military Affairs Editor of 19 FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
