US Navy Pursues New Generation of Electronic Warfare for EA-18G Growler

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.