Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Army is poised to fundamentally reshape its approach to acquiring electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, signaling a significant shift that could rewrite existing programs and how units are outfitted with emerging technology. This new direction, revealed by a service official, marks a departure from niche, highly tailored solutions in favor of broader, software-defined approaches.
The New Frontier: Flexible Capabilities for the Electromagnetic Spectrum
In the past, the Army often confined itself to outlining hyper-specific requirements, compelling industry to design bespoke and often costly solutions. However, according to Joseph Welch, Program Acquisition Executive for Command and Control (C2)/Counter C2, the software and radio-based nature of electronic warfare and signals intelligence (SIGINT) means a solution developed for one capability can have far broader applicability. This realization is opening new horizons. „If we’re hyper specific about what it needs to do, we’re failing to recognize the opportunity and just looking at the capability that exists and trying to think through how would we implement that for spectrum warfare writ large,” Welch stated, emphasizing the need for a wider vision.
Technological Integration: A Pentagon-Wide Push
The Army is now actively seeking to leverage these technological similarities, populating them across the force—a move that could have profound implications for current programs and capabilities. This initiative aligns with a wider push across the Department of Defense to move away from overly specific requirements in favor of industry-led solutions to broader problem sets. In February, the Army released what it calls a „characteristic of need” (CoN) for electromagnetic spectrum operations, following similar documents for its sweeping Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative. Welch explained that tools like the Army’s Spectrum Situational Awareness System, designed to visualize units’ presence in the electromagnetic spectrum, inherently demonstrate the ability to perform other types of EW activity. „By and large these capabilities, they’re very broad-based, software-defined, radio-type architecture,” he added. „The core box, the capabilities themselves, there’s a lot of similarity there.”
Lessons from the Past: From Struggles to Opportunities
The Army has historically struggled with delivering EW equipment. Russia’s 2014 incursion in Ukraine’s Crimea served as a wake-up moment, spurring the service to modernize its entire EW enterprise following post-Cold War divestment. However, numerous efforts – from jammers to planning tools to analyzers – have sputtered, struggled, shifted, or been killed. The new CoN approach is designed to rectify these issues, likely leading to programmatic changes. Welch indicated he wants to relook existing „programs of record” to ensure they are structured under the new, more flexible CoN framework.
A Rapid and Flexible Future for Acquisitions
While it’s still too early to fully gauge the impact, as the Army is only now receiving feedback on its Request for Information (RFI), Welch is optimistic. „If something is identified and it addresses our problem space and it makes sense, then we have everything we need to be able to move out,” he declared. With appropriately allocated budgets and a flexible contracting approach, the Army is prepared to act swiftly. „We’ve got the budget in the right lines, described appropriately, at the appropriate level of balance and we have a contracting approach that allows us to move forward without doing a bunch of twists on that to take a year,” Welch concluded, underscoring the desire to bypass bureaucratic hurdles that have historically slowed modernization.
