VIAVI Solutions – Electromagnetic warfare (EW) has become a pivotal component in modern conflicts.
And while the sensitive nature of its use prevents quantitative data on its operational use, the on-going Russia-Ukraine conflict shows its increased use and importance. In this fight, both nations are extensively employing EW tactics to gain superiority over the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) with the goal of controlling communications and gathering intelligence as well as for navigation and targeting systems.
The effect of EW is significant. For example in July, Ukraine’s Commander of the Ground Forces, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, told the Фокус (Focus) weekly newspaper the country’s use of EW technologies was disrupting almost 2,000 drones per day and had detected approximately 50 combatant EW stations.
In these settings, two major techniques are typically used. Modern encryption is deployed to secure military communications and prevent interception, spoofing, and cyber-based EW attacks. While advanced modulation, for example frequency hopping and spread spectrum, is utilized to enhance resistance to jamming and detection.
Together, these techniques ensure reliable, stealthy, and resilient operations in contested electromagnetic environments, protecting radar, navigation, and communication systems from electronic threats.
To deploy these, however, sophisticated tools are needed to address obstacles and emerging threats in the field. And with a view of signal hiding techniques and spectrum fragmentation, it becomes possible to generate a complete situational awareness of the EMS environment that is capable of exploiting opportunities and vulnerabilities of the EMS.
Managing electromagnetic warfare
VIAVI has a long-standing history of supporting military organizations and our products can monitor, record, synthesize, and analyze individual signals and complex EMS environments. This in turn enables the creation and automation of complex and dynamic electromagnetic environments for electromagnetic attack effects, as well as for obfuscation and training purposes.
As an example, the VIAVI Ranger EMS Suite is the most powerful electromagnetic warfare, EMS operations, and signal/communications intelligence (SIGINT/COMINT) platform available.
The compact all-in-one solution incorporates a large memory with contiguous and sequential playback modes and can capture a wide frequency range of RF signals (from 100 kHz to 30 GHz) in order to deliver the most comprehensive solution for live analysis and the offline forensic post-processing of both military and commercial communication and radar signals.
When used with the T/Rx Software Defined Transceiver (SDT) System, the Signal WorkShoptm(SWS) application, and EMS Sequencer application, any sequence of events in operational and training scenarios can be generated and quickly modified to allow training to be adapted to enhance the trainee’s skillset with real-world signals recorded elsewhere and replayed at total bandwidth.
These field-deployable systems can create scenarios for all EW operator missions, from finding and neutralizing signals to obfuscation training events.
Take the First Step
Electromagnetic warfare may be invisible, but its impact is monumental. For military leaders and strategists, the ability to dominate EMS operations defines strategic and tactical superiority for operational success.
Download the Ranger and T/Rx EMS Suite Brochure for more details about how our products can transform your EMW strategies.
The right solutions will ensure not just success—but dominance.
