Is NATO Falling Behind in the Spectrum Fight?

Electromagnetic spectrum dominance used to be a tactical edge; now it’s a strategic requirement, especially in Europe. But is NATO keeping up?

In this episode, Ken Miller is joined by John Knowles, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Electromagnetic Dominance (JED), to break down the state of EMSO across Europe and the alliance. Drawing on lessons from Ukraine, Canada, and the UK, they explain why speed, integration, and early development are no longer optional, they’re essential.

We invite you to share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions for future episodes by emailing host Ken Miller at [e-mail] or by visiting us on our Instagram @fromthecrowsnestpodcast.

To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.

Creators and Guests

Host

Ken Miller

AOC Director of Advocacy & Outreach, Host of @AOCrows From the Crows' Nest Podcast

IB

Editor

Ish Balderas-Wong

JK

Guest

John Knowles

Producer

Laura Krebs

What is From the Crows' Nest?

Featuring interviews, analysis, and discussions covering leading issues of the day related to electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). Topics include current events and news worldwide, US Congress and the annual defense budget, and military news from the US and allied countries. We also bring you closer to Association of Old Crow events and provide a forum to dive deeper into policy issues impacting our community.

John Knowles (00:02)
You're shifting from the hardware realm to the software realm. And that software is what buys you the speed. That's obviously how Ukraine has done that. They haven't tried to build software-defined radios. They have focused on the software reprogramming skills you need to rapidly iterate new waveforms as quickly as possible in the field. I would say I'm exaggerating, but it's like overnight.

Ken Miller (00:31)
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest. I'm your host, Ken Miller from the Association of Old Crows. As always, it's great to be here with you. I am pleased to have with me on this episode, friend and colleague, John Knowles, who is the editor in chief of AOC's monthly publication, The Journal of Electromagnetic Dominance. John, how are you doing? It's great to have you back on the show.

John Knowles (00:50)
Doing pretty well, Ken. Thanks for having me back on.

Ken Miller (00:53)
Well, it's been a while since we actually talked. think the last time I had you on the show was back at AOC 2025 in December and a whole lot has happened in the world since then. But I wanted to have you on the show because next week we both are headed to AOC Signature Conference over in Europe, AOC Europe 2026 in Helsinki, Finland. And it's a great opportunity for us to look at the EMSO landscape and how it is changing in the European theater.

amongst all our coalition partners in NATO. And in fact, following AOC Europe the next week, I have an opportunity to observe some of the NATO EW exercise Thor's hammer up in Norway. So I very much looking forward to kind of pivoting looking at how EMSO is being handled in Europe. And I thought it'd be a great opportunity to have you back on the show and talk a little bit about what you expect to see and what are some of the issues that are driving

quite frankly, really eye-opening change in how Europe is addressing EMSO. And maybe there's some lessons that we can learn here in the United States. thanks for joining me. Just to start off a little bit, John, know, just could you give us a little bit of insight into where your mind is at heading into Helsinki? I know recently you had an opportunity to attend ⁓ an event with AOC's Canadian chapter. And you mentioned that a lot of what you're hearing from Canada kind of echoes what you're also hearing across the pond.

over in Europe. And so I wanted to kind of get your take on where your head is at going into Helsinki, Finland for AOC Europe 2026 and where you think Europe is heading on EMSO. Sure.

John Knowles (02:26)
So I was up in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago for the AOC Maple Leaf Chapter EMSO Conference, their first one, very successful, actually very great participation on the military side, great participation, actually very good exhibition, a lot of companies there on the show floor. So it was a great conference. And I think what I saw there, what I took away from there at least was a couple of things that I expect to see kind of.

also in Europe and maybe just conversations with people over there. But it's really one year on from the new administration coming in and the questions over it, hanging over NATO itself as an alliance and how that's going to evolve and change. So what I saw really up there was a really growing interest, a resurgence in a way in EW, in a way I've never seen before up there in my 30 odd years of doing this. So one of the things I think they were very focused on

is the NATO money, what I call the NATO money, but basically the extra budget that they're trying to reach the new goals with. A lot of that seems to be focusing on EMSO. ⁓ that's procurement funds that they've never really had up there. And Canada has always had, you know, kind of gone back and forth between buying a lot of US equipment, just because the US and Canada, even beyond the context of NATO, the US and Canada share a special alliance because they share a border and they share the same

Issues with early warning over the north things like that and obviously Canada's got a rapidly melting northern polar border That's gonna have a lot more shipping in it already does really and so so they've got challenges up there and they're looking for So it's that effect force multiplier effect up there, but what's interesting I thought was so in addition to new money. They really seem to want to spend it domestically They're not so hooked on imports that they the way they used to be

⁓ And so they're really looking to develop an industry and there's a lot of ways they need to catch up to that. And the way they buy is interesting too, because they tend to buy through one single ministry, Department of Procurement.

Ken Miller (04:32)
question on that. Obviously when a country or government says, we're going to invest a lot more money into something, here's an increasing pot of money that we're gonna put into defense. If they say, hey, we're gonna use this money to build a lot of military bases, brick and mortar, that's where the investment goes. That's where the companies will gravitate toward.

In this case, in Canada and we see it in Europe, there is an intentional effort to say, hey, we're going to take this money, we're going to invest in non kinetics in EMSO. That's a unique and relatively new pathway that you're seeing. And so it's attracting a lot of defense, but it's very interesting that they're saying, hey, we can put a lot of money into defense, but we're choosing this one path to at least prioritize over others. What do you think is driving it from the European perspective? I mean,

they could increase their defense spending by buying a lot of kinetic weapons and building a lot of bases and it would still hit the top line. So what is driving their focus on investing in NEMSO?

John Knowles (05:35)
think it's the force multiplier effect, which is something that we talked about in our community back in the 90s, you know, when I got to Jed, that was still like kind of one of the major sort of benefits in a policy discussion is the force multiplier effect of EW. And I think that's coming back that, you know, again, if you, this goes to an article we did in the April Jed on Smart Kill, which really was focusing on balancing your non-kinetic and kinetic capabilities, especially like,

right down to the planning, force structure, all of that. You're seeing that it really came out of lessons in the Red Sea, but obviously you're seeing it live today in Persian Gulf. And you're seeing that you've really got to figure out how not to use up or technically waste your kinetic weapons against an adversary. So you need to use your non-kinetics both in sensing and especially in countermeasures where and when you can. And that means you've got to integrate that into your force structure. And so that's the same.

problem, that drone problem or, you know, I think of like a Shahad, for example, the term I'm trying to think of it works or not. the other way I think about them is it is a lethal decoy. It's not going to take down a building, but it's going to probably take out a tank or take out some armor. Or in the middle East, if you hit a refinery, a desalination plant, the bridge of a oil tank or whatever, it's going to cause a lot of damage and probably make render that ineffective for a while. but at the same time,

from a missile defense standpoint, it's not your main threat, it's not a ballistic missile. So you gotta figure out how to take those out intelligently. And this is where the smart kill concept comes in, balancing your non-kinetic and your kinetic weapons ⁓ and your sensing as well. So I'm seeing that countries thinking about that along those lines as an example.

Ken Miller (07:19)
You mentioned, you know, they've been talking about the force multiplier effect from the nineties and it got me thinking, you I remember back a long time ago when I was on Capitol Hill, one of the opportunities I had was to witness a NATO exercise. I think it was trial mace, the RF countermeasures exercise. And it was a really interesting, eye-opening experience. we, was talking to a lot of the participants in the evenings over red wine in the south of France. was a real tough assignment. And, ⁓

But one of the things that came out of that, and it spurred us on to doing kind of a multinational forum as part of the EW Working Group when I was on Capitol Hill, and we learned that a lot of the European countries have really exquisite niche capabilities that they're really good at. In some cases, they were better at it than the US in terms of specific technologies or capabilities, a countermeasure system or something like that that would be able to do something that the US couldn't. And it was always...

our effort back then was always a, let's highlight what they're able to do. I see today as a little bit more of a holistic understanding of EMSO as a force capability that is necessary. It's not so much niche technologies that you kind of have to piece together, but a lot of the coalition partners, whether it's NATO or just allies, they're actually developing EMSO strategies. They're trying to aggregate some of these niche capabilities and really kind of design their force to be able to

fight in the spectrum. Do you see the shift in Europe kind of being a little bit, this shift being a little bit stronger than maybe in the nineties when we were talking the force multiplier, because now it's, it's, you're looking at the total force, the ability of using EMSO to lift up the entire force versus delivering a specific niche capability.

John Knowles (09:07)
I think because EW has changed so much in that timeframe, right? In that 30 years. So it used to be more hardware oriented. What could you bring to the fight? And today it's still, can you bring to the fight? But by the way, we don't want to have to sustain your logistics tail. what can you bring to the fight and make sure it's interoperable with our system? So you can, you can build something in your country and field it and you fight with it.

And as long as we can get the benefit of that from a force multiplier effect, we love that. But if you're just going to bring a hardware capability in that doesn't have enough logistics for the spares, and it's going to be employed in a weird way, so we have to actually bring your guys in to explain how it works in the operations center or whatever. In the coalition, you really need to bring your entire capability in, not just deliver a piece of hardware that delivers one effect.

It really has to be a true multiplying effect.

Ken Miller (10:05)
One of the challenges I see when we talk about EMSO here in the United States is how do we introduce this understanding of operating in the spectrum and what you need from a capability standpoint earlier in development so that it's not something that's reprogrammed or attached or integrated late to late where the cost is increased, maybe the effectiveness is compromised in some way because you're trying to put a bandaid on something late in development. Historically with a lot of these are

exercises and exchanges with our coalition partners and allies. We take finished product, train against a finished product and see if there's interoperability and if not, maybe we can tweak some operational element to using that technology so that there is better interoperability. How can we as ⁓ a global force from US combined with NATO or NATO and other coalition partners and allies

How can we work together to get these technologies in respective countries earlier into development and sharing earlier? And so that when we go into these training exercises, we're not taking finished technology versus finished technology that hasn't seen each other, but they're familiar with each other through the development. And we know this system will work well with this British or this Norwegian or this Finnish or whatever system.

because early on development, we've had those conversations and we kind of tackled it earlier versus too late in the game. Do you see that shift happening or is that an area that we kind of have to, that's kind of the next step in this evolution?

John Knowles (11:43)
I think that shift is both really important and it is happening. I actually Trial Hammer, example, or Thor's Hammer, that's going to be very much, that's not a training exercise, that's a experimental sort of exercise where you're really looking at countries bringing software-defined radio-based systems and in the middle of that, they will probably be iterating techniques and mission data files, development, reprogramming basically in the field at the time.

It's a base capability that they will focus. And so what you learn from that, by the way, isn't just what techniques work, because those techniques usually have a very short lifespan in the field. If someone develops countermeasure, because then everything's software be programmable. It's more about understanding the process of this country does this part of the process really fast. You can look at Ukraine, right? They do it really, really fast. Everybody's trying to model off that as much as they can, at least in terms of getting the same result of much faster rapid reprogramming.

But most countries would never allow an operator in the field to program new waveforms overnight or the course of a week or anybody like that. We have a very much more fixed slower system to do that. And that has to change. And that's where like, again, Thor's hammer and things like that will probably help move that along. So we actually have an example of how it can be done in Ukraine.

Ken Miller (13:01)
This is going to sound like an obviously stupid question, but because we know the answer is yes, Ukraine, the war in Ukraine has radically changed how we think about fighting and it's moving so fast. But what's interesting is, know, Ukraine can't, doesn't have the luxury of waiting or experimenting multiple times on something to try to get it right. They just have to put it in the field. The battlefield in Ukraine is also a test bed.

You have a new technology capability. You might not know how it works. It might be successful. It might not, but they'll put it out there. And that is a level of, I think, ⁓ technology evolution that we haven't seen recently, at least in recent years, where things are changing daily because a war is happening. And both parties, have obviously Russia that operates with no sense of ethical rules or processes.

in that way, they don't have the same constraints that we do in the free Western world. But Ukraine also, while they're more aligned with us, obviously, but the way that they're executing their war is very similar in that they don't have the luxury of making sure that everything works right before they test it. how has that dynamic put pressure on Europe and US through NATO to...

speed up the delivery of new capability while also maintaining adherence to the rules and ethics and all the other processes meant to make sure that what we do on the battlefield follows the normal rules of engagement.

John Knowles (14:43)
think that Europe is looking at a number of things, right? So they're looking at a US that least says it wants to step back a bit from NATO and not be so central to it. You're looking at a, I would say, a bit of a divide between Eastern and Western Europe. So Eastern Europe is much closer to Russia, the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine is not part of NATO, but they're gonna be informing NATO. And then you have the West, you have countries like Spain, which says we're not gonna hit our 5 % goal,

because we are the West end of Europe. And so they have not tried to hit those targets. And you have countries in between, like France, Europe, Germany, that are trying to figure out what the change in the coalition looks like. So you don't have a monolithic Europe, is my point. You have very advanced EW countries in the Scandinavian, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. They're very advanced in EW. And then you have these little countries like in the Baltics. You have this mixture of

capability, all of them are trying to figure out what Russia's move will be. That's their obvious regional threat. And so all of them are, again, trying to figure out what can we be good at if inside of a coalition, what can we deliver that is some countries are going to be able to deliver large numbers of troops. Some countries are going to deliver very advanced technologies or cyber capabilities. So like the Baltic countries, like Estonia. everybody's got something to give. And the key isn't

I think so countries can innovate inside their borders and it doesn't have to be some NATO wide deployed thing, right? It can be, I bring this to the table, but it's going to be very software oriented typically because it's going to have to move fast and iterate quickly on the battlefield in the middle of a fight. And it's also going to have to be very interoperable. it's, have to, that's the key thing. And this is why this experimentation is so important. These exercises are so important. Experimentation is getting

the systems to talk to each other or at least feedback to central operations centers so can see a battlefield picture in the EMS, which is something where NATO is actually buying that now. It's some sort of electromagnetic bowel management capability as the US tries to figure out its own. We're doing EMBM over here. So my point is you're shifting from the hardware realm to the software realm. And that software is what buys you the speed. That's obviously how Ukraine has done that. They haven't tried to build software-defined radios.

they have focused on the software reprogramming skills you need to rapidly iterate new waveforms as quickly as possible in the field. And I would say I'm exaggerating, but it's like overnight. It's fast. so that's, think, those are the, I don't know that answers your question, but that's the flavor that we need to move to. And that's very, that's where EMSO needs to go. The hardware is, it's not irrelevant. It's just, it's not the driver anymore of that.

Ken Miller (17:38)
So when you talk about US wanting to step back a little bit, I mean, I know that there's in the headlines of the news, and we were just talking about this before we get on the air, like we both kind of ignore some of the headlines because it's not necessarily the content that you need to digest, but the headlines, you know, always talk about fear of US pulling out of NATO or something drastic like that. But isn't it a good thing for the US to, what's happening in Europe is part,

Obviously what's going on over in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, it's causing Europe to wake up and say, we have to take care of our own national security. But also the US kind of pulling back a little bit and saying, this is your responsibility. We have to pivot ourselves because we're a global power. have a lot of, obviously the Indo-Pakon region takes a lot of attention. And if we have time, we can talk a little bit about the growing.

defense market down in South America, obviously in our hemisphere, there's other concerns outside of NATO that require our attention. So isn't it kind of a good thing though, in your mind that Europe is taking charge of its own security through NATO in a greater way than it maybe historically has, is this just sort of a, or do you see this as more of a continual path that's been going on for 20, 30 years, and it's just the headlines that are changing and being

a little bit more, maybe it's just the headlines that are pointing out kind of the what we should think or not think about it. But is this an ongoing thing or is this something that's pretty new in terms of how Europe is approaching its own security and defense through NATO?

John Knowles (19:15)
So I think about it is in US policy, it has been a request for a long time to pull ourselves out of it. World events, whether it's 9-11 in Afghanistan and Iraq, ⁓ Russia invading Ukraine, things like that, constantly pulled us in because we really didn't change the dynamic. We've had 35 years to kind of pull ourselves back and restructure the world to something that doesn't look like the Cold War anymore and get back to that sort of multipolar

pre-World War II world, right? Where multiple sort of poles of power. So we wanted to get there. I'll just say basically a year ago when I was talking to lot of Europeans right on the heels of the administration coming in and the messages were rather blunt and it was combined with the tariffs and all that, they were very offended and angry and like, you know, and I was like, well, you know, you know, not, trying to defend the administration, just trying to tell you like, like if you go back in time, like we've been trying to do this for 25 years ever since George W.

Bush came in and wanted to focus on China. And then we got pulled into the Middle East. And then when we kind of extracted ourselves from the Middle East, almost within months of pulling out of Afghanistan, here comes Russia invading Ukraine. And so we get pulled into Europe again, even though it's not the same sort of, you know, active fighting footprint, but we're getting pulled in there again. And so the US really wants to be able to focus on getting out. And as in that year, since then, I've thought about it.

I think the Europeans have thought about their sort of position and they're like, you know, this is a good thing. This is us being able to invent. mean, you got to think of all the industries, especially in EW, all the programs that have slipped out of the hands of the Europeans because they continue to buy US equipment or depend on the US for capability. So they don't make the investment themselves. And so my example is when I was up in Canada a couple of weeks ago, they have a defense industrial plan strategy and EW is actually one of their 10 areas.

where they're hoping to achieve self-sufficiency very soon, like in the next decade or so, which in policy terms is soon. But they want self-sufficiency in EW. And I sit there and I think, like, we're really going to achieve all of that. But the key is, like, they want to go for that. They're going for that. They're not just saying, hey, we're going to buy a new surface combatant, and we're just going to buy whatever EW system is on there that's a US system. Great. They're actually thinking about developing Canadian

Expertise and that goes right into the universities and how they educate people and probably they may have a long way to go because they're still very oriented toward a The way they have been for the past like 30 plus years But they they're basically like how do we invest in the universities and get the students all the engineering STEM and all that? How do we? Develop the company so it's gonna be an acquisition question for them How do we how do we get you know, they don't have a very big venture capital oriented?

defense economy the way that we, the US are trying to focus ourselves. Europe's the same way. They don't have that either, really Ukraine does, but most of the rest of Europe doesn't. They very traditional national champion oriented defense structure. So I look at Canada as kind of, I expect to see the conversations I had in Canada replicated in Europe when we go to AOC Europe. I expect a lot of countries to get very excited about, and not excited, but intentional about developing their domestic EW industries.

in taking that NATO money that they're spending more on to hit their targets, that increase that gets them to 3.5%, a lot of that, the money that gets them from 3.5 to 5 % is a lot of infrastructure spending, right? But the money that gets them to 3.5%, that is pure capability, and a lot of that's gonna go into EW. And so they're all looking at how do we get ourselves back into those things. And you can look at countries like the UK, for example.

They used to make their own SIGN aircraft, right? And they had the Nimrods and now they're buying rivet joint. And so a lot of capability just, and I know there's UK things on there, but that expertise and that mission system integration, all that, that left the country for the most part, because it's now in Waco, Texas with L3, Harris doing rivet joint. And they bought three of those. They need to get back to that. They understand that, the French, the Germans, but even like the Finns and the Swedes, like they have that.

They have an unbelievably good engineering culture over there, like just unbelievably smart. I always tell people, like when I go to like Stockholm and you go on an escalator in a train station, instead of having metal walls, it's clear, because they want the kids to see how the escalator works. They think engineering like 24-7 over there, they're really good at that. And so it's not lost on me how good they are at that. That is going to get tapped. That's going to get turned on in a big way, and especially in software.

So they may not make every little piece of what they dig, but they're going to have those key things, especially the software reprogramming skills and things like that, that are going to really get them there. So I'm very excited to go there and see if that, what I saw in Canada is going to be a small model of how, and I'm sure every country will do it differently, but I think it's going to be big over there.

Ken Miller (24:23)
So AOC Europe, for those who might not be familiar with the event, it's happening next week, if you're listening to this, when we release the episode, in Helsinki, Finland, May 19th to 21. And I apologize to my listeners. I think I might have given the wrong dates on a previous episode. I haven't been able to find it, but I heard some people tell me that I gave the wrong date. So I apologize. You might, you might, I'm actually choosing just to go over to Helsinki, Finland for a longer time. You know, that way I hit everything.

John Knowles (24:44)
Do I have to change my plane ticket?

Ken Miller (24:53)
but ⁓ it's May 21st, May 19th to 21. The theme is Rearming Europe for Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority. And of course we have the electromagnetic spectrum superiority strategy here in the US. We're using that terminology specifically when you land in Helsinki, Finland and you go to AOC Europe, what are some of the questions you want to ask the various...

leaders that are going to be speaking there? What are specifically the topics that you're going to be revisiting in conversations that you want to learn more about over there?

John Knowles (25:30)
Again, and I'm modeling off what I learned in Canada. When you talk to the folks in Canada, they have a Canadian Forces EW Center, they have a Canadian Air Force EW Center, a Navy EW Center, and an Army EW Center. We don't have any of that here. We have the Duke, but we don't have service oriented EW centers, right? You and I worked on that stuff in the past. And my point is that Canada is a middle power, they are agile.

They can reorganize way more quickly than the US, because we are dealing with a much bigger bureaucracy. I'm curious to see how Europe uses that size as a superpower for themselves to be more agile in their force structure. their ability to get where they want to go, in a way, again, if you tried to move the entire US around EMSO, we're struggling to do that.

because we have just so many services budgets are bigger than most European national defense budgets, right? And some of the US services compared to that. So my point is basically that I wanna see how well they blend non kinetics into their planning strategies, into their force structure, into everything. Cause I think they're way more capable of getting to that smart kill concept quicker than we are.

And again, they have a little bit more of, I won't say a blank slate, they've got more money to spend. I think they're less likely to double down on the kinetic strategy that we're doubling down on over here. I think they're more likely to find that blend because they have to. That's the thing. They've got Russia that's just, you need to have a counter-vroom capability. You need to be able to take out S-400s, so you need air power. You need all the things they used to need. Their doctrine is really built around air power.

Ken Miller (27:07)
to. ⁓

John Knowles (27:21)
to stop the Russian army, actually have to take away their air cover. You have to be able to hit tanks, and that means you gotta be able to have air superiority. They're very invested in that. Now, you gotta add in counter-drone. So have an air defense problem that you didn't have before, and their path to that is not just a bunch of kinetic interceptors. I think it's gonna be that blend, that smart-kill blend.

Ken Miller (27:41)
few weeks ago, or maybe a couple actually is probably now a month or two ago, I had on the show Dana Goward, who is an expert on GPS, DNS, spoofing and jamming. And he was showing me some slides over really even just the last five years of how GPS and DNS jamming and spoofing has increased in Europe, along really the Eastern Front where Ukraine is where the war is going on, but even extending down

further south and then of course you have the Middle East. And the images that he showed were fascinating because when you look at it today versus even five years ago, there were some circles there, it happened, but it wasn't, it didn't happen with the regularity. And now you look at it today and it's just like solid lines coming all the way down. Like it's one thing to have a system that can target to do this, but you're dealing with an environment where you're going in with massive capabilities trying to

spoof, jam, all your targeting systems, guidance systems, things of that nature, whether you're, and it's affecting not just military assets, but commercial assets and private sector networks and so forth. does the European theater with where we're at today in 2026 with the war in Ukraine, we have Middle East, obviously Russia is continuing to threaten its other neighbors and there's some, been some talk about maybe they're going to try to

kind of spread out some of their offensive attack with other countries to try to make sure to spread that front a little bit more. Hopefully that doesn't happen. But when you go over to Europe, when we talk about these issues, we'll be at Helsinki, Stone's throw, obviously just across the channel from Tallinn, Estonia, right near the border Russia, where it's very local to a lot of the security threats. How has GPS and all the others counter capabilities in the spectrum in Europe?

how does that change the way Europe thinks about defense versus the way America is where we're always the away team. Europe here is the home team and what you're seeing in the spectrum, you're vulnerable no matter where you're at in Europe. And I would make the case you're vulnerable even the US with spectrum. So how does that change their thinking having such a massive threat that geographically close but also extending into their countries whether they like it or not?

John Knowles (30:05)
There's two things there, I think. One is their vulnerabilities are much closer to the threat. This is Justin Brank making this point that he's an analyst at RUCI, Professor Justin Brank. But he makes this point that if you're Russian and you look at NATO air capabilities, for example, you can think about the fighters, but you can also look at their bases, which have huge data centers, largely in commercial buildings that are not hardened. And they're sitting near the air base or they're commercial and they're off the air base.

God forbid, they're like, that's what you go at, right? So their infrastructure is both not hardened and it's closer. So one submarine from the Atlantic can attack the VIR and attack these data centers and then your F-35s don't fly, or whatever it is, and then maybe the air fighter, whatever it is. But you think about that, right? That's a problem is you have to harden and this is where the Nordic countries are really good. They've always done dispersed based operations and things like that.

because they weren't part of NATO, Finland and Sweden. So they're really good at dispersing and landing a plane on a highway and refueling and coming back out or whatever. So there's that. But then there's this other piece, which is you are playing a home game. So your infrastructure, you can use more of your hardwired infrastructure. So you aren't as EMS dependent for all your communications the way that ⁓ a way team is. There's two sides to that, I guess is my point. And the key is to not be

make sure the Alliance doesn't get disaggregated, get kicked apart. So you got to make sure that, again, that interoperability that, and we're learning this now with the examples of the drones that are flying out of Ukraine up north of St. Petersburg into get at Russian oil infrastructure and things that are north of St. Petersburg. The Russians are spoofing those and forcing those drones to land or basically hit, not targets, but land in

Estonia Latvia Lithuania Finland and Sweden right there trying to to say hey look these Ukrainian drones are hitting your country and they're trying to break apart the Alliance that way which is I think a lot of people can see through that but it's interesting again You can't do that to the US because we're playing the away game, right? So you so it's it's an interesting You have to learn to understand what your advantages and disadvantages are being there I think the Europeans obviously understand that way better and more intrinsically than we do. Yeah, but but yeah

Your point is, I just think it's a double edged sword and you just have to make sure you have the edge that you want.

Ken Miller (32:35)
So the you're the editor-in-chief of the journal electromagnetic dominance a great publication and The May issue that comes out before AOC Europe Could you tell us a little bit about some of the topics that will be in that issue? Because it's geared for those conversations that are going to be taking place in Helsinki What are some of the the topics that are going to be covered in in the future articles in the next edition?

John Knowles (33:00)
Sure. So, May Jed, it's hard for me because that in my mind.

Yeah, early May, and I'm thinking about the July jet right now. But we have an article on Europe and we actually went to all the European defense, major defense companies just to get their take on what they see that a lot of them are national champions, but they also are like Thales and Leonardo, they're multinational. what do they see is needed? How did they expect to play a leadership role in EMSO?

And so it was really kind of a thought leadership piece. And you got some really good answers out of those companies, out of their executives, of how they think about the problems and challenges and meeting those challenges going forward. Again, assuming there's more budget coming for all of that. So my assessment is they're very ready to take on these challenges, and they know what they need to do. Another article in there by James Priett is called The Spectrum Will Not Wait. And that's about reprogramming. So again, getting at that whole.

facet of speed, how quickly can you get new waveforms into the EW systems in the field based on lessons learned from the previous day or the previous week or whatever. That is something that has usually ⁓ a process that historically has taken weeks and months and it's got to get down to hours and days, maybe minutes in the future. That is probably the biggest lesson coming out of Ukraine is that an adversary that can be agile

is can negate your advantage on paper pretty quickly. so it's about getting that into the system, getting that feature. And that's a lot of different moving parts. But that relates to this whole idea of software interoperability and things like that too.

Ken Miller (34:52)
Now back here in the US, AOC is pushing a major reform proposal to establish a combat support agency for EMSO in the US. It's a big swing, a long advocacy process that we're currently in the middle of. We're hoping to get some steps taken care of in this next round of defense budget negotiations with the National Defense Authorization Act for 27 and so forth. But one of the interesting conversations that I've had on this topic recently was,

the interest in Europe for the design of our combat support agency proposal and whether or not we can export similar advocacy for similar reform in each of the European countries. And I found it very interesting. And one of the topics I'm gonna be taking to Helsinki is talking about, hey, if we're working on something like this over in the US that's meant to combine and bring together all the disparate and the segregated,

Aspects of So in the US into one central agency that can better support the services in the man training equip responsibilities but also make sure that the co-coms get the The support that they need for So for their operations both into training assets and so forth Europe is looking at that as well. So do you think that? There is I want to get your take on the idea that me is is it a potential path to be talking about

If US and Europe can both advance their EMSO organization in similar ways, wouldn't that go a long way in helping alleviate some of the challenges with interoperability and design and training and experimentation in the field? all, at least the major NATO partners, including the US had some sort of central organized agencies that could crosstalk a lot easier than the desegregated EMSO.

organization in the US.

John Knowles (36:50)
I think so. think, again, I think of their agility, their ability, the fact that they're not, you know, we have more people in the Pentagon than they probably have in their entire armed services for some countries. They do not have a bureaucracy. There's things that move slowly, certainly, but when they want to speed up, they know how to do that and they're more responsive. So I, and again, to my earlier statement, some countries are going to be really, really good at this because they are very versed in EMSO and they understand what they need to go get out of it.

And others are probably not going to be as good or as agile at it. So you have to find the ones that are, you you can try to impose interoperability standards of these. And then some are going to surge ahead in that model. And some probably are going to be like, oh, wait, what is everybody else doing? I think it's going to be a variety of things, but you're going to try to find best of breed. think there'll be some countries that really move well into new EMSO spaces that have looked really hard at what Ukraine is learning.

and have, again, I'm gonna always pick the Nordic countries, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, they're very advanced in how they think about it and they have capabilities to make interoperable. And some will probably do really well on the air side, some are gonna be great on the ground side. You Ukraine's obviously is ⁓ part of some potential coalition in the future. I would wanna learn a lot of lessons from them as fast as I could on the ground side. They're really good at that. I think overall,

Yeah, I think they can do that really, really well. And there'll be some that do it really, really well and some that are just, you know, but none of them have the bureaucratic challenges on the scale of the US. So if they want to go create, the areas that I think are JCA, again, I always start with, aside from JCA, what don't we do well? We don't do reprogramming well. We do it well for how we need to do it in the past. We're not caught up to speed and how we need to do it in the future yet. We're working on that.

but we have three different services with three different reprogramming centers. They're trying to work together, but if you could wipe the chalkboard clean, you'd probably wanna make that one joint thing, right? But we probably can't do that.

Ken Miller (38:58)
But ⁓ this is one of our talking points. EMSO is inherently joint. It is inherently coalition because no one owns the spectrum. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. So if something's inherently joint and inherently coalition, if you're trying to reform it, shouldn't your mind immediately go to the most joint solution and the most coalition-based solution if it's inherently that.

John Knowles (39:20)
If you're not an armed service, that sounds very logical.

Navy or the Army or the Air Force, that's how

Ken Miller (39:28)
And instantly every listener knows that I have never served in the actual military. I don't have the allegiance to the services that many people do. no, I think it's, you know, we've talked over 25, 30 years. It's at some points it gets frustrating because, you know, every conversation we have in 2026 is referencing a conversation we had.

John Knowles (39:38)
dependency.

Ken Miller (39:50)
in 2000, in 1995. And at some point, you're just like, we have to avoid waiting for the catastrophe to do what's right. we like to, we have one of our talking points right now with the CSA is we have the time now. I mean, yes, the world is on fire in a lot of ways. But if we did it now, if we did this reform now, we would have the time to do it right. Whereas if we wait five years,

we're likely going to run into that catastrophe moment that might also bring us to this point, but at a much greater loss. ⁓ So it's frustrating to try to convince leaders that, look, all due respect to all the good work doing that we're doing across the joint force, the services and so forth, but we just need to bring that organization together because we have to be faster, we have to be more agile and we're just not right now.

John Knowles (40:45)
In addition to view programming, and again, the JCA kind of covers this, but LVC, like live virtual constructive training, that and testing, frankly, that those two things, again, if you're Europe, that's an area of great opportunity for cooperation, right? Because nobody has a great test range. There's no, there's the Nordic countries that have a lot of space for a live range. So Witzel and places like that in Sweden, but the rest of, you know, more compact central and Southern Europe.

They don't have the ability to do a lot of live testing, but they can do a big investment in virtual and constructive. so, and that's something you want to not build nationally. You actually want to build that across your coalition because again, some companies are going be really good at certain things. Others are going be really not good at other things, but bringing that together, that is a, if you are Russia, this is where Russia can buy a lot of equipment and fail on the battlefield, right? They did not train together with a new set of equipment. And now they're stuck in a war that they really

can't adapt to fast enough. Ukraine is way more adaptive. And so you think about, if you want to create a deterrent, I think training is actually a good deterrent. You hey, we train to take out S-400s every day. And we know that if we take out your S-400s, we can get at your medium range SAMs. If we get your medium range SAMs that are covering your armor, your armor's done. It's cooked, it's done for the day. You will never cross a single border because you...

have nothing left, you're gonna come in with drones and you're not gonna go do a combined arms fight and we're gonna pick that apart too. So we've done counter UAS, it throws hammer and stuff like that.

Ken Miller (42:16)
And I think the redundancy of similar but separate organizations across the US and Europe for planning and organizing EW, I think that that is a good thing because that way if one operation or country witnesses or experiences some sort of degradation in their capability for whatever reason, there's so much coordination at the NATO level that other countries, other NATO partners can pick up some of the slack and you have that redundancy. Whereas now,

If something happens, the consequences scatter into the bureaucracy, separate bureaucracies that we have, and it's hard to kind of get that solution back to the field quickly. So I'm very curious about having those conversations on that. for our listeners, so AOC Europe again is April 19th to 21 in Helsinki. And from the crow's nest will be there. Our next episode is going to be from AOC Europe. I'm going to sit down with some of the keynote speakers and leaders that are going to be at AOC Europe.

You can also follow us on social media on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're going to do some interviews from the show floor, et cetera. So you can follow it if you're not able to be there in person. And then also in July, the episodes in July are going to be dedicated to the, my opportunity to observe NATO's Thor's hammer exercise in Norway after AOC Europe. So I'll be there and I'm going to put together content that we'll release on the show in July.

So a lot of European focus on EMSO over the next couple of months here on From the Crows' Nest and really looking forward to these conversations. So John, thank you so much for taking time to join me here on the show. Looking forward to seeing you in person here for the first time in six, seven months next week. Thanks for joining me. Well, that will conclude this episode of From the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guest, John Knowles, for joining me on the show. As always, please take a moment to review, share and subscribe to this podcast.

John Knowles (44:01)
Same here. Thank you.

Ken Miller (44:15)
We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so let us know how we're doing. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.