The Invisible Battlefield

Show Notes

The US military must chart a new course to project, achieve, and sustain electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) superiority against peer competitors. What technology and operational concepts must the Department of Defense (DOD) adopt to address these challenges and persistent gaps in US electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO)?  In this episode, we speak with Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. Bryan is the lead author of a new report, “The Invisible Battlefield: A Technology Strategy for US Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority.”

 

Ken and Bryan discuss the need to invest in game-changing technologies, such as passive and multi-static sensing, networked electronic attack, and multi-function capabilities. They also address improved training through the use of live, virtual and constructive environments and the opportunities for open system architecture.

 

You can download and read the Hudson Institute's full report here. To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.

Creators & Guests

Host

Ken Miller

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

Producer

Laura Krebs

Editor

Reese Clutter

What is From the Crows' Nest?

This podcast features 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.

Ken Miller (00:10):
Welcome to From The Crows' Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. Thanks for listening. In this episode, we discuss the invisible battlefield. Before I introduce my guest I want to thank our sponsor, Mercury Systems. Mercury Systems is a global commercial technology company serving the aerospace and defense industry. The company delivers trusted, secure, open architecture processing solutions, powering a broad range of mission critical applications in the most challenging and demanding environments. Inspired by its purpose of delivering innovation that matters by and for the people who matter, Mercury helps make the world a safer, more secure place for all. To learn more visit mrcy.com.

Ken Miller (00:59):
My guest today is Mr. Bryan Clark, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Bryan is an expert in Naval operations, electronic warfare, autonomous systems, military competitions, and war gaming. From 2013 to 2019 Mr. Clark was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, or CSBA, where he led studies for the US Department of Defense, Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency, or DARPA, on new technologies in the future of warfare. Bryan Clark recently released a report of the topic for today's episode entitled The Invisible Battlefield: a Technology Strategy for US Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority. Bryan, it's great to have you on episode two of From the Crow's Nest. Thanks for joining me.

Bryan Clark (01:46):
Thanks, Ken. It's great to be here with you.

Ken Miller (01:49):
I want to get right into the report that I raised in your introduction, The Invisible Battlefield: a Technology Strategy for US Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority. Could you tell us a little bit about the report generally speaking, and the impact that you hope it has on the conversation that you just kind of went through in terms of where things might be breaking down, and how we need to better transition from the conceptual to how we invest in programs?

Bryan Clark (02:12):
The study, which we just released, grew out of a study we did two years ago now for DoD in response to congressional direction to do a comprehensive assessment of where we are with regard to electromagnetic spectrum operations. So we did that study two years ago to come up with essentially some ideas on what would be an appropriate strategy to try to regain spectrum superiority in a world where we were not necessarily making all the investments necessary to support that ourselves.

Bryan Clark (02:42):
That study really highlighted the fact that programmatically, or I guess, budgetarily, we're in a situation where the US is behind the investments of countries like China and Russia, [inaudible 00:02:52] be able to target their systems against us. We don't have the time or money to try to meet them system versus system, and regain spectrum superiority. So instead, we need to come up with a new strategic approach, and that approach is largely reflected in the electromagnetic spectrum superiority strategy that came out last year.

Bryan Clark (03:07):
So this study was really to follow along with that and say, "Okay, if we sort of revisit this idea of where we are with regard to our major adversaries, Russia and China, what technologies should we be investing in to enable us to regain spectrum superiority?" And it's trying to go beyond just simply saying, "We should be more agile in the spectrum." Which is sort of how the last study left it and how those spectrums of priority strategy says, but actually to go into what are some specific technologies that are going to enable us to be more agile through the spectrum in a lot of different dimensions. And we highlighted probably a dozen or so those major technology areas.

Bryan Clark (03:43):
And to do it, we used a net assessment approach. So we kind of fell back in the cold war, the US was faced with a similar challenge where, yeah, you could try to outspend the Soviets, but because of our geographic disadvantage, we were the away team against a country that was basically right next door to the area where the conflict might happen. We were trying to also spend money on other things domestically so that there was a constraint in how much we could really try to match the Soviets, system for system. So a net assessment allows you to step back and say, "Well, what are the areas where I can get an advantage that don't require me to basically comprehensively overwhelm my enemy in the spectrum?"

Bryan Clark (04:21):
And so that approach was used here as well to identify, "What are the points of leverage, where if we were to adopt technologies in certain areas, are we going to be able to create such a problem, for in this case, the Chinese, that they would be more likely to be deterred because they feel like they don't have that ability to control the spectrum like they've been trying to do?"

Ken Miller (04:40):
So Bryan, you've been around our community for many years, and in fact, you were a keynote speaker at our virtual summit just a couple of weeks ago. So you know a lot about us and you know that we oftentimes struggle with our lexicon, words that we use and their meaning. We have gone through a number of these words over the years to accurately describe what I call the imperative of EMSO. For example, we use terms like dominate, control, advantage, superiority, domain, but these words mean something, and especially when it comes to allocating resources and authority. In your report, you use the term EMS superiority, can you discuss why you chose that word? And what does it mean in the context of the report ,and what weight should it carry in making decisions on resourcing EMSO?

Bryan Clark (05:24):
Yeah, Ken, that's a very important point. We, in the EW community have done not a great job of communicating to people outside the community what it is that we're saying we need to do, and how we're going to be able to accomplish it. So we used EM spectrum superiority in this report in the same way that we talk in other domains about maritime superiority or air superiority, meaning you have the ability to control the activities in a particular part of that domain or environment for a period of time when you need to, such that you can prevent your adversary from denying you the ability to use that domain, and you can use it for your purposes more or less to the degree you need to.

Bryan Clark (06:04):
So it's a very temporal and it's a very limited sense of superiority so it doesn't mean that you have the ability to dominate any activities in the spectrum over a wide area, it doesn't mean that there's no conditions on your ability to operate in the spectrum, it means you've got the ability to do what you need to do for as long as you need to do it in a confined area where it needs to happen. But then after that, you may quickly lose that ability to control the spectrum.

Bryan Clark (06:30):
And that's an expectation because not only are there adversaries that are contesting our ability to operate in the spectrum, there's also all these civilian users and commercial users that need to operate in there as well. And as we move towards an environment where dynamic spectrum sharing, dynamic spectrum allocation is going to be necessary, and is already happening, we're going to need to think about spectrum superiority in these very temporal, very constrained limited terms.

Ken Miller (06:56):
I want to pull the thread on everyone's favorite topic, the EMS as a domain discussion. There are many in our community, myself included, that believe in order for proper decisions to be made on authorities and resources, to make sure the dollars are going to where they need to go, to make sure leaders across the Department of Defense can compel action, you really need the domain designation. Recent doctrine and other guidance says that EMS is not a domain, but instead it's a maneuver space. Is that sufficient, and does that give EMSO enough sway to say, "Okay, here's what we need to do across our joint force. Let's go out and do it."?

Bryan Clark (07:32):
Well, it doesn't really, I mean, so I agree with those proponents, and I'm one of those proponents that you really do need to make the spectrum of domain to be able to drive the conceptual change, the kind of doctrinal changes, and then the organizational changes. That was our argument in the study that we did for DoD was that so much of the existing processes and authorities and DoD derive from certain things being domains that it was seemed necessary to be able to make the spectrum of domain, to make those follow-on changes happen, institutionally in DoD.

Bryan Clark (08:03):
Absent that, I think we still could achieve a lot of the changes necessary to reach EM spectrum superiority, but it'll have to be done in a more kind of haphazard way, or it'll have to be done as a work around, and you can already see how that's starting to happen. For example, in the sensing and communication world, both of those communities have pursued new technologies and new processes and concepts that are essentially adopting some of the ideas that the spectrum is a domain and we need to think about conflicted activities in it. So you're seeing that the communities within EM spectrum operations are starting to individually do work arounds, and that would be less necessary if we'd made it a domain.

Ken Miller (08:46):
You talk a lot in the report about China and Russia obviously as the two most obvious peer competitors in the report, and how they've been assessing our vulnerabilities, and making substantive reforms, and how they're organized, they train, and other equip activities. They present a series of asymmetries from simple geography to C2 technology innovation, EDW deployment. But at the end of the day, these are two very different peer competitors. Differentiate geopolitical dynamics, different ways of operating, different war fighting environments, you can go down the list, and you do it in the report. Can you talk about the strain that this places on US and coalition forces?

Bryan Clark (09:22):
Yeah. So that was part of the rationale behind using the net assessment approach because we did have these two very different competitors. The idea was, "Well, let's examine how we each pursue... What are our strategies, what's our doctrine with regard to electromagnetic spectrum operations? What are the capabilities and organizations that we each use to be able to pursue EM spectrum superiority and identify those asymmetries between us so that they might be offering points of leverage?"

Bryan Clark (09:48):
So, for example, like you mentioned, I guess one area where China and Russia have a lot of similarities is in their organizational construct. So obviously they're very different countries and militaries, but they both have a kind of central electromagnetic warfare, in their case, organization at the top. So the general staff of the Russian military has a electromagnetic warfare commander, that person is in charge of some strategic level electromagnetic warfare capabilities and forces. And then he drives a lot of the doctrine development and essentially established as priorities for electromagnetic warfare being done by the services.

Bryan Clark (10:22):
Same thing in China, you've got the strategic support force, which offers the strategic level set of capabilities. It influences, but does not directly drive doctrine, there's another organization that does that inside the Chinese military. And then with each of the services, they have their own electromagnetic warfare technology development and operating forces, and they push those capabilities down to a pretty low echelon in the military. So that's that they're both very similar in that case, which makes them very different from the United States, which doesn't have a strategic level of their electromagnetic warfare or EMS spectrum operations organization, or leadership.

Bryan Clark (10:57):
So that's kind of one example, but in other areas there's a wide divergence between China and Russia. So China has a very comprehensive system of systems they've devised under their concept of system destruction warfare that they're going to use to target every one of the nodes and linkages between our forces, our own system of systems. So they're going to go after Link 16, and TTNT, and CEC, and they're going to go after the platforms like the E2s and the E3s that are providing the network nodes. So they've got a whole comprehensive system of systems that go after every little piece of our system of systems.

Bryan Clark (11:29):
The Russians don't do that. The Russians build a system of systems that more or less can address the Eastern European competitors they have [inaudible 00:11:38] and the United States, and then they sort of test that out, but then they have a very improvisational process for concept development and the Chinese have this very rigid process of capability and concept development. So from the US perspective the response is, "Well, do we need to have..." Our technologies should probably focus on adaptability, agility, the ability to respond in real time and move across the spectrum, move both in spectrum frequency, as well as location and beam width, et cetera, giving the Chinese a more adaptable enemy to have to prepare against which is going to be difficult considering their very rigid approach to concept and capability development. A more agile US force is going to actually create an advantage for us relative to them.

Bryan Clark (12:20):
And then against Russia, we might find ourselves more of a symmetric competitor. So if we're going to be more agile in the spectrum and more agile in our concepts, well, we're probably just beating the Russians where they kind of are, and we're going to have to trust that our technology is going to be superior to that, that the Russians are able to bring to bear. So that's kind of how that ends up playing out when you look at two different competitors when you have one military that's having to face them.

Ken Miller (12:41):
In the report, you discussed system development, and you mentioned the need to invest in systems that obviate rather than overcome some of the asymmetries that you have listed, especially in the context of Russia and China. Can you discuss how you proceed with this notion of obviating an adversary's capability and how does that affect the strategy of system development?

Bryan Clark (13:01):
Yeah, so if we think of China as the pacing threat because they will have this very comprehensive approach to system development and very methodical way of developing new concepts that leverage our systems. So if we focus on them and we think, "Okay, with civil military fusion, the Chinese are able to develop a wide array of systems, adapt them relatively quickly over time, and then continue to counter our own EM spectrum capabilities." So if we get into a move-countermove competition where they build a jammer and we build a change to our radar, and then they build another jammer, and then we build another change of our radar, we're never going to get ahead so they just have, by being able to tap into their commercial industry and fuse it with their military industrial complex, they're able to tap into an array of technology development that, it's not better than ours, it's just they can do it faster and they can do it on a more comprehensive basis than we probably can realistically do.

Bryan Clark (13:58):
So let's stop trying to match them system for system. And that gets to that first area of asymmetry is to say, "There's some things we're just going to have to not try to compete on. So let's not try to compete in the move-countermove of, "I'm going to build a new system to fix a problem that your new jammer created for me."" We should instead step back and say, "Well, we need to build more adaptable systems that leverage artificial intelligence, cognitive controls that allow them to create new techniques, and move across broader areas of spectrum, change there beam location, beam width, to be able to adapt in real time, rather than trying to do this system versus system competition over a longer haul."

Bryan Clark (14:36):
But then the question is, "Well, where, where does that adaptability need to be applied?" And that's where we said, "Okay, well, these other asymmetries offer an opportunity to think about that." So for example, the geographic asymmetry imposed because the US is almost always the away team in these conflicts, and then the Chinese and Russian are home teams. So they can use installed sensor arrays, they can use hardware communications, they can put in place a sensor network that's largely passive in a lot of ways that can use either lower frequencies that we don't necessarily plan against, and then they can take advantage of their hard wire communications to prevent our jammers from being successful.

Bryan Clark (15:13):
So all of those things would suggest we need to turn around and focus more on our own ability to avoid detection. So we need to think about passive sensing to a much greater degree, which means we probably need to have networked passive sensors given the fact that geographic diversity is necessary if you want to try to get good targeting locations on an emitter. We need to think about if we're going to do offensive VA, we need to probably put that onto something that's going to be expendable because it's going to get detected right away in this environment next to China so we probably need to think about smaller form factors, networking those systems together to get collaborative effects or coherent effects, and then be able to deploy those in a way that can get them into the targets that we're trying to address.

Bryan Clark (15:55):
And then the last part of that is protecting our systems from detection, even if we have to go active. So there's going to be situations where you have to use an active sensor, like a radar because it's missile defense and a passive sensor's not going to give me the accuracy to do a surface to air missile engagement against an incoming weapon, so I got to use an active radar. Well, then that active radar should be an LPI, LPD radar. So it should have a really narrow beam width, so it's not detected outside of its beam. It could be a really low power, or adjustable power. It can operate for a very short period of time and use a passive cue to help orient the beam so that you're not radiating everywhere, but instead just at the incoming target.

Bryan Clark (16:34):
Those are all, in the EDW community or in in the EMSO community, we call that EP, so electronic protection is what we call that, but those are all operationally irrelevant to offensive operations. If we want to go into the Western Pacific and go up against China and be able to compete in the spectrum, we've got to adopt all of these technologies that we call EP, which makes it seem defensive, but in fact, they're needed to enable offensive operations. So that's one example of how that geographic asymmetry can play out in terms of the technologies we need to develop. If we do that, then that allows us to get out of the move-countermove competition and instead maybe impose some challenges on China.

Ken Miller (17:13):
At this time I'd like to take a short break to introduce the trailer for our upcoming sister podcast, The History of Crows.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
Electromagnetic energy is a fundamental part of our universe. Humans discovered ways to use this energy for many purposes. From radio to TV, smartphones to wifi, the list goes on. But electromagnetic energy also influenced another major sector, military operations. Along came the Crows, people who learned electromagnetic, applied it to military combat operations, and forever impacted modern warfare. Introducing The History of Crows podcast.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
The History of Crows will take you through the global history of electromagnetic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations. From the earliest scientific discoveries to modern military operations around the world. If you are a student of history or are curious about unique contributions to military operations from the turn of the 20th century to present, subscribe now to The History of Crows on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever great podcasts are found.

Ken Miller (18:37):
Welcome back. I'm here with Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. We've talked a little bit about organization doctrine and technology, and there's another leg to this stool that you discussed in your report, and that's training. Specifically investing in live virtual constructive training environments and techniques. Can you go into some of the recommendations you propose in your report?

Bryan Clark (18:58):
Yeah. So one of the interesting asymmetries we found was that the Russian and Chinese militaries are not really pursuing an EMSO like concept. I mean, they're not pursuing a concept that looks at all the activities in the spectrum as being interrelated and potentially synergistic or conflicting. They just sort of treat EW syncing communications as totally separate activities, and then electromagnetic battle management really just consists of spectrum management. So they're just looking to de-conflict those activities probably through a procedure, procedurally joined. As opposed to in real time managing them simultaneously and maybe even using one to support the other. So that's unique to the United States concept of EMSO. So we should really lean into that.

Bryan Clark (19:42):
So that means technologies for EMBM are probably along with those for EP, the most important technologies we should be pursuing. So cognitive EMBM, even non-cognitive EMBM. So taking today's EMBM like systems like the real-time spectrum operation system the Navy has, or the Army's EW planning and management tool, those are the kind of inception of a EMBM tool, we should be embracing that and fielding it in an operational way very quickly. It also means there's this whole training aspect of this that we need to address as how do we get people to start thinking in these terms of, "Why [inaudible 00:20:17] might be able to use my communications signal to also help me with sensing, or I can use my jammer to decoy, or I can use it to jam, or I can use it to maybe provide a elimination of a target that I'm going to then receive through a passive detector that's going to pick up that reflection. All of those things relate to this idea of electromagnetic battles management, EMSO, so I got to train people to do that."

Bryan Clark (20:43):
Well, that's hard to do if you want to set up some kind of training event on a range because it's expensive to do it that way. And also, [inaudible 00:20:51] intelligence satellites now are available commercially, they're commercially providing data to people as well as the military and of [inaudible 00:20:58]. So if we do that in open air, it's going to reveal potentially our tactics to China. So we had to think about how to do that in a virtual or constructive environment, which also gets to a key kind of asymmetry we found as well, is that the Russians do a lot of their EW training in the real world. So they go out and they're using the Middle East now is more or less a live fire electromagnetic spectrum operations training range in Syria in particular. And then also in Ukraine.

Bryan Clark (21:26):
The Chinese tend to do this a lot. [inaudible 00:21:28] kind of in the interior of the country, but they get a lot of live EW type training. We don't do that as much because it's expensive, and because we're concerned about infringement on other activities, and also the operational security concerns. So idea of moving this to a virtually constructive environment is really important to improve our training to be able to really lean into this asymmetry that we've got in terms of EMSO, and it also allows you to push training capabilities down to the lower echelon.

Ken Miller (21:56):
When we were talking a few weeks ago, I asked how difficult it is to train for a gray zone conflict versus a more conventional force on force scenario. This is particularly the case with China. How does preparing for gray zone conflict influence training, and then how does training in turn help you project EMS superiority in the region?

Bryan Clark (22:18):
Right, yeah, that's a great point. So the advent of gray zone operations, which China and Russia both kind of stumbled into, if you read the writings on this. They both sort of started experimenting with this idea because they had opportunities and commanders willing to execute on them, and then they've really embraced it so this has become a forcing function for, in terms of China, the development of the People's Maritime Militia, they've begun a whole set of operations around it, island building and became part of it, even though it was done initially as a separate activity. So all of those things are being weaponized, if you will, in the interest of getting their objectives at a lower level of escalation, and albeit over a longer period of time, then they would, if they'd simply gone out like they did with the Paracels in '79, and just taken them from Vietnam and fought a war over it, that model is probably not the model they want to pursue.

Bryan Clark (23:08):
So the important thing is then to be able to compete in that gray zone because we really have not done a very effective job of that, short of a couple of very notable events like the Malaysian drilling rig last year that got pushed off by the Gabrielle Giffords, that confrontation was diffused by American presence. But doing more of that's going to be really important because if the PRC doesn't see any sort of back pressure, they're just going to continue to push and push and push and eventually gain more and more control over places like the South China Sea and East China Sea.

Bryan Clark (23:36):
So an area where we can really enhance our ability to operate in a gray zone is electromagnetic spectrum operations. So you're not just in terms of competing the spectrum, meaning we can fight through jamming that the Chinese do periodically employ against US forces [inaudible 00:23:51] time in what we call the competition phase today as part of their gray zone operations, but also so we can start to impose some of these costs on the Chinese.

Bryan Clark (23:59):
So if we can jam some of their operations, or are confused some of their sensing, or make their coordination more difficult with the People's Maritime Militia, even if we don't tell anybody we're doing it, if it just sort of happens, that's an element of competition which reduces the confidence of the Chinese that they could continue down this road, or even escalated into a periodic confrontation that they can maybe use to get an advantage. They can say, "Well, nobody's really pushed back on us in the gray zone, we're going to make a gambit and try and take Scarborough Shoal because we expect that we're not going to get any armed resistance to that." But if you can reduce their confidence that they've got control of the spectrum, day-to-day, that might forestall that attempt to go take Scarborough Shoal formally from the Philippines.

Bryan Clark (24:43):
And the other piece of it is, in terms of escalation management, right now, the US has this significant disadvantage due to geography that comes out of that asymmetry in terms of geography where if we push forces into the area that they're covered by the Chinese weapon and sensor networks, so the East and South China Seas, and even to an extent, the Philippine Sea, we push them there knowing that they are subject to a rapid attack by large numbers of precision weapons based on the Chinese mainland, meaning they're at risk. So we kind of do that every day, knowing that that's the case because we don't expect war to break out. But that gives China an escalation advantage because they can always choose to ratchet up one rung on the ladder and launch a weapon at a US target that's floating around or driving around in the South or East China Sea.

Bryan Clark (25:28):
Electromagnetic spectrum capabilities like jammers, decoys can help provide the defensive capacity to US forces so that it takes more than just one or two weapons to actually threaten us. You have to launch large Salvos to be able to really have a chance of taking out a destroyer that's got a really good EW system, or you can add decoys that now make it so there's maybe multiple targets you might have to shoot at if you want to execute that sort of fait accompli attack, which takes away some rungs on China's escalation ladder and then gives us some rungs back.

Bryan Clark (25:59):
So there's a couple of ways that the gray zone is a really important environment to be thinking about EM spectrum superiority, and why it's so important that we adopt some of these technologies that allow us to operate in that area without necessarily being as easily detected because we're doing good EP, we've got passive sensing, and we're using attritable jammers and decoys, and because we are also thinking about how are we going to overcome this geographic disadvantage when it goes to conflict and I can protect myself and maybe even control parts of the spectrum if I need to, for a short period of time, if confrontation turns to conflict and reduce the ability of the Chinese to feel confident in their ability to rapidly gain an advantage?

Ken Miller (26:42):
Earlier, we talked about the need to invest in adaptive systems to reduce predictability. And I want to go back to that for a minute because there's an important topic that I'd like you to address. System adaptability really comes down to software, and in your report, when you're talking about software, you focus on open systems architecture. Can you go into more detail about your recommendations in your report for OSA?

Bryan Clark (27:07):
Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Ken. So the goal of our EM spectrum superiority strategy, and the goal of the technologies we identified in the report, was to create this more adaptable set of capabilities in the spectrum and create more agility so to create more uncertainty for the Chinese in particular regarding how we're going to operate, what our system configuration is going to be, so they cannot use their geographic and military civil fusion advantages against us. So it's more agile and adaptive force though depends on the ability to mix and match components within systems, as well as mixing and matching systems between themselves. So systems in systems of systems, if you will. So I need to be able to swap out components inside a radar, inside a passive sensor, inside a jammer if I want to give it new characteristics that are beyond what's available just because it's adaptable on its own right.

Bryan Clark (27:58):
I also need to be able to then mix and match a jammer like a E18G with the next generation jammer, maybe expendable X50A, or RQ58 UAV. If they're working together I want to be able to switch and maybe have them work with two entirely different air platforms or a surface platform. So open architecture applies both within the system and then between systems. So that that hardware in open architecture gets to things like SOSA and CMOS, some of these open architecture standards that are being pursued by the services to allow them to mix and match components inside of an electromagnetic warfare system.

Bryan Clark (28:36):
And then to be able to have interoperability between systems, there's new software tools like STITCHES, which is a DARPA program, that's developed the ability to automatically write software so you can have one system talk to another system. And then also, things like gateways like [inaudible 00:28:53] that allowed two systems that are using different networks to be able to talk to each other.

Bryan Clark (28:57):
And then last the software defined radio, Revolution, which is happening, also allows you to be able to have systems that don't normally talk to each other be able to communicate with different wave forms, but then be able to be integrated on board the system software defined radio. So it's both forms of open architecture, both between systems and within systems, that we thought were very important to highlight as technology priorities.

Ken Miller (29:21):
And over the years, Congress has been very closely involved in what's going on in DoD, what can they add to the conversation in terms of providing some accountability, providing some oversight, or just simply a better funding strategy to kind of compel action in DoD?

Bryan Clark (29:40):
So a of things I think would be important. So one is they need to continue to track this governance debate, which is going to play out at this point within the services and within DoD because there is a need for a strategic level organization that's going to be managing the operations of electromagnetic warfare at the strategic level when it comes to our military operations against adversaries, but then also can provide this sort of proponency and doctrine development. So Stratcom, but given with Stratcom having been given maybe an operational role in actually using electromagnetic warfare at the strategic level operationally. That's going to be important to continue doing.

Bryan Clark (30:16):
A second thing that Congress should be doing is ensuring that DoD is pursuing these technology priorities, because what I'm fearful of is that, left to their own devices, the services will continue to invest in the things that support their own service equities. So they're going to continue to invest in platform centric systems that protect their platforms like the EA-18 next generation jammer that protects airplanes making attacks on air defenses, the F15 EPAWSS that's protecting the F15 from attack. So these platforms centric programs have a lot of energy behind them, a lot of inertia. So to get the services to move off of that is probably going to require some congressional intervention. And this new approach to electromagnetic spectrum operations and the need for EMBM, that's all going to be things that are probably going to have to get driven by Congress to a degree because inside the department, they don't seem to be able to do that.

Bryan Clark (31:08):
And then the third area is a budget agility. So one thing we've been identifying at Hudson is the need for the ability to have more flexibility in budgeting that is currently afforded because if it takes two to three years to make a change to a program or to kill a program that's not doing what you want it to do, that means you've lost a step against the Chinese and the Russians. So having the ability to move money around at a greater degree, so maybe that's different reprogramming limitations, but more importantly, to maybe add a new element of budgeting which we called mission element budgeting, so that the OSD or OSD in concert with the COCOMs can allocate funding to support the interstitial capabilities that allow a mission to happen. And those are almost all electromagnetic spectrum capabilities.

Bryan Clark (31:53):
So right now there is no service responsible for ensuring that all the networks can talk to each other when you get out to the joint level, COCOMs have to make things happen at the COCOM level, but there's no joint integration that happens after the services deploy a capability to a COCOM, the COCOM's left to sort of integrate all that themselves, they're not equipped to do... They don't have a resource organization or a R&D organization, the COCOM's kind of on their own out there collecting systems from the different services and having to integrate them in the field, and they hope that they work together.

Bryan Clark (32:26):
So having the ability for somebody to be able to allocate mission element funding against missions that were really important at the behest of the COCOM is going to be, I think, a really important aspect. And there's currently some work going on the hill to try to create some test cases where we can do that in the NDAA for this year. So budget agility, both in terms of how can I move money around faster, and then also, how do I create the ability for money to be spent against a mission that allows us to spend it on the kind of EM spectrum interstitial elements that keep emission together, those are going to be really important going forward.

Ken Miller (33:02):
That's a really interesting recommendation. Has that been done in the past with other mission areas where that's been set up that ability to allocate per mission versus specific program, or is this a new concept that needs to find its way into kind of normal budgeting process?

Bryan Clark (33:19):
So, I'd say the only example where I've done that before has been JIAMDO. Yeah, JIAMDO, the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Office is responsible for air missile defense, and it's got some funding that it can use to go do some technology development, and mostly do studies to figure out where the technology development needs to go. So that's about the only case [inaudible 00:33:39] an organization that has had funding to go help make a mission happen, be able to fund what might be necessary to allow forces to combine in the field to accomplish a task that at the behest of the combatant commander.

Bryan Clark (33:53):
So what we're advocating here is something along those lines where OSD or the joint staff would work together to have a person or office that is able to allocate this mission element funding. And the mission element funding would go against particular really important operational challenges like air defense of Kadena Air Force Base in the Western Pacific, or EMBM, just say, "We need the ability to do electromagnetic battle management among forces that are deployed in the field." We don't have that today. Nobody is responsible for investing in that because the [inaudible 00:34:25] spectrum is a joint domain or environment where nobody has authority yet. So that's the kind of stuff that this mission element and funding would go against because it's needed for the combatant commander to integrate forces in the field, but from the service perspective, it may not be a priority because services can integrate their forces today with their existing systems and then deploy them, and then the COCOM has to worry about how they work together.

Ken Miller (34:48):
Okay. Thank you, Bryan, for joining me on this episode of From the Crows' Nest, I appreciate your time. It was a great discussion. I look forward to having you on again soon in the future.

Bryan Clark (34:58):
Thanks, Ken. It was great being here. I really enjoyed it.

Ken Miller (35:00):
Great. Thank you, Bryan. That concludes this episode of From the Crows' Nest. Again, I'd like to thank our sponsor, Mercury Systems. Mercury Systems is a global technology company serving the aerospace and defense industry. The company delivers trusted, secure, open architecture processing solutions, powering a broad range of mission critical applications in the most challenging and demanding environments. Inspired by its purpose of delivering innovation that matters by and for the people who matter, Mercury helps make the world a safer, more secure place for all. To learn more visit mrcy.com. And that will do it for this episode of From the Crows' Nest. Thank you for listening.