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In this episode of From the Crows’ Nest, Ken Miller is joined by Mike Alperi, Deputy Program Manager of PMS 408 Expeditionary Missions Program Office at the Naval Sea Systems Command, to talk about his involvement in NATO Subgroup One and its cross-country collaborative Thor’s Hammer exercise — an initiative that allows systems from different nations to be tested side-by-side against cutting edge UAS and IED threats.
Alperi says the annual four-week program has greatly expanded over the last decade, growing from five participating nations in 2015 to 14 countries last year. Crucially, he says the scope of Thor’s Hammer has grown over the years, from just counter-ID and counter-UAS training to countering emerging small radio frequency threats.
Alperi says the subgroup shares the information from these tests with participating countries around the world, making sure key allies have the best information available as EW technologies continue to rapidly evolve.
To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.
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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.
Mike Alperi [00:00:02]:
Our subgroup 1 is ground based, so we mainly use backpack systems, systems mounted on vehicles, or fixed site systems to protect areas against these IEDs or these, you know, flying drones. That's our main mission and it's grown over time from when the early IED roadside bomb threat was there. Our group got together and decided they really need to put together a program of record. They needed a chairman, vice chairman, and needed to make sure that we were sharing information because multiple different countries at the time were deployed in different areas and we were all seeing different things and we wanted to compare information, share best practices and techniques so we could be the most effective war fighting capability that NATO has to potentially be deployed if ever asked to be deployed.
Ken Miller [00:01:16]:
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest. I'm your host, Ken Miller from the Association of Old Crows. All right. I am very pleased to be here with Mike Alperi. He is with US Navy PMS 408 Program Office for Expeditionary Missions. Mike, it's great to have you here on from the Crow's Nest to talk about NATO Subgroup one. Really appreciate taking time to join me.
Mike Alperi [00:01:37]:
Well, thanks, Ken. Glad to be here. Yes, our NATO group, Subgroup one, we've got a long history of supporting NATO. We started off as a group that was doing counter IED when we had the improvised threats in CENTCOM. And the group was stood up in 2012 as an official team of experts with the charter to look at compatibility and effectiveness in dealing with that counter IED threat.
Ken Miller [00:02:10]:
So, so how, how does that all work then with the current office you're in with PMS408? And some of our listeners might not be very familiar with Navy program offices, but your, your program office has a number of missionaries or technologies that, that are relevant to SG Subgroup one. And so before we get to talking about the NATO, how NATO is structured, I just want to make sure that our listeners, you know, we, we understand kind of how you're structured and, and lead into that.
Mike Alperi [00:02:35]:
Yeah. So PMS 408, we are expeditionary missions and we have a broad portfolio of programs supporting the fleet. One of the product lines we have is to do counter ied. So we were the acquisition office who contracted with a vendor to build a system called J. Crew. And so we fielded that system to counter, you know, the IED roadside bomb threats in centcom. And as time moved on, our systems are very flexible because we have software defined radios that are programmable. And when the counter uas, the unmanned drone threat evolved, we were able to program our existing system to counter that threat.
Mike Alperi [00:03:27]:
And so with those two systems, you know, we support the Navy, the Air Force and some other services with our system and those are the products that we also bring to our SG1 group to support what's going on there with our NATO mission.
Ken Miller [00:03:49]:
So I mean we, we, I think we met at, we didn't meet for the first time, but we met most recently at a D.C. gathering of folks from Naval Weapon Station Crane back in June. And you know, we had talked about, you know, covering a little bit about NATO Subgroup one on a podcast. Many of our listeners who are familiar with a lot of our recent conversations know that we have talked a lot about subgroup 2, which is more in the countermeasures sector. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but is more focus a little bit more on countermeasures. The subgroup 1 is not a topic that we've covered on the, on, on the podcast yet, but it's obviously extremely relevant to our overall MSO mission as it pertains to NATO. So I really do appreciate you coming on the show to shed some light on, on this group, its activities, why we need to continue to grow this, this portion of this organization and also kind of how it relates to some of the other MSO equities within NATO, including subgroup 2. So in your introduction earlier, you mentioned that going back to 2012, talk a little bit about just generally the mission of SG1.
Ken Miller [00:04:56]:
What, what is the lane that SG1 swims in? And kind of, let's go back a little bit for our listeners on, you know, knowledge of history here. Like where did you, you started in 2012 and, and how have you grown over the last number of years?
Mike Alperi [00:05:12]:
Yeah, Ken, Our sister Subgroup two does the airborne countermeasures. And our Subgroup one is ground based, so we mainly use backpack systems, systems mounted on vehicles or fixed site systems to protect areas against these IEDs or these, you know, flying drones. That's our main mission and it's grown over time from when the early IED roadside bomb threat was there. Our group got together and decided they really need to put together a program of record. They needed a chairman, vice chairman, and needed to make sure that we were sharing information because multiple different countries at the time were deployed in different areas and we were all seeing different things and we wanted to compare information, share best practices and techniques so we could be the most effective war fighting capability that NATO has to potentially be deployed if ever asked to be deployed. And so the group evolved and said we need a way to test our systems. And so the group huddled up and came up with, well, let's do an exercise called Thor's Hammer. And so the group said we need a big wide open test area to do this because we can't impact other things going on.
Mike Alperi [00:06:47]:
And so Norway volunteered to host the first Thor's Hammer event in 2015. And so we had five countries that would show up with their systems and we would run on, set up test lanes and collect engineering data on how effective we were. Were we compatible together and be able to use that information to continue to evolve our systems to deal with threats. And so That's a every two year exercise we've been doing since 2015.
Ken Miller [00:07:20]:
You're looking at what, the fifth iteration coming up here next year or how do. Or you just had the fifth iteration, the sixth iteration. Yeah, I'm sorry, math. Math is hard for me and that's probably not what you want to hear from someone talking about mso, but. But yeah, you're on your sixth and that'll. And that will be as well in Norway again.
Mike Alperi [00:07:39]:
Yes. So nor Norway will again. You know, they volunteered to host for the second time. Sweden volunteered to host the second Thor's Hammer event. Australia hosted the third. And I put together a group of folks in the US and we hosted in 2024. We leveraged the test infrastructure around NSWC Crane, Indiana. And that was the first time where we actually introduced a new environment.
Mike Alperi [00:08:14]:
In the past, we did a lot of testing on very flat ranges that collected a lot of good engineering data, but weren't really totally representative an operational environment. So we tested at a range in Indiana called muscatatuck and that was an urban testing environment. So this is where you have buildings and structures and different landscapes. That's more realistic if you were a war fighter roaming around in different areas so that we could actually see now how actual effective we are in a more challenging environment to understand if there were things we needed to do to improve our capability.
Ken Miller [00:08:57]:
So you originally formed a 2012, it took you about three years to get to kind of coalesce around the Thor's Hammer event itself. Your group meets what, twice, twice a year?
Mike Alperi [00:09:08]:
Yes, we meet twice a year. We try to meet either and the NATO headquarters once a year to be able to interact with other groups and be able to, you know, get the latest going on there from our secretariat, who is a permanent NATO employee. And then different countries volunteer to host to be able to showcase what their country's capabilities are and gives us exposure to different areas. So we've been successful in being able to, you know, hold meetings at a number of different countries and that helps each individual country get a big boost of, you know, what's going on. They invite VIPs to our meeting and really be able to stress the importance of what our group is doing.
Ken Miller [00:09:55]:
How many nations currently participate generally in the SG1 meetings and then how. You've had quite a bit of growth in the Thor's Hammer. You said the first one was five. You had a lot more in the most recent iteration. You're going to expect even more in 26, correct?
Mike Alperi [00:10:13]:
Yes, it's grown. When we hosted in the US we had 14 nations come. And in Norway we have 15 countries that are interested. We've had up to 20 plus countries attend our SG1 meetings. Our SG1 meetings are open NATO, so any of the NATO or non NATO nations that are part of it can attend our meetings.
Ken Miller [00:10:38]:
Okay.
Mike Alperi [00:10:38]:
And so it varies sometimes, you know, countries might only come once a year, but depends on resources and interest in what our group is doing.
Ken Miller [00:10:48]:
So you have formal members as a part of SG1, but any member of NATO can participate in the actual meetings?
Mike Alperi [00:10:56]:
Correct. And Thor's Hammer is a subset of what we do and we have specific requirements for that because the countries are using their operational systems and exposing, you know, a lot of technical details. So we have a security aspects document that everybody signs that says they'll keep all the information that Thor's Hammer generates within those countries. And we have an MOU that we've done for each of these individual events that talks about the host country, you know, requirements for coming, outlines how we do things, and every country that comes to a Thor's Hammer event signs that MOU. So we've had to sign multiple MOUs over the years and that's become, you know, an administrative burden on everyone. So we decided we wanted to put together an overarching Thor's Hammer mou. So Great Britain took the lead on generating the first cut of that. The US worked with Great Britain and our, you know, lawyers in the Pentagon to review it.
Mike Alperi [00:12:08]:
We got it to the point where it was ready to be vetted by all the countries. The 15 countries that are interested, we finalized that. So it's in for final signature and that will allow us to do both Thor's Hammer events or other events. So we can sign miniature project arrangements where, say I'm doing some testing in the US and I can let three other countries know I'm testing for these two weeks. Would you want to bring your system and test along with us and we can put together a Project agreement and do that. And it's a lot lower level authority to make that happen under this umbrella mou because we've seen, you know, how the threats evolve so fast. You know, we really don't want to wait two years to do things and make these leap of improvements. We want to be able to do shorter duration tests to deal with emerging threats, to continuously improve what's going on in our group and how effective we are against these threats.
Ken Miller [00:13:10]:
So I want to spend a little bit of time in a minute talking more specifically about the structure of these trials, kind of what you're learning from them, just to kind of continue along providing at least an initial understanding of organization. Because it's, it's one thing to understand the military bureaucracy in any one particular country, but then you take all their bureaucracies and bring them together for a NATO bureaucracy, it's even more confusing. So stepping back a little bit on the SG1SG, explain to us what a subgroup is in the NATO context and how does that fall under the, it falls under the military committee of NATO or how does that, how does that structure? Because I think if I remember when we were talking recently, you had mentioned that the group started in as one defined entity and you decide, well, we actually need to be a subgroup and what does, and because that allows you to do other activities, what does that mean to be a subgroup within NATO and how does that open up opportunities for other, you know, trials and exercises and things of that nature that you need to do for people within the EW community?
Mike Alperi [00:14:27]:
Yeah, we started off as a team of experts and so that is a very focused technical effort where they said we need to really try to tackle what's going on in that counter IED roadside bomb threat.
Ken Miller [00:14:42]:
And that's, that's a very kind of informal group in terms of it's a very formal authority and resources.
Mike Alperi [00:14:49]:
So it's a very formal group. So it's char, it's chartered, we have a terms of reference, we have defined a program of work as part of that effort. And so it's a formal structure that, that gets put in place and you know, as the chairman and vice chairman, they have the ability to structure the group how they want to be able to tackle these problems. And so over time the group to tackle that said, well, we really need to look at the kill chain, so we really need a group to look at the exploitation aspects of our threat. And so we formed an exploitation group that looks at what are we seeing around the world, what are the current threats, what Characteristics do they have? What does our group need to tackle? And then they kind of hand that information off to our compatibility and effectiveness working group. And that's where we've stood up things like we're calling it the Waveform Olympiad exercise. And so that's where a bunch of engineers get together in a host country's lab and they'll develop threats and they'll program software techniques to try to deal with those threats. And then when they come up with new techniques that they put in their boxes, then we'll go ahead and go from a lab environment to a Thor's Hammer exercise where we'll do land based, more realistic testing to prove it out.
Mike Alperi [00:16:25]:
And so that's kind of the structure of our group and how we evolved over time. And when the Counter UAS threat started coming in play and I was taking over as chairman in 2018, I said, we really need to start leaning forward and going after this threat. So I updated our terms of reference for our group to include counter UAs. I run that document up to the aerospace capabilities group three that I work for the ACG3 and they vote on whether they accept the terms of reference and the scope of our group and expanding it. Okay, so we got approval for that and we expanded it. And then when Sweden hosted in 2022, that was the first time we actually put together a Counter UAS test lane where it's solely dedicated on flying drones and, and having our systems try to see if they can affect them. And there's many different drones out there, you know, Mavics dji, different ones. And so that was our first chance to do that.
Mike Alperi [00:17:35]:
And then when we did our Thor's hammer 24 in the US you know, we went beyond just the counter UAS lane. We did the urban environment. And when I was reporting out to the ACG3, all of the work we were doing, I said, you know, we really have grown to the point where I think we shouldn't be a team of experts. We're not focused on one thing, we're focused on many things. I said, I think we should be a subgroup, one supporting you. And they said, yes, we agree. Your group has done fantastic things, demonstrated real capabilities. So they had me update our terms of reference that then I put together to even broaden our scope to say, beyond just counter id, Counter uas, it's countering small radio frequency threats that could come about and sent that to the ACG3 and the ACG3 group voted on it and approved it.
Mike Alperi [00:18:37]:
And so we became a subgroup One. So now we've got a broader scope to be able to tackle emerging threats and not have to, you know, every time something new comes up, ask for permission to go off and do something.
Ken Miller [00:18:51]:
So I know that we've worked with. I've been familiar with subgroup two on the countermeasures for, for years, and dating back to my time on Capitol Hill, I was never familiar with A subgroup one is to be labeled a subgroup one. What is that terminology? Carry any sort of authority or resources? And by that I mean, like we've had subgroup two for decades. Your subgroup one was identified relatively recently. Was there another subgroup one before that that did something different that went away and you kind of filled back, filled that space in the organization, or did they create a new subgroup one? And how did that, how does that compare with the Pre existing subgroup 2? Some of the organization here, just for some reason I'm having a hard time understanding like that, that kind of connection between the two in terms of hierarchy or are they just kind of collaborative bodies, you know, like. Yeah, horizontally.
Mike Alperi [00:19:52]:
Well, since I came in in 2018, I didn't know the whole history of it if there was a subgroup one. But when I proposed to the ACG3 that we become a subgroup, there was no subgroup one. And so we just adopted that terminology for our group. And, you know, it carries some benefits to be able to. When we're trying to host meetings in NATO headquarters, we have, you know, a higher priority than, say, team of experts or other community of interest things that NATO has. They have lots and lots of groups. And, and we're under what's called the NATO Air Force Armaments Group, the nag. And so we report up.
Mike Alperi [00:20:37]:
We're not on the military side. We're on the acquisition civilian side.
Ken Miller [00:20:42]:
All right, so, so you're not. So subgroup two for that we deal with on the countermeasures, they're, are, they're not on the acquisition, they're on the military side? Well, they're or they are they right next to you? I.
Mike Alperi [00:20:55]:
They're right next to me. So they, they. We both report. Mark Elson and I both report to ACG3 and up through, you know, ACG3 to the NAPAG, CNAD and then top level NATO.
Ken Miller [00:21:08]:
Roger. Okay, I, I think I've got it. And, and I, I just wanted to kind of COVID that a little bit because some of the terminology is very similar to the way, you know, we're structured here in the U.S. but for some, some folks, it might be a little bit hard to feel comfortable with it. So I just wanted to kind of put that out there first to kind of give everyone a clear picture of where, where everything falls. So you were mentioning that you have like, you know, several different technical working groups, including electronic exploitation, compatibility and effectiveness, effectiveness and, and so forth. So with regard to. And the, the growth of, you're actually like Thor's Hammer and other things that you've done.
Ken Miller [00:21:50]:
Obviously a lot of that growth has been, is within the context of what's going on in, in with the Russia Ukraine war. I found it interesting that you had the foresight to say, hey, we have to get into counter UAS back all the way back in 2022 and that, you know, we're talking. That was right at the beginning of the Russian Ukraine, the second iteration of the Russia Ukraine conflict. Obviously, of course, that started really back in 2014. So you've been tracking that a lot. So talk a little bit about the role that you're the subgroup one, especially through Thor's Hammer. In the recent years, what you have been learning in terms of the need for NATO to really invest in this, in these capabilities as it pertains to the security situation in, in Eastern Europe with the Russia Ukraine war, and how those two things have kind of led to a lot of growth in NATO and growth and really the investment of NATO countries in Europe to ew.
Mike Alperi [00:22:51]:
Yeah, one thing I left out one working group that I formed about a year and a half ago, and that's an operations working group. And so as I've talked about, all of the data that we collect from Thor's Hammer, the information from the waveform Olympiads, all of the exploitation information that we get on threats. The one thing I saw that I thought our group needed to do was what's the. So what of collecting all this information? And so the group was like, yeah, you're right, you know, we've got drawers of data. I said, we really need to take that information and we need to look at coming up with operational vignettes of if NATO was called to support something like, you know, the Ukraine Russian war going on now, how would we deploy our systems? Which ones are the most effective, which ones are compatible, which ones are the most flexible that NATO would want to deploy. If they had to reach out to countries and say, hey, we've got to go do this, or if you were in a maritime scenario, what would you need to do to keep drones away from, you know, spying on your ships or dropping explosives on them? So we're working on coming up with a Bunch of operational vignettes that then NATO would have available and depending on what their conflict would be, they'd be able to pick out from those vignettes and we would be able to tell them, you know, hey, here's the systems you need, here's some techniques, you know, procedures on how to deploy them to be the most effective. And I'll say that, you know, as our group has grown and the scope has increased. The last meeting we had that Norway hosted, where we had our initial kickoff meeting for our Thor's Hammer 26 in Norway, in our SG1 we did the same week was a lot of the NATO nations were now coming into our meeting saying because of what's going on in the world, they're investing more in defense.
Mike Alperi [00:25:05]:
And all of a sudden countries were saying, we can offer up more people to help, we can support doing different things, we're buying new equipment, we can't wait to test it in these environments. So we've seen a really nice change and what's going on in the world and how NATO countries are investing more in the defense aspects of it. And it's been a benefit for our group of what we've seen as the ability to do more work and try to be more effective in making our systems, you know, work for the warfighter.
Ken Miller [00:25:44]:
We've had conversations on the podcast before where we talk about the rapid pace of evolution, technology evolution as it pertains to EW coming out of Russia, Ukraine, war. Obviously, you know, Ukraine, that zone is, is basically a real world test environment where with very little laboratory research you could put a new technology in the field and see, see what happens. And it's a tremendous driver for rapid innovation. But it's gotta make it a really hard environment for organization like NATO or any particular country to keep track of those developments and incorporate what they need to into their own innovative efforts. So I want to know how you work with, when the countries participate. Can you give us some insight into how you are helping other countries tackle this problem of rapid innovation? Because it's almost moving too fast for any particular country to keep up with, especially the U.S. and you know, obviously the large, maybe it's the smaller countries might be able to adapt a little bit more, but it's easy to fall into the trap that you have the Russia, Ukraine war and you're thinking it's Russia against Ukraine, but what's happening over there is affecting every country in the region and around the world because even you have Russia, you know, jamming GPS over across the Nordic territories and Baltics, and you have other aggressions taking place. You have proxy wars popping up all over the place in Middle east and so forth.
Ken Miller [00:27:19]:
So just because we talk about the Russia, Ukraine war doesn't mean we're talking about some conflict that's going across the border in Eastern Europe. It's really affecting all of Europe. And so it's causing a lot of changes in how we think about military technology, innovation, operations and so forth. So how are you working with the individual countries to kind of bring everyone up to the same level to be ready for future conflict should it ever develop?
Mike Alperi [00:27:45]:
Yes, and I'll say that the Thor's Hammer events have really helped us in that aspect, where now, you know, civilian engineers and some military folks who staff these events. And the Thor's Hammer event runs for approximately four weeks. So you've got, you know, 100 plus people from multiple different countries. They're living together, they're in the field 10 hours a day testing. And we've developed a lot of really close relationships. And the engineers now, you know, really trust each other. And so the group has really opened up in communicating best practices across all of our engineers. And, you know, I'll say that we had one example where a country came in to Thor's Hammer and, you know, they had a counter ID system.
Mike Alperi [00:28:42]:
And, you know, it was their first event there and they had a long history of doing that. And, you know, we were happy to have them in the group. And the engineers would walk over and look at their system when it was being tested and they were like, well, whisper, whisper, why don't you do this? Program it this way. And so they programmed their box and all of a sudden they came away with a counter UAS capability that they never envisioned having. And so we've had a lot of great sharing of information so that we all learn from each other, both from a techniques perspective and also from just how we test. Like, the first few events were pretty rough on, you know, coming up with how we do all this testing in the lanes, and some of the systems were breaking down and we didn't know how to deal with that. And over time we've gotten better where we've been able to test, you know, thousands of runs as opposed to just hundreds when we started off. And so that's allowing everybody to use new testing techniques or different ways to do things that help us collect more data so we're more effective.
Mike Alperi [00:29:57]:
So we've had great sharing. I'd say that, you know, our group has some fun little things. We do to welcome new members into the team. We always have a, for our SG1 meetings, social media, and everybody gets together and we welcome new members and we've had a country who has helped us socialize things. They bring something that we call the medicine, which we don't know what the ingredients are. But it's a great icebreaker that we all have to welcome new members and say farewell to members who are leaving.
Ken Miller [00:30:36]:
Well, and I can imagine that's a very key benefit of well, any, really any, any group like yours, but you know, yours specifically is it's one thing to have, you need an organization structure to obviously get things done and to, you know, authorize exercises so forth. But the trust that you can gain from in person collaboration probably just expedites ideas and development at a pace that's so much faster than any particular individual player can experience on their own. Talk a little bit about that, that trust piece that is gained from bringing these countries together. You can spend all day talking about the need to put, to invest in test and evaluation and training and so forth. But, and that's all important, but the glue between all that is trust. And that is almost something you can't gain unless you are, as you mentioned, together in a room for, for four weeks or whatever where you get to know everybody and get to understand how they're communicating and what ideas they bring to the table. And when you do that, things that you don't expect that are good can come out on the other end. So talk to us a little bit about how that, that in person trust, the pe.
Ken Miller [00:31:55]:
The importance of that in person trust.
Mike Alperi [00:31:57]:
I mean that's absolutely critical to the success we've had is over time we've developed that, you know, camaraderie and trust. And I'll say it might be hard for managers, but you really need to let the engineers talk and collaborate. And you know, when engineers get together they love to talk about how smart they are, what they know and trade, you know, different ideas and almost, you know, who can one up someone by knowing something that somebody else doesn't and sharing it but you know, doing it in a positive way. And when we're doing these Thor's Hammer testing and they're in the field, they're sharing that information with other countries. And you know, on the fly these countries are updating their systems with new software because we have now these software defined radios that you can program. And so we're doing more and more of that on the fly, faster iterations of improving our technology because we've seen what's going on in the world. We've seen what, you know, Ukraine has done and Russia's done. And so, you know, that's motivating us to get on a faster pace of how we need to iterate and deal with evolving threats.
Mike Alperi [00:33:16]:
And the group has really embraced that. And you know, we've seen a more rapid pace of all of our systems improving over time as we, we've gone on.
Ken Miller [00:33:28]:
So you mentioned in, in 24, the Thor's hammer in 24, which was, I'm trying to find my notes here, which was in a. It was in the US and you focused on, it was at Crane. You said you focused a lot on the urban environment, which was really kind of one of the most challenging new environments that you had. You really did testing in. And it was also the largest U.S. ground based event in the U.S. you know, so, and, and a lot of good stuff came out of that. What are you looking for in, in terms of Thor's hammer 26? Is there going to be a unique, what is the next step to that? Are you, is there anything that.
Ken Miller [00:34:04]:
What is going to be the focus on that and how are you going to tie in past evaluation, past exercises and what you've learned into that new environment that you're going to be testing in? In 26?
Mike Alperi [00:34:16]:
We've had our initial planning conferences in Norway. And so we're just now setting up the location of different testing events on the range that Norway has. And so these are big events and it takes a lot of resources from the country hosting to pull this off. And so we have to adapt our testing to what is available on the range. In the middle of, you know, Norway, in the test range that they're offering, we can't do any maritime testing. So even though our group might like to do that and someday, right now that's just not possible based on the infrastructure. But you know, Norway has some urban testing environment areas and some other, you know, unique things that the weather is different, you know, trees get in the way. There's all different types of things that, that happen.
Mike Alperi [00:35:10]:
That's a different environment when you go to every country and test on a different range. So you always pick up, you know, new nuances of, of your system and how well it works in these, you know, unique environments.
Ken Miller [00:35:24]:
I can imagine that's actually extremely helpful to be moving to different environments, different hosting countries because as we've seen with the destabilized global security that we are experiencing this right now, we don't know where we have to Go. And so getting used to kind of going into somewhere, a new environment and saying, okay, how do we need to conduct ourselves? What are some of our limitations, whatever some of the, the opportunities that we have in this environment? I would imagine that just that exercise of going to another location to seeing how your technology works and what new kind of criteria you have to think of, we check off to make sure that you have a successful exercise, I imagine that that's a pretty positive opportunity for a lot of participating countries to get that experience.
Mike Alperi [00:36:15]:
Yes, and one aspect of Thor's Hammer is you need a very large area to test because when you turn on these systems they have impacts on electronics. So it's a big deal for, you know, some of these countries to be able to come to an event like this to really test every aspect of their system. So there's different benefits that each country gains from all of these tests.
Ken Miller [00:36:44]:
Do you have to be a member, a NATO member to participate in the trial or can you be a non NATO member but just simply invited based on your alliance partnership? What is the criteria for a country to participate at Thor's Hammer?
Mike Alperi [00:36:59]:
Thor's Hammer is a group that we set up and if a country X says, wow, I've heard about, you know, the high level things that Thor's Hammer is from our SG1 meetings and briefing at a high level, what happens? And they want to join the group. They'll put together a proposal to the existing Thor's Hammer countries and pitch what you know, they bring to the table to add benefit to our group. And our group of countries who are in Thor's Hammer will vote yes or no. And it has to be a unanimous vote of everyone saying yes to bring a new country into our Thor's Hammer group. Great.
Ken Miller [00:37:43]:
So we have that plan coming up from your perch here with SG1 and someone who's been obviously intimately involved in the growth, the establishment and the growth of this group over the last decade. Where do you kind of see subgroup one going? You know, obviously you have the planning requirements for the coming year and you're expecting even a larger trial in May with Thor's hammer 26. But beyond that, where do you see the mission of SG1 going? Because it seems to me that this both your group, which is focused a lot on ground based and we hear a lot of a lot more conversation about that with Counter UAS and ground based EW becoming much more under the spotlight. So where do you see your group going? Where would you like to see it go? And then also kind of As a follow up to that, speak to the growth of SG1 in terms of collaboration with subgroup 2 and other EW equities both in NATO. And of course you have the EW working group or whatever the con that was established from the European, I guess the European Defense, the European Union, they have their own group. So how, how do you see that collaboration developing here in the near future.
Mike Alperi [00:39:01]:
As far as where our group is going? When I came in, you know, we really didn't have any roadmap of where we were headed. So one of the first things I did was say we need to put together a road map for our group and where we're headed. And you know, that included, you know, documenting, looking at Counter UAS and some other things. And every time we have a meeting, you know, I'll present the, the roadmap and ask for inputs from different countries on, you know, what are they seeing, you know, what are things that they want to deal with in the future. And so I'll get various inputs from that. But I was kind of a little unsatisfied with some of the inputs I was getting. And so I said I really think I need technical advisor. And so I kind of canvassed around for, for some countries and selected Dr.
Mike Alperi [00:40:02]:
Stephen Boyce from the UK who works at DSTL there. And he's got a broad portfolio under him of R and D things. And we've had him come to the last meeting and present what are the emerging technologies, you know, 5G, 6G. What are the different, you know, comm systems happening? You know, what are things that we need to be worried about in our group? And so we're updating, you know, that roadmap to show how we deal with things like that, you know, what might happen for, you know, maritime threats because they're small remote controlled boats that, you know, you easily could put explosives on. So there's lots of different things out there. And so we're continually, every six months looking at that roadmap and updating it so that we are continually trying to lean forward to address those threats. And when people go back to their countries with their systems, they have things that, you know, if they have R and D and S and T dollars or acquisition programs, they can look at how they can improve their systems to tackle these threats going forward. So we're trying to be forward leaning and looking out in the future and coming up with what potential threats would be and how our systems could deal with those in the future.
Ken Miller [00:41:24]:
I certainly think obviously this is going to be a Topic that we're going to revisit in the future. I know we'll collaborate a little bit more, as you know, through AOC in the coming months, but we also have our AOC Europe event actually in Finland next year just before, I think, Thor's Hammer takes place. You know, I. I hope to have you back on the show to really kind of talk about how Thor's Hammer is going. Maybe we can even have an opportunity where we can actually be on the ground there. But I really do appreciate you taking time to be on there, try to wrap up our conversation. I just wanted to kind of ask you, you know, you look, looking ahead, can you share with us the state of interoperability and collaboration from your perspective and. And is there anything, you know, any closing thought that you want to share with our listeners about the important role that subgroup one plays and the mission that you're trying to succeed at?
Mike Alperi [00:42:19]:
Our group has a long history and we've developed, you know, great camaraderie and, you know, everybody's committed to the mission of, you know, protecting the warfighter with our systems that are counter id, counter uas, and we're excited about tackling future problems. And I'll say that working with our sister, you know, subgroup two, we've talked about even doing maybe some joint testing together with them to even expand, kind of the look at operational vignette of having ground and air work together. So I'd say that's another potential future thing that our group might do in the future to continue to evolve and make sure that we're interoperable on the ground, air and sea as we move forward with our systems. And the interest in our group, I think, is really energized now with NATO countries providing more resources. In our last meeting, never seen the amount of volunteering that countries have done. I think there's a lot of renewed energy with having some resources to do some things and tackle some of these problems that have been holding back the engineers, that now maybe we've opened up the floodgates a little bit to let them really, you know, use their brain power to really advance forward our capability for the warfighter.
Ken Miller [00:43:50]:
Mike, I want to thank you for taking time to join me here from the crisis. Great to talk with you again. It was great to meet you at the Naval Weapon Station Crane event back in June. Really appreciate your engagement and looking forward to continuing our conversation. And there'll be numerous opportunities. We'll be tracking this Thor's Hammer and the work of your subgroup one here in the coming months, so this won't be the last time we talk. But I really do appreciate you coming on and giving us insight into this important piece of our global MSO capability.
Mike Alperi [00:44:21]:
Ken, happy to do it. I think, you know, we're doing a lot of great things for NATO and the warfighter and I think now we're getting, you know, the exposure for the successes of our group and we want to continue that through podcasts or other forums to be able to let everybody know the great work we're doing.
Ken Miller [00:44:43]:
Well, that would conclude this episode of From the Crows' Nest. As always, please take a moment to review and share the podcast. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please take a moment to let us know how we're doing. Also, check us out on social media and Instagram and and YouTube and Facebook. We post there regularly updates on the show as well as clips and so forth. So please check that out. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.