Following the conclusion of the Cold War, the service divested the majority of its electronic warfare tools. Since then, much of the electronic warfare equipment has lacked the sophistication needed to compete against peer threats. Instead it has been designed to combat improvised explosive devices used by insurgent groups in the Middle East.

But that’s changed in recent years.

“We’re really at a renaissance [with] electronic warfare,” Col. Kevin Finch, program manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, said Aug. 23 at TechNet Augusta. “We have a force that hasn’t had EW equipment … We have a generation of leaders that have to learn what EW is all about.”

The Army is taking these problems — lack of electronic warfare professionals and actual equipment, namely, jammers — head on and simultaneously.

Building the force

As of October 2018, electronic warfare personnel were folded into the Army’s cyber branch, often referred to as the 17 series. Officials said this will allow the service to build a more holistic information warfare force, given the similarities between cyber operations and electronic warfare.

Maj. Gen. Neil Hersey, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, told reporters Aug. 22 at the TechNet Augusta conference, that this creates a “multi-skilled officer.” He explained on the enlisted side, the Army expanded its functional electronic warfare course from nine weeks to 32 weeks. There, they’ll learn about the theory of electronic warfare as well as the equipment they’ll use.

“Think of it as akin to [how] we have our traditional SOF … and then you have your very, very high-end SOF in [Joint Special Operations Command]. That is sort of the model we’re putting in place,” Maj. Gen. John Morrison, who previously served as the commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, said.

JSOC refers to the elite special operations units such as Naval Special Warfare Development Group — better known as SEAL Team 6 — and Delta Force.

“We’ll have tactical cyber operators … then the very, very, very best will move into the cyber mission force,” Morrison said, referring to the cyber warrior cadre that serves U.S. Cyber Command and conduct remote cyber operations.

Among the operational force, there will exist planners and operators.

Hersey said the planning elements — called cyber and electromagnetic activities (CEMA) cells — at each echelon will inform commanders of what capabilities reside where and how to use them to accomplish their mission.

On the operational mission side, Hersey said the planning elements will plug into units on the ground. The Army is creating the 915th Cyber Warfare Support Battalion, which will be able to conduct local cyber and electromagnetic spectrum effects on the ground. In some cases, they will work with Cyber Command.

Hersey said today there are more staff officers than operators in the electronic warfare force, but the Army is working to boost the number of operators.

One way to do this is for electronic warfare soldiers could go to a formation — depending on the needs of the Army — such as an electronic warfare platoon or a staff section. Officers will be team leaders.

On the cyber side, soldiers could go to the Cyber Warfare Support Battalion or the cyber mission force working on defensive cyber operators on a cyber protection team or the offensive mission on a mission team.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for different types of echelon work within the [electronic warfare] career field. I think one of the benefits is we’re going to have officers throughout their career that are going to be able to work at both the tactical, operational and strategic level and bring those capabilities and skillsets to those formations,” Hersey said.

Equipping soldiers

On the equipping front, the Army is following a “build, fix, learn” methodology.

“We build something, we give it to the soldiers, then we learn from it and then we fix whatever that is,” Finch said.

The Army has used a variety of urgent capability needs requirements from soldiers in Europe to help inform how the service can develop future capabilities. It’s also a way to get interim capabilities in the hands of soldiers as a way to reduce risk.

The first program of record that the Army has awarded contracts to that focus an offensive electronic warfare capability is the Multi-Functional Electronic Warfare Air Large, a jamming pod mounted on board an MQ-1C Gray Eagle.

This capability is the Army’s first brigade organic electronic attack capability.

Lockheed Martin was awarded the first prototype for MFEW Air Large last year. In late August, the prototype pod flew and is slated to participate in Cyber Blitz in September.

Deon Viergutz, vice president of spectrum convergence at Lockheed Martin, told Fifth Domain in an August interview that his company’s pod, called Silent Crow, has been flying on other platforms for some time. He added that Lockheed Martin is seeking to integrate this pod and its capabilities with other assets to include ground assets.

Finch said MFEW Air Large will begin fielding to combat aviation brigades in 2022, though, he noted the Army is still working to figure out which units that will be.

Aside from Air Large, the MFEW family will also include small and rotary wing. These are still a ways off, especially small, for which the electronic warfare community is waiting on what the Army decides to replace RQ-7 Shadow drone.

On the ground side, the Army is working on the Terrestrial Layer System, the service’s first integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber system.

As part of the development effort, the Army has created two pre-prototypes as a means of informing the final system; the Tactical Electronic Warfare System (TEWS) and the Tactical Signals Intelligence Vehicle. Both are integrated platforms the Army is using to experiment with different technologies that would allow for sensing, signals intelligence, electronic warfare and RF-enabled cyberattacks.

The 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division is currently utilizing the TEWS platform, and is serving as the prototyping unit for not just TLS, but new electronic warfare platoons the Army is creating.

In fact, Finch noted that 2/2 Stryker was supposed to go to Europe as the second phase of the “fix” methodology, but the Army directed they serve as the prototyping and experimentation unit for TLS back in the states.

TLS will ultimately include TLS large, which will be a brigade asset mounted on a large vehicle like a Stryker, TLS small, which will likely remain vehicle mounted but a smaller form factor, and TLS dismount.

Officials also described the TLS Extended Range, which, provides an extended range in distance but also gives commanders with an extended range of capabilities. This will primarily be a division asset and will include a variety of deception capabilities.

For example, these capabilities may include pods that could be air dropped during an air assault at a different location than where troops emitting signals. This could help in confounding the enemy as to the exact location of troops.

These capabilities could also include small boxes that emit the electronic signature of a command post, also confounding enemies.

On the deception front, officials said that many of these capabilities are commercially available, but the problem becomes getting the requirements approved.

Aside from deception, an extended range system could also include counter targeting, defense from electronic attack and long range sensing and long range attack.

The Army wants to be able to wage attacks from areas that are separate from sensing platforms.

“Perhaps the altitude for the sensor would be far behind enemy lines and because we have greater altitude we have sensing capability. That’s not the same area we want to transmit from because it will take more power to be able to generate an effect,” Col. Mark Dotson, the electronic warfare capabilities manager at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said.

Ultimately, the goal is for these capabilities to be integrated and used by a variety of forces.

“We have a golden opportunity here in that we can have these systems be interoperable with each other,” Finch said.

Col. John Transue, capability manager for cyber at the Cyber Center of Excellence at TechNet Augusta described several capabilities that the Army has already approved requirements for. These include, a garrison defensive cyber platform, a deployable defensive cyber system, cyber analytics, a defensive cyber tools suite, defensive cyber planning, a tactical defensive cyber infrastructure, a tool for insider threats and a tool for forensics and malware.

Many of these tools are suited more for the mobile and expeditionary force, though they can be used for larger installations. For example, on the tactical infrastructure side, Transue noted that commanders are often using mission command platforms that are susceptible to cyber intrusions and need to be protected.

But because the cyber landscape is evolving quickly, the equipping community wants to get tools to the force in real time.

“We are not committing to ‘This is the tool,’ and then we’re going to buy it to field to everyone. What is the problem set we’re facing today, what’s the best tool for it and let’s put it in the tool kit,” Brendan Burke, deputy program executive officer at Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, told Fifth Domain.

Burke said the approach his office is using allows staffers to identify needs and pick the best of breed before buying. He pointed to the office’s Forge, where industry officials can test their cyber tools, as a chance to put their money where their mouth is.

“It’s not show me a PowerPoint of how you do it. It’s prove to me that your tool solves my problem. Okay it does? We’ll buy it, we’ll sustain it until the next one comes around. Then we don’t need it anymore,” he said.

The Army is also pursuing capabilities in advanced sensors, threat discovery and counter-infiltration, threat emulation and a defensive cyber development environment. Transue said.

In the future, Transue said, myriad devices will be connected at the tactical level through mission command platforms, internet of things and weapons systems. The Army will need advanced sensors to know what is happening on each.

This development environment will serve as a cyber armory for defensive cyber operators. Much like a physical armory houses the bullets and rifles for soldiers, a cyber armory will allow Army cyber protection teams to pick and choose which tools they need for missions. They will also provide the program office feedback on these tools to make improvements in the future.

Joe Kobsar, director of applied cyber technologies within the defensive cyber operations program at PEO EIS, told Fifth Domain that after receiving their mission, the defensive cyber soldiers will enter the armory, essentially a graphical user interface, select the tools they need and load them onto deployable kits.

Upon returning, Kobsar said the program team will gather metrics such as how much memory was actually needed and what type of storage was needed.

The service has also begun to embrace the idea of embedding developers alongside operators as a way to more rapidly create capabilities.

At Fort Gordon, offices have previously said that with the entire Army cyber force residing there – the Cyber Center of Excellence, the school house, the defensive cyber force in the cyber protection brigade, the offensive force in the Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber and Army Cyber Command headquarters moving there in 2020 – it creates an incredible synergy.

This allows for doctrine writers, requirements writers and the program staff to sit with the operators and pull lessons in real time.

Kobsar said on the program side, Army officials are also embedding personnel with the cyber protection brigade to learn how to sustain capabilities from a lifecycle management perspective.

These joint common access platforms, as they’re known, are essentially what allow cyber operators to connect to their target and to deliver the effect beyond friendly firewalls.

The decision to have the Army provide these platforms is pending with Cyber Command, Col. Kevin Finch, program manager for electronic warfare and cyber within Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told Fifth Domain at TechNet Augusta. The Army would develop the capabilities to all of the service cyber components.

Cyber Command created what it calls the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, which governs all its capability development across the force proving a common framework. Maj. Gen. Karl Gingrich, director of capability and resource integration, J-8, Cyber Command, previously told reporters that the organization itself doesn’t have enough acquisition authority to meet the needs of the entire cyber mission force.

But through the new architecture, leaders can communicate their needs directly to the services, which in turn can issue contracts.

“If we can leverage the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to make specific investments and make sure that they are deconflicted so we are effective and efficient in use, that’s what one of the benefits of the JCWA is. I think we won’t see the need for executive agent type relationships,” he said. “I think we can use other means, existing authorities, rules and regulations within DoD to become even more agile.”

Providing cyber tools from the top to the bottom

The Army is also focused on developing ground forces that can conduct localized cyber and electronic warfare effects and also link up with high end, remote cyber mission forces.

The Army is responsible for outfitting these forces with capabilities such as tool development environment and platforms, infrastructure and firing platforms. All of those have been approved by the Army to begin developing. For firing platforms, just as an Apache helicopter fires missiles and bullets, the same type of weapon is needed for the cyber context, Col. John Transue, capability manager for cyber at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 21.

Transue described how service officials are now working with the program manager to create a system in which tool developers and operators can develop tools quickly. Finch described this as a “big win.”

“We’re giving them a laboratory environment where they can build their own tools. That is huge because nobody can make them faster than them and then the fact that they are co-located with the operation guys makes that spin a lot faster,” Finch said.

Other capabilities the Army is pursing on the requirements side but that have not been officially approved fall under what Transue called “counters.” This includes counter adversary command, control, computers, communications and intelligence, counter adversary critical support infrastructure and counter adversary weapons systems.

“The actual bullets [are] the effects that we would be trying to provide. We are working on obtaining those effects and the requirements are coming. We expect those to be approved by this winter,” he said.

Finch also described the “golden opportunity” the Army has as it procures electronic warfare and cyber capabilities that will eventually become integrated at the tactical edge.

Currently, the Army is developing the Terrestrial Layer System Large, the service’s integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber platform that will be mounted on a ground vehicle, Multi-Functional Electronic Warfare Air Large, the Army’s first organic brigade electronic attack asset mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle, and cyber capabilities for the 915th Cyber Warfare Support Battalion, which will create localized cyber effects through the electromagnetic spectrum operating alongside companies in the field.

TLS, Finch said, could do cyber in three ways:

– onboard it to the platform by plugging a card in;

– plugging in a laptop and using radio frequency to deliver an effect;

– having forces dial in remotely to send the effect.

On the MFEW Air side, he explained that ground forces will be able to plug into it to conduct cyberattacks from the air. Contractors have previously noted that this is a requirement for the program outlining how forces can conduct “attacks” on Wi-Fi networks, intercepting messages between enemy combatants and even allowing friendly forces to delete and alter messages to adversaries, an information operations component that could help control the battlespace.

Getting on contract

On the contracting side, the Army awarded multiple companies a contract worth up to $1 billion called R4.

While few details have been available on this contract, only that it is focused on research and development — not materiel solutions — in support of the cyber mission, Finch described the contract’s scope.

It will essentially provide the ability for the Army to equip the entire portfolio of cyber capabilities, which can be understood as high end cyber mission force to the tactical Cyber Warfare Support Battalion and everything in between. This also includes the aforementioned Joint Common Access Platform, Finch said.

It’s important because leaders “need to have a vehicle that you can quickly get contracts awarded onto and not go through the 12 or 18 month process it takes to get a … contract done, already have everything done where you basically go request for whitepapers and they submit it and you evaluate them and you award it,” he told Fifth Domain. “We have to be able to speed up that loop.”

Moreover, while many military leaders have lauded the speed and flexibility other vehicles such as other transaction authorities have afforded, Finch said that was not right for this because OTAs don’t cover sustainment.

While to a certain extent, current programs along these lines already exist for the electromagnetic spectrum, the Army wants to include cyberspace.

Enter Cyberspace Situational Understanding.

“What we’re trying to get there is more understanding of what is actually happening in this invisible domain. Not necessarily for the S-6 and the cyber personnel, but for the commander and the battle staff,” Col. John Transue, capability manager for cyber at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 20 at TechNet Augusta.

This capability is geared specifically for Army tactical units – corps to brigade – and not the cyber warriors at U.S. Cyber Command.

“We’re looking at the depiction of a commander’s battlespace displaying the effects [and] the operational impact of what is occurring in the network, not necessarily just a network map of what occurred in the network. What is their impact to the mission, to the operation,” Transue said.

Essentially, the Army wants to take programs from various staff sections, such as the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool, which helps coordinate and understand electronic signals across the battlefield, and connect those program to mission command platforms.

With official funding likely coming in October and the new fiscal year, the Army began determining requirements for Cyberspace Situational Understanding in June. A formal request for information is expected in September. Additional experimentation is set to occur at Cyber Blitz in September.

A first phase is expected to help show friendly forces and help provide greater clarity of the operational environment, Transue said.

Lt. Col. John Newman, then deputy commander of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, who’s brigade participated in Cyber Blitz in September 2018, said hat the situational awareness tools allow him to track the progress and operations of cyber personal in cyberspace. He said he wants the ability to know if the cyber staff are bogged down at one point on their mission just as he’d want to know if an infantry company meets heavy resistance somewhere and will take longer than expected to reach the object.

These platoons are part of major force updates the service is undertaking in order to better compete with nations such as Russia and China. They will reside within military intelligence companies and serve as brigade assets.

“We do not have any organic electronic attack capabilities across echelons in the Army,” David May, director of the capability development integration directorate at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 21 at TechNet Augusta.

As previously reported, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division out at Fort Lewis in Washington was designated as the pilot unit for these new EW platoons.

Since then, this brigade has participated in a series of live environment tests, May told C4ISRNET, including the Joint Warfighter Assessment. The unit will also go to the National Training Center for a full rotation, allowing soldiers and electronic warfare personnel to practice against a world class force as well as participate in Cyber Blitz in September.

In addition, the Cyber Center of Excellence will supplement these live experiments and demonstrations with modeling and simulation at its battle lab.

These activities are expected to run until November, May said, when the Army will analyze its data and send a formal requirement for the unit to Army headquarters in April 2020. Provided the Army accepts the requirement, they can begin establishing these units across the force.

The experimentation has also allowed the Army to test new capabilities, serving as a proving ground of sorts for risk reduction on current programs of record, namely, the Terrestrial Layer System (TLS). It also allows the Army to experiment with new concepts.

“We took a unit. We gave them some EW personnel. We took some pre-prototyped kit. We brought them out to the field and we said ‘We want you to play with it. Let’s try some different formations. Let’s try some different ways to do connectivity and geolocation. Let’s see what works, what doesn’t work,’” May said. “All those lessons learned are going into validating the concept of operations and helping us drive the material requirement so that when we do come out and ask industry to produce something we’ve got a 90 percent solution.”

Currently, TLS is spread across several programs for varying sizes of capabilities. May explained this includes TLS extended range, which will be a division and corps asset, TLS large, which will be a brigade asset mounted on a large vehicle like a Stryker, TLS small, which will likely remain vehicle mounted but a smaller form factor, and TLS dismount.

TLS large will be the first to be developed and fielded. May had previously said TLS is set to field in the 2022 or 2023 timeframe. He added that these vehicle capabilities will also work with the dismounted systems so soldiers can also deploy with it as part of the vehicle.

In addition to the platoons, May explained the Army wants to create an intelligence/EW battalion at the division level and an intelligence/EW company at the corps level.

These force updates are still working their way through Army headquarters for approval, May said.

Cyber teams from across the services work through organizations, formally known as Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber, which in turn provide planning, targeting, intelligence and cyber capabilities to the combatant commands. These organizations oversee combat mission teams and combat support teams.

“We have the more mature JFHQ-C, we just have more reps at this point. We’ve got more capabilities current in the JFHQ-C, the other services are building those rapidly,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, the head of Army Cyber Command, told Fifth Domain Aug. 20.

Army Cyber Command was the first to create a standalone JFHQ-C, while other services have decided to dual hat personnel and are still working to create their organizations.

This difference has also allowed Army Cyber to stay on track in building new planning organizations at each combatant command as mandated by U.S. Cyber Command in 2017.

These new organizations, called cyber operations-integrated planning elements (CO-IPE), will serve as satellite offices of the service-specific cyber components, which control cyber forces.

Fogarty said the three cells the Army is responsible for – Africa Command, Central Command and Northern Command – are on pace.

“For us, the focus over the last year has been on the CO-IPEs because we had already built out the JFHQ-C,” he said. This allowed the Army to focus on building these cells, which are expected to be fully operational by 2022.

Because of the maturity of JFHQ-C Army, Fogarty said the service can surge personnel if need be until the planning cells are fully staffed.

The new cells have already improved operations, he said.

The conclusion that Gen. Paul Funk, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, determined was no, the force has to change the way it thinks and organizes to meet these challenges in a 21st century information battlespace.

“Our application of information dominance is too narrow,” Funk said, speaking at TechNet Augusta, Aug. 20. “It is underdeveloped and lacks coordinated direction.”

To fix that, Funk said they are working at TRADOC to include information dominance in the Army campaign plan and develop and information strategy.

He said the Army needs to invest in appropriate resources, such as data mining and alerts, in order to restructure information operations for success on the future battlefield.

When developing a future strategy, Funk said the force needs to keep a few observations in mind.

First, it does not understand how to best degrade connected systems or what ripple effects attacking one component of a system will have on the system as a whole.

Second, the Army doesn’t know whether what it thinks the enemy knows about it is true or not. “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you killed; it’s what you think you do know that ain’t so,” he said.

Third, the Army when building systems in the past hasn’t taken into account that adversaries will seek to take them down; rather, it has assumed that it will always have uninterrupted flows of data.

The force has, however, taken some lessons and themes into consideration, namely that the way the current Army is structured and optimized is not ideal for the future fight, and must be tweaked.

The force the Army built for the counterterrorism fight, which is centered around brigade combat teams, won’t work in a fight against a peer adversary. Echelons above brigade have the most capability and are most decisive to enable the multidomain fight for the future.

“The scale, tempo, lethality and complexity of large-scale, multidomain combat operations requires significant changes in how we equip, organize and structure the force to enable the Army to prevail against peer threats in contested domains,” Funk said.

Russia and China have begun to organize all information-related capability — to include cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and space — under singular entities. Now, Army leaders, say the service must do the same.

“Integrated formations will be innovative because they’ll help us create novel approaches to problem solving by leveraging multiple skillsets,” David May, senior intelligence adviser at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a presentation at TechNet Augusta in August.

May outlined five force design updates the Army is implementing. Four of those five updates will begin immediately to provide competitive edge in multidomain operations.

1. The widespread introduction of cyber and electromagnetic activities

May said the Army will introduce cyber and electromagnetic activities, or CEMA sections, at every echelon from the brigade to service component commands. These sections will plan, synchronize and integrate cyber and EW operations as well as conduct spectrum management.

At the Army’s cyber school, effective Oct. 1, all previous electronic warfare personnel in the functional area 29 will transition into the cyber branch to serve as these CEMA planners. That’s important because it moves those staffers out from working as a functional area specialist and into an operational branch, Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, the home of the cyber school, told C4ISRNET during an interview at TechNet.

May said Army leaders are expected to approve this plan in the next six weeks. Moreover, the update will not require any additional growth to the Army as it will reorganize existing workforce.

2. New electronic warfare platoons

Electronic warfare platoons will be stood up within brigades residing inside military intelligence companies working in tandem with signals intelligence teams and double the Army’s sensing capability in the electromagnetic spectrum, May said.

He added that these teams will also be able to deliver local, as opposed to remote, cyber effects and military information support operations.

A pilot effort is expected to begin in the fall with a tentative test unit identified pending final approval from Forces Command. This will allow the Army to conduct rapid prototyping on kits and organizational structures for these new forces, Morrison said.

“I always emphasize the fact that the path we’re on will double our sensing capabilities inside a brigade combat team. We’ll restore electronic attack and that includes the ability to deliver cyber effects that will deny, degrade or destroy enemy capabilities in and through the [electromagnetic spectrum],” Morrison said.

3. EW companies at corps

Similar to the electronic warfare platoons within the military intelligence companies, new electronic warfare companies will be in the expeditionary military intelligence brigades and will have a counter reconnaissance mission to support long range precision fires and start in 2021.

4. A new multidomain detachment at Fort Lewis

May described a new detachment within the multidomain task force located at Fort Lewis in Washington, which is where the Army is working to figure out the way ahead for multidomain operations through experimentation and participation in exercises.

This involves standing up an intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare, space detachment within the multidomain task force.

The ICEWS (pronounced I-CUES) will integrate all those capabilities plus signal, information operations and targeting, May said. This group will support the multidomain task force counter-anti-access/area denial mission, which will be piloted in the fall.

Morrison said it’s important to not just focus on building capability in tactical formations and the CEMA sections, but across the breadth of the battlefield.

5. A new cyber warfare support battalion

May said this battalion will fall under Army Cyber Command and serve Army-specific missions, not U.S. Cyber Command joint missions. It will be used to integrate intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare, signals, information operations and fires all into one formation. It will also be able to deliver effects remotely and through local expeditionary cyber teams that will plug into the CEMA sections.

May said there is approved growth for these teams with an initial capability slated for 2019.

“What we lack right now is a comprehensive understanding of cyberspace,” Col. Steve Rehn, the cyber capabilities manager at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 23 at TechNet Augusta.

In multidomain battle, the commander cannot make a decision unless he understands the entirety battlespace, Rehn said, which makes it imperative that someone develop systems for understanding cyberspace (broadly defined as cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum, space and even the social media environment).

Rehn said the Army is in the process of prototyping what will eventually become a program in 2020 called cyber situational understanding, or cyber SU. This tool will help commanders visualize and understand what is happening in the nonphysical battlespace under their command, which could have drastic impacts during operations.

For example, Rehn said, speaking a day prior during the same conference, there’s at least seven different networks within an average brigade combat team aside from the primary command or communications network.

The communications personnel within the brigade generally have a good handle on the primary one, but not all the others. This presents openings for the adversary if they can exploit one portion of this network and move laterally to the most important ones, gleaning sensitive information or shutting it down.

One component of cyber SU is to pull this data on all the networks together to provide the commander a more complete picture of his battlespace, which now includes the broad realm of cyber.

Not only that, Rehn said, but the general vision for a cyber SU capability, on a conceptual level, is to be able to pull information from all types of sensors in the battlespace that might provide greater intelligence about adversary action.

He provided another example in which a link goes down on the battlefield. While the normal course of action when a link goes down is to troubleshoot, if personnel were able to detect and correlate at the time the link went down that there was radio frequency interference in the same location, that would likely change the reaction and how the staff would approach a down link.

With a situational awareness tool, staff can tell the commander what the impact to the mission might be, as well as provide additional intelligence that it is typical in the doctrinal template, such as inferring from the adversary they’re facing that a denial-of-service attack means the enemy is about to launch an attack and where the attack might take place.

However, Rehn noted earlier, such understanding of adversary tactics has not been realized yet. He said he’d like to get to a place where, if the adversary is targeting certain friendly systems, friendly forces might be able to discern if that is an indicator of a particular action they might take in the physical space. The Army hasn’t linked observed activity within cyberspace yet to understand what that might mean in the physical space, he said.

Overall, he noted, cyber situational understanding can tip off the commander to certain indicators in which there were no physical effects or indicators.

Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, told C4ISRNET in a Aug. 22 interview at TechNet Augusta that the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air, an electronic attack capability that will be mounted to MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, is in prototyping and will fly next year.

The original MFEW program was slated to be phased across the next several years, first with aerial capabilities, ground vehicle capabilities and dismounted soldier capabilities.

Recently, however, the Army decided to delay MFEW ground in favor of a new integrated capability with the military intelligence tribe.

The developers of MFEW ground realized that their intelligence brethren were developing almost an identical capability, leading them to join forces.

The Army has identified that there needs to be a closer relationship between the electronic warfare/cyber cadre and signals intelligence force.

The new air capability, the Terrestrial Layer System, is a SIGINT/EW system projected to be fielded on aerial vehicles to provide brigade commanders a means to deliver the electronic attack effects.

MFEW Air will not go the way of MFEW ground, Morrison said, However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be integrated EW-SIGINT air platforms designed in concert with the intelligence personnel in the future.

“We do have greater opportunities to team with our MI partners there and we will stay closely nested with them,” Morrison said.

Similarly, Maj. Gen. Robert Walters, commander of the Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in July that the Army wants SIGINT, electronic warfare and cyber systems on the same platforms in the air and ground domain.