Unlike in the counterinsurgency fight of the last 18 years, the Department of Defense\u2019s focus on Russia and China has forced leaders to confront the idea that the military may not be superior in all aspects of war. This may be especially true in the electromagnetic spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can no longer assume dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum and what that means in practice for us is that we have three dimensions that we have to deal with. We have spectrum that\u2019s congested, spectrum that\u2019s contested and spectrum that\u2019s constrained,\u201d Gregory Wagner, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency\u2019s Defense Spectrum Organization, told C4ISRNET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wagner said that these three dimensions \u2014 constrained, contested and congested spectrum \u2014 will all surface in great power competition while in the wars of the last decade leaders generally only worked against two of those factors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now forces and commanders have to be more agile and flexible, Wagner said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He explained that across the military, leaders make decisions faster regarding their use of spectrum and to do that, they need improved command and control tools as well as additional information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where Wagner\u2019s outfit helps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials at the Defense Spectrum Organization are trying to move to the cloud and piggyback on other Department of Defense efforts. This could mean helping the Pentagon\u2019s top IT leaders with modernization projects associated with artificial intelligence and machine learning and how to address the spectrum challenges for commanders. This includes \u201cbetter awareness of how we\u2019re using the spectrum, better awareness of the operational constraints that are being put on the spectrum in one of those three dimensions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They also have a project called the Electromagnetic Spectrum Enterprise Architecture that describes the data flow between services and between and the joint force. In addition, DISA officials maintain a \u201cone-stop-shop\u201d that commanders, both joint force and service specific, can access for curated spectrum data. For example, this group could provide information on what an organization\u2019s spectrum footprint should look like based on military doctrine. Such data would allow a commander to better understand their terrain and better command and control their forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about a joint command. A leader would likely need to know all the forces in their operating area \u2014 land, sea or air \u2014 while an Army brigade commander would only be interested in their formation but might want to drill down as far as company or platoon level, Wagner said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This also allows commanders to be more precise in their decisions. To act as a deterrent, Wagner said, maybe commanders want adversaries to know they\u2019re in the spectrum. Or maybe not. By knowing their own footprint in the spectrum, they are able to better calculate their next move. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DISA’s spectrum office is helping commanders make more informed decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":26706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":62,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,62,12,29,32,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3268],"class_list":["post-20888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-disa-forecast-industry","category-electronic-warfare","category-home","category-newsletters","category-show-reporter"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"LIHMDN4H2ZBDJIPVYKD3LO4NP4","arc_canonical_url":"\/show-reporter\/disa-forecast-industry\/2019\/11\/04\/disa-efforts-bolster-electromagnetic-spectrum-superiority\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n