From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller (00:11):
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 All Crows. You can follow me on LinkedIn or simply email me at host at from the crows nest.org. Thanks for listening. In this episode, I am pleased to have with me Anthony Zuo. Tony is retired SCS or Senior Executive Service in the Department of Defense and US Army. He is currently the president and CEO of Iron Wave Technologies, a component manufacturing company, and he is also the incoming president of the Association of Old Crows. He will begin his two year term as president in December of this year at a OC 2024, our International Symposium and Convention in National Harbor. So before I introduce him, just a few words about some upcoming episodes. We are quickly wrapping up 2024.

Ken Miller (01:05):
I think we have about four regular after today. After this episode, we have about four regular episodes left. We'll be covering topics such as drift to energy, Navy, EW requirements, and we'll also be diving into reform efforts around DODs planning, programming, budgeting and execution process, also known as PPBE. So we'll be covering all those topics in depth. We'll also be at a OC 2024. We'll be doing special bonus episodes available to all of our regular listeners each day from the convention. I'll be interviewing several of our keynote speakers and other folks to provide analysis for the week. Also, if you cannot attend the convention, you can also tune into our social media channel on LinkedIn as well as YouTube. I'll be walking around the exhibit floor doing some live recording segments. From there, talking to our exhibitors and other guests as well as we'll be airing a special live episode from the main stage on Tuesday, December 12th. So a lot of stuff happening at the convention as well as a few remaining episodes this calendar year. That also means that we are looking at 2025. So if you have a suggested topic that you want us to cover on this podcast, please take a moment to email me again at host at from the crows nest.org. Okay. Without further delay, I want to welcome incoming A OC President Tony Zuo to the show. Tony, welcome to from the Crow Nests. It's great to have you here,

Anthony Lisuzzo (02:36):
Ken. Pleasure being here, and thanks for the invite. Looking forward to this interview.

Ken Miller (02:42):
Well, I wanted to have you on the show. We want to keep our listenership up to speed about what all the changes happening in a OC, particularly with leadership, because every time we do have a new president right now, Brian Hinckley is the president. He's had a great two years. The direction of the A OC changes some of the issues that we think about and that kind of flow regularly through our events are affected. And so we've known each other for, I don't know, 10, 15 years, somewhere around there. Back in the time when you were with SES in the Army, correct. Lost track a little bit for number years, and now you're back with the association. So I'm sorry about that, but it's great that you're back involved in A OC and looking forward to you taking office. So just to get started, tell us a little bit about your journey that brought you to this point where you are now ready to take the reins of the association the last few years. You've done a lot of different things since you left a federal service. Tell us a little bit about your journey here.

Anthony Lisuzzo (03:44):
Thanks. Thanks for that, Ken. It's been a great journey actually. I've been involved with EEW or in every aspect of EEW since I actually started in the government back in 1980 as a young engineer. We were just doing a lot of the stuff and my first program was the A LQ 1 62, which was a Navy funded program and we were migrating that to the army. But I've had a great career, as you mentioned, I was, my last government position was the director of intelligence and information warfare directorate, US Army based involved with all electronic warfare, both aspects or the whole conglomerate of electronic warfare and so management perspective. So I've been a member since the A OC since I was a young boy back. I think I joined in 1984. I've been an active member. I served on the board for several years and I'd continue assisting the A OC because I think it's a very critical element of our war fighting capability. With that, after I retired in 2011 from federal service as a senior executive, I started working with some of the defense industries, both in L three communications and then from Booz Allen Hamilton. And now I started my small business support for the last 10 years actually, and growing the small businesses and seeing how we could at least help the EEW community and still continue moving that forward.

Ken Miller (05:18):
So you look at your career and it spans so many important aspects of who we are as an association. I think it sets you up great for success for the next two years. I want to kind of go back to your time with the Army because when you were the director of intelligence information warfare with the army, that was a tremendously, almost like a revolutionary time, so to speak, in the Army. There's a lot of changes happening. Obviously coming out of the war on Iraq, EW was front and center. I remember we had numerous events where we had army leadership from top down at some of our events talking about all important changes that the Army is taking to make sure that it was a leader in ew. You were right in that mix. Tell us a little bit about that time and what it showed you about the importance of EW in the modern fight, because nothing has really changed in terms of its importance since then. We're still working on the awareness, but that was a critical time that you were a part of.

Anthony Lisuzzo (06:20):
Yeah, that was kind of crazy times as well, because as a service, the army, how do you say this? Your success in one arena also then alleviates any of the future funding to move forward. So you're successful with one program and they think from an EW perspective in general, you defeated a threat and that's all we needed to do. You never saw the enhancement of those threats and have the counter, counter, counter counter the cat and mouse game. Right.

Anthony Lisuzzo (06:51):
So when I took over the intelligence and information warfare directorate, one of the portfolios was the electronic warfare piece, both air and ground. One of the biggest critical things is we were addressing all the aviation electronic warfare, and that was great. But during the initial war back in Desert Storm, when there were other threat systems actually migrating to ground, what we took, what we did is actually looked at the tactical end and the tactical application of electronic warfare with the IEDs, and we jumped into action to develop what we can as the initial, if you recall, warlock Systems. They were the initial systems that went out that were defeating some of those threats at that time. And then the evolution of it actually got more sophisticated through the years, and we continued migrating and evolving and going into the next generation systems to protect us against the IEDs.

Anthony Lisuzzo (08:01):
So it was very active, and that's one of the biggest things I can see within the EW community or EMSO. I mean, it's never, you defeat one threat and you're stagnant. You stop. You got to continually look and analyze and develop for your next generations. I mean, people just develop things outside from a threat perspective. It's never stagnant. It's continues moving. And as an association of A OC, let's say the Association of Roll Crows mean with our main portfolio of being EW and EMSO, we really need to be on that front end of looking at where it's going and how we can help and support and protect.

Ken Miller (08:45):
Yeah, you look at your current conflicts taking place around the world today, and I think too often in the past when we've thought about ew, like you mentioned, it was there's a threat and there's a solution. The solution defeats the threat and it's very binary. But in today's threat, as we're seeing, particularly in the spectrum, it's not about just defeating the threat. It's about making sure that there's elements of cost, there's elements of time latency just affecting the decision making process, making one side doubt the accuracy of the data or information that they're receiving because it's not just a matter of simply defeating a threat, but kind of almost manipulating that in a way to allow you enough time to accomplish your mission. And so it is so much more complex and the old way of thinking. I think we're still trying to get rid of that. Sometimes when you hear leaders talking, I don't think they fully get it. It's certainly the conflicts in Middle East and Ukraine. It is pointing to that now. It gives us a case study. But what are your thoughts in terms of how the field itself of EMSO has grown in its complexity and it's almost become almost chaotic in nature in many ways in terms of what we have to encounter on a day-to-day basis in an operational environment that whether it's active conflict or just kind of the competition phase of engagement.

Anthony Lisuzzo (10:12):
Wow, there's a lot in there. It's always changing. And I mean, that's the whole thing. It's the cat and mouse, right? You introduce a new mousetrap, you have to introduce a new way of getting out and escaping that mousetrap or protecting not getting into that mousetrap. I mean, and over the years, as you're correct, Ken, over the years, the migration and the improvements and the different ways that the electronic spectrum is being leveraged has evolved, alright? And it is very important that we continue sticking with it. It's no longer a way to say, Hey, you have point A, point B jam, ID maneuver. It's now there's things that they're introducing into the community that is rapidly changing the way we have to think and how we have to address, I can't get into some of those, but everyone who's in this community in the EMSO and the electronic warfare area understands the threat, understands the rapid evolving of that threat, and you can't stay stagnant in this community.

Anthony Lisuzzo (11:26):
So one of the things that we really have to do is continually assess, continually evolve ourselves and continually stay ahead of where the art of the possible is going or heading. I mean, who would've ever thought that during the wars, during these IEDs, you could all of a sudden use a cell network to detonate and you don't have to be at that location. You can be halfway the world to detonate. So we need to at least evolve with the changing threats. It's an ever evolving area. It's never going to stay stagnant with these bad actors as well. So

Ken Miller (12:07):
It'd be great if in combat, if there was an emerging threat, our military leaders could just snap their fingers and the solution would be in the field. But that obviously doesn't happen because we have an industrial base that we have to work with where a lot of that innovation is getting started from. We do have military labs that play an important role, but there's an industrial base that is extremely important to getting those technologies into the field fast and true to so many in our field. Tony, when you retired, you didn't actually retire, you just changed a career and now you spent the last 10, 15 years in industry looking at it really from the other perspective, how do you manufacture and supply those technologies and those systems to the war fighters? So from your perspective, from an industry perspective then, what are some of the challenges that you confront on a day-to-day basis through your businesses that you currently have or had in terms of manufacturing, defense technology and ensuring that supply chain that you need is secure and stable?

Anthony Lisuzzo (13:21):
Well, that's a loaded question. I can tell you it's a difficult question. There's a lot of, I mean, the traditional way to develop against a particular threat, we don't have the luxury of time it needs to get rapidly developed in place. I mean, you can't have the luxury of developing 1500 systems overnight to meet a specific threat means. So what we need to look at from a technology capability perspective and working very closely with our counterparts on the defense side, all services, and seeing how we can work together very closely regarding quick rapid capabilities, right quick, they call 'em the QRC quickly rapid capabilities and getting him in the field, even if it's one Z two Z, three Z unit type, just from the protection side to detection side and so forth like that. So I don't think we have the luxury of waiting four years or five years to go into a major manufacturing perspective within the EW realm.

Anthony Lisuzzo (14:41):
I mean, this might be a little controversial, but from an Army's perspective, we're always also looking at quick reaction capabilities. This threats typically changing overnight. I mean, you take away a threat the next day, the next 30 days, something else evolves in its place. How do you rapidly get in for protection detection and so forth like that? I mean, it's a different world. Where we came from back in the seventies even where, okay, you knew what the threat was, you had time to study it, you had time to develop the electronic warfare countermeasures, so forth, and then you had systems that you were going to cover across the echelon. It took a lot of time. Today that time is no longer a luxury. So we need to really understand what the environment is and how we could really react fairly quickly. So I'm a real strong supporter in quick reaction, small unit protections as well as the large platform protections. Obviously that's never going to go away, and we still have to concentrate on that, but it's a difficult arena. And I can tell you with the association of all pros and the knowledge base that's there between industry and academia and government, I mean as that team, that has to be a close team to understand so we could rapidly respond to any threat.

Ken Miller (16:06):
At the top of the show, I mentioned that you're going to be taking office as president in December, you have two years. And for those of our listeners who don't understand how the association works, the presidency is a volunteer position, which means that we get to load up about 40 hours of your time a week, I think was what we were looking about, just about that. So you take the position of president in December, you have two years. What are some of the priorities you want to focus on during your time in terms of whether it's topics we need to be addressing as an association, opportunities or programs that you've been a part of over the years that you just want to make sure that are strong and healthy? What's some of your vision for the next two years?

Anthony Lisuzzo (16:56):
That's a loaded question. I'm

Ken Miller (16:58):
Asking a lot of those today.

Anthony Lisuzzo (17:00):
So I mean, what I envision actually from an A OC perspective is number one, educating our defense department too. I mean, we really need to be a team. We need to educate the defense department of the capabilities that are in industry and academia, trying to align those capabilities, working with congressional staffers and the ministries because we are an international organizations and understanding and seeing how we and when we can partner to defeat some of these next generation efforts that we should be working together between our scientists and leaders. I also see focusing on education as well. It's been a little difficult, and I know for the last several years we've been concentrating on stem, which is fantastic, and I like to continue concentrating on STEM because I can see that as our next generation workforce coming through and the technologies and capabilities, I'm moving really rapidly in leveraging some of these young minds as early as possible and interested in, let's say the electromagnetic spectrum and capabilities that exist.

Anthony Lisuzzo (18:09):
How can we leverage and do that? That's very, very critical. And then again, I think our number one would be also educating our leadership. What does the EEW systems, what can we leverage? How can we support? I mean, because it's these days. I mean, you could be in one section of the world or one part of the world and controlling electromagnetic interference somewhere else. Well, how do you deter that? How do you understand that? I mean, we really need to get our hands around that. So one of my big things as well is educating the leadership across this defense as well as congressional, educating them to at least ensure that we don't wait and waste that last mile. We need to bring that up right up front. And this we can prepare ourself. I mean, there's a big push into space now, the space mission. I mean, that to me is a critical battle brand with respect to electromagnetic environment. So I'd like to start focusing there and start educating our leadership across the defense department and across the ministries on what we can bring together.

Ken Miller (19:24):
I completely agree with everything you said, especially when we're talking space domain. I think it's an area, quite frankly, A OC has a lot of room to grow in terms of our association activities, membership outreach and education and stuff like that. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity there from the congressional standpoint, 100%, obviously, that's my other hat that I wear with the A OC is doing advocacy. So with the election coming up, what it means for an advocacy from a congressional standpoint is of course there's huge turnover, not just from the members, but all the way down through the staff. So every two years, you're kind of starting over and making sure that you get that kind of battle rhythm out at the beginning of the new Congress to get that education. A lot of different ways that staff learn about this, whether it's through committees or briefings or so forth.

Ken Miller (20:17):
And it is something that you can't take your foot off the gas at any point because as soon as you do, you lose that progress. And so those are very, very good things to emphasize in the coming months. I think the next time we'll cross paths, though. We'll be at the convention December. I know that you've been involved in just understanding the event as it's taking shape. And just to wrap up our conversation, the convention is December 11th. Let me see if I can say this properly without drip over myself. December 11th to the 13th at National Harbor, Maryland. The theme is electromagnetic spectrum warfare, the Great power competition. So you're going to play a very big role in this as kind of the first convention that you'll really be a part of as the incoming president. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to hearing or just simply being able to engage at this convention from a thematic standpoint, and some of the speakers that we have coming in,

Anthony Lisuzzo (21:28):
I tell you the convention actually or the agenda of the convention, what topic areas that we'll be speaking about is getting very exciting. There are a lot of looking at next generation capabilities, looking at things that we're trying to work. Coalition is a big player. International is a big player. I mean, in today's complex and dynamic global security environment, it is imperative that we collaborate with each other. I mean, a lot of the, there's going to be a lot of data, a lot of briefings that the membership is going to enjoy. I think across all the services as well as our international partnerships that we're working with. Bottom line, I think we still need to be ready, number one, more capable, number two, and more flexible because of this ever-changing global challenge mean. So we really need to concentrate work as one body. I mean, the A OC is a global, global organization, and I truly believe that working together we can at least make a difference in this. So that's just the bottom line is basically partnerships and just educating and just moving forward in this complex environment and this complex EMSO.

Ken Miller (22:54):
Tony, it's great to have you on the show. Really looking forward to working with you very closely here over the next couple of years. We've been working closely over the last year as vice president, but it takes on a whole different kind of feel when your office begins in December. Really looking forward to it. Thank you for being on the show. We'd love to have you back as we dive into more specific topics with you at a later time. But thank you for taking time to join me here today. We'll look forward to seeing you in December,

Anthony Lisuzzo (23:22):
And thanks a lot. And I just want to leave you guys with, I'm extremely honored and humble to be elected as the next A OC president, and I'm looking forward to supporting the whole organization with our international partners across the whole EEW community. So I'm here to serve. I want to do right, and I'm really looking forward to it. Thank you so much, Ken.

Ken Miller (23:47):
Thank you. That will conclude this episode from The Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guest, Tony Luso for joining me. As always, please take a moment to review, share, and subscribe to the show we always enjoy hearing from our listeners. You can also learn more about the podcasts@ftcnpodcast.org, and you can also email me your questions and comments at host at from the crows desk.org. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.