From the Crows' Nest

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to From The Crows Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. Thank you for listening. In today's episode, we are going to discuss joint all domain command and control or JADC2. Joining me today to help cover this topic is a good friend and colleague Mr. Steven Tourangeau, call sign tango. Before we begin, I would like to thank our episode sponsor Northrop Grumman.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Northrop Grumman provides full spectrum superiority. They're innovative multi-function interoperable solutions ensure war fighters have full spectrum dominance to make real time decisions no matter the environment or domain. Learn more at ngc.com/ew.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
All right, I'm here with Mr. Steve Tourangeau, call sign tango. Tango is the Dean of the Reginald Victor Jones Institute. A new institute that focuses on electromagnetic spectrum operations. He's also the vice president and founder of warrior support solutions, which provides subject matter expertise to the DOD industry and academia and the advancement of electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations. He is a retired air force officer having served 20 years as both a navigator and electronic warfare officer. Thank you. It's great to have you on today's show. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Thanks Ken. And thanks for having me on the podcast. And I look forward to our discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, we have a lot of ground to cover today, but before we begin, I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about your new initiative, the Reginald Victor Jones Institute. It's a center of excellence for electromagnetic spectrum operations that's new. Many people who probably know you from our community, but they might not know about this new institute that you've set up. So why don't you say a little bit about what the RVJ Institute is about?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Very good. Yeah, about two years ago, March of about 2019 Melinda and I were sitting around frustrated again by this...

Speaker 2 (02:11):
And Melinda is your wife.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yes, Melinda is my wife and my business partner. She's actually the President CEO of Warrior Sports Solutions. And now acts also as the Executive Director for the institute. We had a discussion about where things were going with the spectrum. And we've been in this business as you mentioned for a long time. So it just kind of frustrated how things are going. It occurred to me at the time that what if we did something different? We really need an organization focused on doing scholarly research based on all of the previous studies that have been done over the last few decades. So the intent of the institute is to capture all of that previously accomplished knowledge, house that in what we're calling a knowledge hub and make that accessible to industry, academia DOD specifically, and use that to develop new knowledge related to the spectrum and how the DOD needs to go with spectrum ops.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
And that's very important. I know throughout our conversations, we've talked a lot about advocacy and I've talked about in presentations that advocacy is really provides two values. The one is the generation and distribution of knowledge, and then it's also the other value is the facilitation of trade or business, or helping your customer accomplish their mission. But going to the knowledge pieces is really important because from an association perspective, associations are very good at distributing knowledge, but there's oftentimes that gap in the generation of knowledge, kind of getting the information together, coming up with new knowledge for your customers and getting that out there. So could you talk a little bit about how you envision RVJ Institute generating new knowledge and how it will connect to others in our community for the distribution and facilitation of that knowledge across our community?

Speaker 3 (04:13):
One of the pillars of the institute is to capture what we're calling our cadre of experts. There are experts in this community who've been doing this activity for decades, and they're not just US, they're around the world and having a catalog of all of these experts, knowing who they are, knowing how to get in touch with them, allows us, or will allow us the opportunity to bring them together and collaborate, especially in an environment now where we're doing so much remotely. We can set up a collaboration space in order for these people from around the world to answer a specific question or develop some new techniques, new technologies, with a expert understanding of the area of the spectrum in which they've studied and become experts. So this cadre of experts would be called together on an as needed basis to answer a question or to come up with a new concept, and then they would go back to their day job. And then this new knowledge would be distributed through multiple sources, but then be housed in our knowledge hub for later use for developing new knowledge beyond that.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Now, you're calling it... It's a center of excellence for electromagnetic spectrum operations. And as we'll get to probably later in the conversation, that's a broad term. It covers a lot of ground.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
It does.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
So what are some of the areas that you are focused on right now under the EMSO umbrella in terms of issues or topics that you have ready knowledge and you're ready to... You're ready knowledge for your customers, as well as the ability to engage our community on.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
I'd say the two biggest hot buttons that we've been working of late, and we're seeing it really coming to a peak right now is what we've referred to for years as electromagnetic protection or electromagnetic protect prior to the revisions of the joint hubs. We've always termed EP as a part of electronic warfare. And a challenge with that is that EP features are necessary on every spectrum dependent system, not just electronic warfare systems. So I think we've done a disservice to ourself in that respect, but I see things changing in the very near future. The other area that we're starting to push a lot toward right now is live virtual constructive capabilities to allow testing and training in a realistic electromagnetic operational environment while not interfering with the local populace around our live ranges, or allowing someone to sense our really sensitive technologies.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Now, one last question before we get onto the topics, and actually the reason why we wanted you on the show was because of your subject matter expertise on electronic protector, electromagnetic protect, particularly as it pertains to JADC2. But one last question about the institute. It has an interesting name, Reginald Victor Jones Institute. And I want to get to that for our listeners, because it's a name that carries a lot of history with our community. Could you go in and could you explain a little bit about why it's called the RVJ Institute

Speaker 3 (07:54):
When we first started thinking about the institute, who is the father of electronic warfare? Reginald Victor Jones is one of two or three on the list. Do a little research on Reginald Victor Jones. And he was the lead of a team in Britain during World War II that basically discovered what the German air force, the Luftwaffe was using to guide their aircraft over London and other cities in Britain to drop bombs.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
And this is the battle of the beams.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Correct. This is referred to as the battle of beams and our RVJ's discovery of that allowed them to develop a countermeasure and basically steer those beams away into areas of Britain that were not highly populated with the attempt of taking the bombs off London. And he's very famous for that. You read some of his books and he's got a lot more that he's very famous for, but that was the goal.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
And that was pretty much the first large-scale use of electronic warfare in...

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Correct. Correct. That was it. And the other reason we focused on Reginald Victor Jones is we want the institute to be understood and seen as an international center of excellence, especially with the national defense strategy and our ongoing discussions about how are we going to work with our allies and partners, especially in the EW space where conflict in the spectrum is challenging enough without us doing it to ourselves. So we wanted to make sure it had an international flavor. So that's where RVJ came from. And we're pretty happy with the decision to go with that.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Well, thank you, Tango. I know AOC is looking forward to working with the RVJ Institute to advance EMSO advocacy, it's a difficult mission, but look forward to working with you on it. I want to turn now to the main topic of our conversation, joint all domain command and control or JADC2. JADC2 is basically connecting all military sensors into a single network. It's a great vision, but it does have some challenges. And when you get really down to it, the backbone of JADC2, is our ability to maneuver in the electromagnetic spectrum. So EMSO plays a key part in executing this vision. So I wanted to start by asking you to talk a little bit about JADC2, its evolution and what it means for EMSO moving forward.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
The JADC2 construct basically is designed to give a single leader as a CoCOM or above that at the DOD level, a situational awareness picture across an area of responsibility, for example. And that picture today is bits and pieces. But what I don't have is that single picture of the battle space and that battle space obviously includes a lot of components. The EMS is one piece of that, but how do I make a decision on what capabilities I have at my fingertips and what best to use if I don't have awareness of what's available? So the idea of JADC2 is bringing together all of the networks from all of the other services, or let's call them all of the other domains and present that in a way in which a commander can make a decision based on full knowledge of the scenario. What's the best approach to move forward next? It just creates that vision. And then there's a secondary piece to that is the ability to develop courses of action in order to speed the decision process for the commander.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
One of the challenges about executing JADC2 is that there are a number of different initiatives out there from the Air Force's advanced battle management system, ABMS, to project convergence from the Army. Project Overmatch from the Navy, other service initiatives. You also have components such as electromagnetic battle management, a lot of different pieces that have to fit together into a larger puzzle. Can you talk a little bit about how DOD is working to integrate these pieces into a single network?

Speaker 3 (12:30):
As these demonstrations are ongoing, ABMS has their experimentation piece, project convergence is moving off with some great experimentation stuff. Each of these pieces individually are kind of setting the stage for what's the art of the possible. They are limited to, I won't say single service because some of the ABMS experimentation has included Army involvement and Navy as well, but it's not the entire picture. And it's primarily a sensor to shooter decision-maker piece. There's some other parts of the decision process that are going to need to be considered that aren't included directly in that, I won't say limited perspective, but it's not the full picture.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
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Speaker 4 (13:25):
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Speaker 2 (14:25):
So, how does a service then they take their network that's designed for cross domain, where do you draw that line between making sure that it is compatible with other networks and other domains, but also you're not making assumptions about that compatibility. How does a service go about kind of tackling that issue of compatible network without making assumptions for the capabilities that are out in the field?

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Each service is tasked by law to do a certain mission and they're funded to do that mission. So unfortunately there's no reward for sharing across services and I will have to give a lot of credit to the services right now because regardless of reward or not, they see the importance of doing it, and they're reaching out to the other services to try and figure out how to make this work in a bigger scale. The joint piece though, is going to be harder to do, because if you set out some joint requirements and in the Air Forces case, they're the lead service for JADC2, without somebody directing that funding gets spent by each of the services to support JADC2, it's going to be very difficult to make that work. There are ways that make it work, and I've seen it being pursued at this point.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
So when you talk about JADC2, and setting up a single network, we're talking about integrating sensors across many different platforms and systems operated by each of the services, but not all the sensors are created equal. Some of them are designed to only share information with a specified end user. And so there are some limitations to how these sensors can be integrated into a larger network. You mentioned earlier about the authority to make decisions on activities, particularly when it gets into sensor data and intelligence versus operations. So this brings us to the title 10 title, 50 discussion. I wanted to ask you about how JADC2 tackles this challenge in authorities with the collection and distribution of sensor data.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
That's a good question because your radar warning receiver on your aircraft, as you mentioned, is going to tell the pilot, hey, somebody's looking at you. Well, a sigint sensor on a rivet joint aircraft may see the same signal, but their authorities are different than the aircraft. So how does the radar warning receiver signal get fused into the JADC2 picture differently than the sigint information just based on... It's already created a bigger gray area between title 10, title 50, as you watch how the Army pursues their [inaudible 00:17:21] construct which has an EW guy and a sigint guy sitting next to each other, looking at the same signal. So the challenge will be, how do we divide that if we still need to? So there's a policy issue. Do we need Congress to go back and review title 10, title 50? Is it still applicable given today's technology? But we also are going to have to, in the meantime, develop ways of tagging the information based on where it's coming from and giving accesses to that information based on title 10, title 50 restrictions.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
And you mentioned that the role of artificial intelligence in all this. When we talk about these existing lines of separation between the title 10, title 50, it's about people and either side making the decision. But when you have artificial intelligence machine learning, collecting large sums of data across various sensors, analyzing it, how do you keep control of that division or that constraint? And does AI... Can you develop these systems to properly tag, oh, well, this sensor is intel and so it has to be distributed and analyzed in a certain way. And this other sensor is operations so it has to be handled differently. It's obviously [inaudible 00:18:40] and algorithms, but are we looking at AI and machine learning as kind of the next evolution of this title 10, title 50 debate and are we prepared to have that conversation yet?

Speaker 3 (18:54):
As we collect more and more information, and we've seen it for a decade, especially with the streaming video coming back and how much of it do you retain? And all the signals analysis that's being done by fewer and fewer signal analysts that machine learning and AI is becoming that much more important in that area. So that's already starting to happen. The trick is training those algorithms with the proper information, and then somebody is going to have to make a determination. What's the difference between title 10, title 50? The challenge is going to be someone's going to have to make a determination how...

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Title 10, title 50 is based on how it's used. And if the same information is being used to support a commander on the ground in combat, that's this title 10 information, that's ES, electromagnetic spectrum support. But if it's going to be sent back to an analyst to use it for intel, then it fits in title 50. So is that same signal both title 10, title 50 until somebody determines that we need an analyst to look at it for intelligence prep. That's a big question that's causing this gray area between title 10, title 50, that we're really going to have to have it resolved, or we're going to have to have some amazingly smart algorithms that can process this stuff real time and in a way that... And somebody has to make rules. So it's still going to come back to that.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
I'd like to talk a little bit about the role of EMSO in JADC2 and I view EMSO so as more or less the backbone of JADC2 in many ways, because obviously everything we do in an environment, a conflict environment relies on our ability to access and manage electromagnetic energy, electromagnetic spectrum. So if you don't have superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum, you're not going to be able to accomplish anything on the JADC2 front, because you'll be able to sever that network. Could you talk a little bit about how you see EMSO fitting into JADC2 and particularly some of the conversation that you mentioned earlier about specifically electronic electromagnetic protect, electromagnetic support and electronic attack that make up this traditional EW concept. How do they play into JADC2?

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Well under the EMSO construct the piece that enables it all is the data links or the communications. So although electromagnetic protection falls under EMSO construct or in the joint hubs, it's the one enabler that we need to put some more focus on to make this happen. The briefings I see on JADC2 still have the lightning bolts connecting all of the different sensors and devices. Those lightning bolts aren't guaranteed. So matter of fact, Russia and China has watched us for the last two decades developing this network warfare concept and have designed capabilities specifically to take those links away. And it's published in their open policies, procedures, and doctorate.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
That's what they're intending to do. I don't believe, partly because I may not be at level of security to be aware, but I don't believe we focused enough on how to ensure those data links are going to survive in a congested contested, constrained, or denied electromagnetic operational environment. So that's my concern with JADC2 is whether or not we're going to be able to make all those links, or are we going to accept the fact that we're not going to be able to make all those links? And we'll only use what we can get our hands on.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
And when you're looking at resiliency of those links, it's not just from direct attack on those links, but it's also the interference that you might get from other systems, both commercial and military working in that band of the spectrum. And then of course, your ability to overcome that threat to the network where you have to shift to other data links to still get the same information, but you have to reroute it through a different part of the network and being able to do that real time with low latency. So what are some of the opportunities moving forward that you see, particularly on the EP front, which is going to be responsible for quite frankly, protecting a lot of our sensors from these attacks on the network. On the EP front, what are some of the solutions? What are some of the opportunities moving forward that you see on the EP front that will help us ensure the superiority of our network?

Speaker 3 (23:50):
The classic EP features that we talk about directional transmissions, LPI, LPD are capabilities that allow you to transmit in a way that you're not necessarily sensed by the adversary. That doesn't mean that they won't attempt to just dump a bunch of noise into the entire bandwidth. But one of the things I'd like to see us look at more is... It's frequently be called multi-spectral capabilities. I'm not a fan of the term multi-spectral because there is only one spectrum, but there are different regions of the spectrum that can be used. There are free space optics that allow UV, visible infrared lights to work to transmit information. Laser communications concepts have been around for awhile. They're limited in that you've still got to worry about the environment, the physical environment, clouds, et cetera, restrict some of that flow, but there are ways to support that, but we've got to open up multiple options for all of our networks to use whatever piece of this spectrum is available.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
So a couple of weeks ago, President Biden released kind of his blueprint for defense budget. Obviously the details of which are forthcoming and not released as of this recording, but he gave a blueprint of where he sees a defense spending going in fiscal year 2022. And obviously JADC2 is going to play an important part in future defense budget planning in DOD and Congress. How do you think DOD should prioritize some of their competing communications requirements for its future network?

Speaker 3 (25:37):
One of the pieces that really has to be focused on, and I know in the Air Force, a new Air Force EMS strategy, they talk about it is a software defined radios are going to have to be the core of everything. And the sooner we can start on integrating the software defined capabilities in every spectrum dependent system, the sooner we'll be able to do the types of things that we want to be able to do with JADC2. Broad spectrum access. At that point it becomes a challenge of apertures, but ESA apertures at this point, electronically scanned arrays are able to do a lot of capabilities that we're hoping for.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
But moving to a software defined capability is going to be the most critical component, I think, to make JADC2 a reality. That would include all of your network connections, but it's also going to include, how do I take a bit of data that's coming through my sensor and digitize it and transmit it so it's not an analog recording. Or along those lines, we need to find a way to make data easier to move. And I think software defined radios give us that push.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Well, that will conclude this episode of From The Crow's Nest. Thank you, Tango for joining me. It's a pleasure to talk with you, and I hope that you'll be a guest again in the near future. I also want to thank our episode sponsor Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northrop Grumman's multifunction interoperable solutions create full spectrum superiority for our war fighters across all domains. Learn more at ngc.com/ew. And finally, don't miss episode one of our new sister podcast, The History of Crows, which will air next week. Visit crows.org/podcast for more information. Thank you for listening.