From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller (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. Thanks for listening. All right, on this episode, we are going to go back to talking about the situation in Ukraine. There have been quite a few developments over the past few weeks. Many have been unexpected, or at least gone against conventional knowledge, and of course there's tremendous relevance for what's going on over there as it pertains to electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations.

Ken Miller (00:40):
So today I am pleased to have with me Colonel Jeffrey H. Fischer, he's retired U.S. Air Force, 30-year military aviator, electronic warfare officer with seven combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Balkans. He's flown both Air Force's EC-130 Compass Call and the EA-6B Prowler while on joint exchange with the Navy. Jeff also served at the U.S. Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon for both requirements, as well as programming. And toward the end of his career, he was assigned as diplomatic defense official to U.S. embassies in Austria and Kosovo. His final assignment was a senior position at NATO's special operations headquarter in Belgium.

Ken Miller (01:21):
Today, he is an author and consultant. He's written several books and we are going to talk about those a little bit later in the show. But more so than many people, he has really had his ear to the ground as in terms of what's going on over in the situation in Ukraine. And I am pleased to have him here with me today. Colonel Fischer, it's great to have you on from the closeness. Thanks for joining me.

Colonel Fischer (01:39):
Hey Ken, it's great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Ken Miller (01:42):
You have had your ear to the ground of what's going on more so than many people, and last month we had John Knowles who is the editor-in-chief of our JED magazine. And we had him on about five days into the conflict, so there was not a lot of real new knowledge about how things developed. So we were still kind of guessing based on conventional knowledge of how we thought things would happen. We're now about six weeks or so into the conflict, and like I said at the opening, there's quite a few developments that have been unexpected. So just to start off, I wanted to get your insight on what we've learned so far from a contextual standpoint about how this conflict has progressed over the last several weeks, and how does it align or conflict with what we thought about going into the conflict?

Colonel Fischer (02:28):
Sure. Ken, it's a good question. And sometimes proximity matters and I currently live in Austria with my wife, which is a stone's throw, at least from a U.S. perspective, to Ukraine. So sometimes I have a little bit of a different perspective. When we talk about, what's the conventional wisdom? How did things change or what did we get wrong? I think that depends a lot where everyone sits. Chairman Milley was just in front of Congress recently and he had estimated that the war was going to be far shorter than it's been. And I would also argue that his counterpart in Russia, who guessed that the war would only last two days, is having long discussions with President Putin right now on why it's taken well over a month to secure their objectives.

Colonel Fischer (03:12):
Scoping this down to the podcast on electronic warfare, I think that those of us that are EW experts, we owe a little bit of a humility as well. For years, we've been talking about when the east finally conflicts with the west, there's going to be this mud slog fight in the electromagnetic spectrum, and for the most part that hasn't happened. So we're six weeks into that and I think a lot of people are now reevaluating, me included, Russia had built many new state-of-the-art EW systems and we're just not seeing them. So there's going to be a lot of retrospect on that.

Ken Miller (03:48):
What's interesting is obviously we talk about Russia as being the peer competitor to the east, and we talked about what they're capable of from a technology standpoint. And certainly we know that they possess some tremendously advanced systems in electronic warfare, but there seems to be a disconnect happening from the technology that they possess and how they are using it tactically and the tactical relevance of that equipment in Ukraine. Could you talk a little bit about how, maybe we focus too much on technology side and not enough on the tactics or the training or even their military strategy, because we thought that obviously their goal would be to go into Kiev, but they haven't been able to do that yet. And some of that has to do with the environment they're operating in. Where's that disconnect happening?

Colonel Fischer (04:40):
I think we can talk for the whole podcast to that question.

Ken Miller (04:45):
Well, you've got two minutes, so I mean [crosstalk 00:04:47]-

Colonel Fischer (04:47):
Perfect. I'll sum it up. It's interesting, right? It's been a while since I've been in, but I don't think much has changed in the way intelligence briefings work, correct? There's an information or intelligence officer who will get up and say, hey, here's the new Soviet system [inaudible 00:05:02], that's either a radar system, a surface air missile system or an electronic warfare system. And they go through basically the technical specs, hey, this thing upgraded from analog to digital, it's digitally capable. It's got all new processor systems, amplifiers are cleaner and more powerful. We assess it to be able to do this, and so we go from that.

Colonel Fischer (05:24):
We make, probably as operators, a false assumption that just because the capability exists, that they can implement it and we go with the way we implement it, because it's what we know. And we just presume that the Russians can implement their systems the same way we do. I was joking with a friend, I said, "If you have that fastest car at the Indianapolis 500, but your driver is an Amish farmer, you're probably going to have some challenges winning that race." And I think maybe we focused a little bit too much on the machine ware or the hardware and not so much on the human ware, and that's a topic of an article that I'm going to have out in Defense Post here in a couple days. So yeah, I think we failed right there.

Colonel Fischer (06:07):
And not just the intelligence community. I got a lot of friends in the Intel community, so I got to be careful, right? I don't think Intel necessarily got it wrong. I can't remember the last time when I worked at the Pentagon that I asked a question of like, okay, well, how well do the Russians implement this? When we talk about combined arms and effects in a full battle space, how well did they train to that level? I never asked that question and perhaps maybe I should have.

Ken Miller (06:32):
Part of it goes down to how they train. I think it's universally accepted, at least I hope it is, that U.S. armed forces are the best trained in the world, and every country kind of goes about their training a little bit differently. Could you talk a little bit about how Russia trains and maybe how that's impacted the effectiveness that they have in the field today?

Colonel Fischer (06:53):
Yeah. Well, sadly, even as a diplomat, I was never invited to go train with the Russian military, which doesn't shock me. But I gained some amazing insights from a recent article that I would strongly encourage a lot of people to go read. It was in a European publication called The Economy. It's in English, don't worry, it's not in Italian. But it's a one-on-one interview with a former national security advisor to both Putin and still an advisor to Lavrov, who is the foreign minister of Russia. And in it, one of the statements he makes is very interesting regarding training. And it's not so interesting because it's Russian training, but it's interesting because it's U.S. training. And one of the reasons that Russia invaded Ukraine was they were frustrated with the advancements in the quality training that the Ukrainians were getting over the Russian forces. And they kept seeing this and they said if they wait much longer, the Ukrainians, they won't be able to beat them.

Colonel Fischer (07:54):
That's a feather in the cap, I think of the Department of Defense. I think it's a feather in the cap of the National Guard Bureau, because for the last 30 years, Ukraine has been the beneficiary of the state partnership program with California, who's gone in and basically helped Ukraine shed some of those former Soviet Union Russian military doctrine, centralized command, centralized control constructs, and moved them to decentralized execution where you give an order to a lieutenant or an NCO and you expect them to be able to achieve that order through ingenuity, self-awareness, you don't necessarily need to talk to them the whole time, and that's the big problem.

Colonel Fischer (08:33):
When we talk about Russian training, I was a diplomat in Vienna for three years, from 2011 to 2014, and I was lucky enough to meet a lot of other former Warsaw Pact military officers who had trained under Soviet doctrine and are now NATO members. And they would tell me that their training was, may get out of the sandbox, but there was really no opposition force that they trained against. They would charge into woods against nothing. I mean, an open field and they'd act like they were charging against something and they would mimic that they were being jammed or the signal is turned off, but they'd already be pre-planned to go to their chatter mark frequency or whatever. And I don't think there was really any radar jamming.

Colonel Fischer (09:14):
So I think that is rearing its ugly head, right? I mean, there's a lot of lessons to be learned from this Ukrainian war. I think inefficient training is one of them. I think Russia has had a significant problem with the time [inaudible 00:09:31] strategist plan for a battle, logisticians plan for a war. It was like a week and a half that the 80-mile long or however mile long the convoy stood there just waiting for orders and waiting for gas. It was not the most shining hour for the Russian military I think.

Ken Miller (09:49):
And it goes to, when we talk EW and EMSO oftentimes we talk about having to train in realistic environments. What are you actually going to end up having to face when you go into combat? And then of course when we talk spectrum environments, obviously we go from the congested to the contested, to the complex and we try to train in those. And it sounds like in many ways the Russian technology might say, okay, it can operate in certain environments, but the forces might not have the training for at least the complex EMS environment that they might find in more populated areas such as city centers like Kiev.

Colonel Fischer (10:30):
Exactly. And we had talked a little bit before this and we had talked about this kind of very question, kind of in a construct of DOTMLPF, and I think one of the biggest things that I'm chewing on right now from that construct is, let's go back a little bit and talk about the Russian doctrine where it's centralized command, centralized execution. Their forces forward are not going to do anything until the commanding officer, the General, whoever, tells them to go. They move when he tells them and they stop when the General tells them.

Colonel Fischer (11:04):
And what you learn from that kind of doctrine is it's very communications intensive. If the communications don't happen, the military doesn't move. And we often joke that I think that the typical Russian soldier, he would let the enemy come upon him and climb into a foxhole with him before he'd shoot, if he never got the order, because he fears his General more than he fears the enemy. Right? I mean, it's kind of how they operate.

Colonel Fischer (11:33):
So if you look at operations, what made Russia think that electronic warfare was a tool to be used to support that doctrine? That's what I'm kind of chewing on right now. If you know that your doctrine is communications intensive, that you have to communicate up and down the chain constantly in a multi-domain battle space, why on earth would you want to bring the battle into the electromagnetic spectrum? I could see why you'd want to secure it. Why you'd want to do electromagnetic protect and secure communications, but I don't know why you'd want to bring a mud slog there. To me right now it's clear it doesn't make much sense. You got reports of Russian soldiers using their cell phones in the battle space now and I laugh at that because the advantage clearly goes to Ukraine.

Colonel Fischer (12:23):
If Russia doesn't want to fight in the electromagnetic spectrum right now, they're [inaudible 00:12:28] a domain, and this could be an advantage for Ukraine. I don't know what they're doing. Again, I don't hold a clearance anymore, which allows me to be able to talk to you by the way. So there're goods and bads there. But yeah, it's fascinating. I don't understand it. Perhaps the only reason Russia truly got into the EW game is they saw the massive success that the United States had in Desert Storm I in Iraq, in other places. And they said, hey, well, if it works for the U.S. maybe it'll work for us. Perhaps, but then maybe you should have thought about your doctrine change as well.

Ken Miller (13:04):
I know we've heard a lot of presentations in the past about how Russia has organized its forces well for the EW fight. And on paper they may have, but the centralized command, centralized execution and they don't have an NCO structure. As I understand it's officers and conscripts, basically. And so when we talk DOTMLPF, and we've had a lot of conversations here in the U.S. about how, spectrum as a domain. And one of the reasons why we talk about it being a domain is because you need to address it across DOTMLPF, as we were talking about earlier. You have the doctrine piece, how are you going to fight? You have [inaudible 00:13:48] organization.

Ken Miller (13:49):
We thought maybe that they were organized probably, but it seems to be that they do have holes in how they're organized. But then the leadership and the training and all those other pieces, it seems like we're getting a little bit clearer picture on maybe some of their limitations. One of the developments that happened a couple weeks ago and I've only seen it in the news a little bit, there hasn't been much follow up. But as I've heard is that apparently the Ukrainian forces did capture or retrieve some important EW system from Russia. What do you know about that? The system that they captured or at least attained and what that could mean, and even better understanding some of the Russian EW technology.

Colonel Fischer (14:33):
I don't know how social media is working in the United States, but I'll tell you social media in Europe is packed with videos of Ukrainian farmers towing away tanks, armor personnel carriers, electronic attack ground based systems. And I think the first order effect of that is there's going to be a lot of Ukrainian farmers who are going to have a bumper crop this year when they sell their wares out of their own barn. I don't know, again, I'm not in the military right now, so I don't know where that's going to go. I know there's probably a lot of people that'd love to take a look at it and I think time will tell. I think we should probably stand by on that one and see how that develops. But yeah, this was one of the systems that had been briefed numerous times by our intelligence folks. You can find stuff most likely in JED on it. You can find stuff in Jane's on it. Those are obviously unclassified sources, and even the unclassified sources say it's got some significant capabilities. So that'd be interesting.

Ken Miller (15:31):
And now there was some news coming out today, or in the last couple days about new negotiations or ongoing negotiations about contributing more arms transfers, either from the U.S. or partner countries to the Ukraine. There was an approval of a number of different technologies recently by U.S. Congress, including Switchblade drones. From a technology standpoint, what are some of the things that U.S. can or should be thinking about doing in supporting Ukraine from a weapons perspective and also even just the forces that we have there now they're talking about repositioning a patriot system on the east. So what are some of the things that we can do from an EW perspective to keep pushing that ball forward on that front?

Colonel Fischer (16:13):
Well, yeah. So I think an EW perspective is somewhat challenging. I live in a country that's right next door to Slovakia. As a matter of fact, the Slovakian border is 10 miles from my house. And Slovakia just gave an S-300 system to Ukraine, right? It's not an S-400, but it's a fairly capable surface to air missile system, long range, that the Ukrainians can employ. And the reason that's important is the Ukrainians know how to use this weapon system, right? They're trained in that type of weapon system. I think when we talk about electronic warfare systems, we have a little bit a challenge, and that is it's the same as the F-16 challenge. An F-16 is extremely capable asset, but how long is it going to take us to train a Ukrainian pilot to be able to maximize his use in an F-16?

Colonel Fischer (17:09):
I've read reports that they can do it in three weeks. I would tell you there's probably a lot of F-16 pilots out there and say, if you told me that you were going to give me three weeks of training and then let me go fly against an [inaudible 00:17:21] 20, I would tell you that that would not be my dream employment construct of the weapon systems. So I guess the question is, are there electronic warfare systems that are available right now that could be quickly trained, quickly placed in, quickly go through the FMS process, right? Because at the end of the day, state department gets a vote. And I think a lot of times we're developing electronic attack capabilities that go against a near peer, as we've talked about, a denied degraded EMS.

Colonel Fischer (17:55):
We don't spend a lot of time just creating simple jammers that the state department is going to sign off and say, okay, yeah, we're okay with it, exporting this technology. So you run into a lot of problems there. Not that I don't want Ukraine to win, and not that I don't want to help Ukraine, it's a great question. It's probably one for industry, right? Where's British Aerospace Engineering and where's L-3 Com and all the guys who build the jammers? What can they push? I would venture to say inside that there's probably a lot of those discussions. I'm just not privy to them.

Ken Miller (18:31):
I think one of the positives that you see developing through this is obviously this kind of the host of nations, the solidarity of nations coming together, where you do have Slovakia contributing and other EU countries and NATO countries. And there are coming together kind of as a united group of collection of countries that are using all the resources that they can. With the U.S., but we're not necessarily on the front where it can be perceived as U.S. against Russia. That united front, I think is a positive and I think that could actually improve how we fight together in joint domain operations as a host of countries moving forward. So what do you think are some of the outcomes of this collaboration across partner countries? What benefit could this have in terms of future opportunities for better interoperability, compatibility of systems and training and fighting that could come out of this conflict?

Colonel Fischer (19:30):
I will put back on my amateur diplomatic hat for that. Again, I was a diplomat in two different embassies in Europe as a military attache and a senior military advisor to the chairman and to my ambassadors. I will tell you the landscape of European security right now is like shifting sands. Things are going crazy. There are MODs across Europe right now that even before the battle is done, they're already taken lessons learned in just the first 10 days in starting in on their plans, their requirements, their funding. A billion euros from Germany is going to, or a hundred billion euros from Germany is going to be dropped immediately. There's a lot of countries out there that never thought that this was going to happen, and that Putin would go as unhinged, is probably the nicest word I can put right there.

Colonel Fischer (20:23):
You've got many people who are speculating on the 14th of this week that Finland and Sweden are going to join NATO. These are pretty significant individuals who are talking about these types of things. I heard an interesting comment, Finland and Sweden learned two valuable lessons from this. The first thing that Finland learned was they can't manage the relationship with Vladimir Putin like they thought they could manage the relationship. There is no relationship at this point. So that was the key reason they stayed out of NATO.

Colonel Fischer (20:59):
And then I think the lesson that Sweden learned was that Sweden had always been promised as a partner for peace nation in NATO, not a member, but a PFP nation that NATO would be there for Sweden should anything happen. Ukraine was also a PFP nation and I think Sweden has seen what being there for a nation means to a PFP nation. They expected a little bit more and they realized that they probably are going to have to ante up if that's the level of support that their people want. I would imagine it would go to a referendum in both nations and it'll be interesting to see how they vote.

Ken Miller (21:36):
So we're about six weeks in, based on what we know now, what are a couple of things that you're looking for or watching closely over the next, say month? We'll continue to revisit this situation in episodes in the future, what are a couple of things that we need to be looking at or focusing our attention on over the next few weeks?

Colonel Fischer (21:54):
When I look ahead, I have to kind of use foundational data where we are right now. And one of the things that, another one of those lessons learned that I think Mr. Putin and his minister of defense sure you have learned was multi-front boards are really a bad idea. When they tried to attack through Belarus and then the north and then down in, they tried to Donbas, to come in from the side out in the east, and then they were going to come in from the water. It looks good on paper surrounding Ukraine, but basically you give the center of gravity of Ukraine where they can actually move forces far faster than you can around the outside of the circle. So I think they've come back to, okay, maybe a single front war isn't a good idea. They're trying to regroup down in the Donbas and they're trying to push in from the east and move westerly.

Colonel Fischer (22:42):
I don't know, what I'm hopeful for is that this is a place where Ukraine can still make a stand. Russia lost a lot of forces in the north, probably a lot more than we even know because they're probably not declaring that many. So how well will Ukraine stand against that push from the Donbas and the Mariupol in that whole region? That's my first one. And then the second one is from an international perspective, how much greater will NATO unify and send heavy weapons into Ukraine? The MiG-29s that they keep asking for. They can fly those. They've got guys who know how to fly those. The F-16s I think are a little bit of a challenge.

Colonel Fischer (23:23):
The larger switchblades, I'm not a switchblade expert, but as I understand, there're two different sizes of switchblades. They've been getting the little ones, they want the ones with a little bit of a bigger punch. If you're Raytheon guy right now, you're pretty happy with that. I think your stocks are going to go pretty well. But the [inaudible 00:23:44] they're doing God's work right now, so it's awesome.

Ken Miller (23:49):
So obviously there's a toll of this conflict on the ground regarding the war. Given your location in Europe, do you have any insights into what listeners can do if they're looking to help Ukrainians on the ground? Do you have any insights what they can do moving forward?

Colonel Fischer (24:07):
I appreciate that question because I think there's a guy that I'm in contact with. He's a CEO of a company in Poland. The name of the company is called PLUS Ops, the word plus and then ops. You can find at plusops.com. His name is Ron Farkas, he's a 14 year Air Force veteran. Married a local Polish girl. He's in the same boat as I am. Right? I married a local Austrian girl. When the woman says you'll live in our country, you live there. But he started the company seven years ago and he's boots on the ground.

Colonel Fischer (24:39):
He's been to Lviv. He is intimately familiar with charity organizations. I'm in contact with him literally every day via WhatsApp. I'm starting to donate significant funds through him. I would recommend any company that's interested they reach out to him. I know his big challenge right now is logistic support. He's got a U.S. company right now that's got 44 pallets of water purification systems to get from the United States into Poland and into Ukraine, but he needs airplanes to move them. I don't think ships are going to work right now.

Ken Miller (25:18):
One last question. Obviously you recently retired from the Air Force, but you are now, in addition to doing some consulting work, you're also an author. You recently released a book. Could you tell us a little bit about it and the title?

Colonel Fischer (25:30):
Sure. Yeah. So I was going crazy with COVID sitting inside and if I didn't do something productive I was going to pull my hair out and I don't have a lot left. And so I decided to write a fiction book. I'd had the idea in my head for a while. It's about a former Navy SEAL [inaudible 00:25:44] to go to the medical school and he becomes a doctor, wants to do good things in the world and somehow he's the protagonist Jack Ryan that keeps getting sucked into bad situations like Tom Clancy. And in this one, he ends up getting sucked into working with mercenary group that he's unaware of until it's too late. And then he escapes and he's got to try and stop an assassination plot of a world leader.

Colonel Fischer (26:10):
The book sales, I'm grateful, they are exceptional on Amazon. My wife and I have broken even. I've written two more books. They're based on the same character. His name is Dr. Curt Nover. The second book, it leverages my knowledge and my love of electronic warfare. So you're going to hear about compass call in there. You're going to hear about laser weapon systems and that book comes out probably this summer or fall, and the name of that is called [Balk and Reprisal 00:26:37]. And then the third book, and that'll come out probably early next year. It's already written, it's at DOD for review right now. And that one's called Afghan Ghosts. Again, fiction thrillers, but all based on my career.

Colonel Fischer (26:52):
What I would say to the listeners out there is I have a little bit of breaking news for you. My wife and I are, again, are pleased with the sales. We've broken even with our first book and we are seeing the refugees from Ukraine flowing through and it breaks our heart every day in this land. So we have decided that all, at least for the next month and perhaps even longer, every a hundred percent of all my royalties from the sale of Live Range are going to go to Ukrainian relief effort. I'll leverage PLUS Ops with Ron Farkas. What's great about Ron, by the way, that I failed to mention earlier is, since he's there, not only can he tell us which ones are the legitimate ones, because nobody wants to see their money go to some kind of scam artist in this kind of situation, that's just really heartbreaking. But he also knows which ones truly need the money most.

Colonel Fischer (27:46):
They're charity organizations, budgets fluctuate extremely fast. They're fat one day and then they get hit with 50 refugees and they're screaming for money again. So on a fairly realtime basis, Ron and his team out there, boots on the ground, can really advocate and direct for that. And like I said, if there're big donations coming from some of our larger crows and AOC organization, which we love, right? Because without them we wouldn't be here, I know that. If they want to get involved, Ron's kind of the guy. But yeah, all of our money is going there. So if you buy the book, if you buy them for gifts, whatever my royalty is, it's going to Ukraine.

Ken Miller (28:23):
That's great and very generous. And so it's always difficult to know how best you can contribute to the calls, especially given all the challenges of knowing which organizations are on the up and up and this is a good way of kind of being assured that your contributions and your support are going to the right people. So thank you for that. Thank you, Jeffrey, for joining me on From the Crows' Nest. I appreciate you taking time out and look forward to having you back again to have a follow up discussion on this topic, hopefully in the near future.

Colonel Fischer (28:53):
Sounds good. I hope I get some of my predictions right this time, because I think there's a lot of us that are happy we didn't bet in Vegas before the beginning of this war because we'd have lost a lot of money.

Ken Miller (29:01):
Exactly. And I have a feeling that five, six weeks from now we're going to be looking back [inaudible 00:29:06] conventional wisdom has proven worthless. But thank you for joining me here From the Crows' Nest.

Colonel Fischer (29:15):
Absolutely, Ken. You have a great day. Take care.

Ken Miller (29:19):
That will conclude this episode From the Crows' Nest. I'd like to thank my guest, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Jeffrey Fischer for joining me. I'd also like to mention that we are currently conducting a listener survey that you can find wherever you download your podcast or on AOCs website at crows.org. On our website you can also find more information on our sister podcast, The History of Crows, where we chronicle the history of electromagnetic spectrum operations from the earliest inventors to the latest operations. Thank you for listening.