From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller (00:00:10):
Welcome to this special episode of 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.

Ken Miller (00:00:22):
For this episode, I'm here live at AOC's Cyber Electromagnetic Activities, or SEMA, 2021 conference at Belcamp, Maryland, just outside of Aberdeen Proving Ground. It's our first in-person conference in over a year, so it's great to be back in a somewhat normal conference environment. We have a great episode today as I sit down with several of our speakers and industry partners throughout the conference, including Lieutenant General Stephen Fogarty, Brigadier General Rob Collins, and others.

Ken Miller (00:00:48):
Before we begin, I'd like to thank our episode sponsor Pentek. Pentek provides cutting edge interoperable, deployable board and system level solutions for the most demanding high-performance requirements. Pentek arms the defense community with the electronic tools they need for mission readiness and success. Learn more at pentek.com/go/ew.

Ken Miller (00:01:12):
So to begin this episode, I am here with AOC President, Glenn "Powder" Carlson. It's great to have you Powder. Appreciate you being on from the Crow's Nest for your first time here. So I appreciate your time.

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:01:23):
Yeah. Great to be here, Ken. I appreciate the invite and I'm excited to do the podcast.

Ken Miller (00:01:29):
Excellent. So you kicked off our SEMA conference this morning. What was your main message to the audience about the role that AOC is playing in cooperation with the Army in pursuit of SEMA?

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:01:39):
Main message is in line with what our strategy is, obviously to advocate, educate and support, working with the chapters, chapters working with each other, working with the membership and focusing in on the theme of SEMA about MDO 2030 and beyond. The multi-dimension operations is key to any of the future work in EMSO. And we see that even as the terminology changing from multi-dimensional to all domains, and that's really important for us as we move forward. And we're anxious to see, anxious to hear the speakers here, talking about what they're doing to move forward with them. So with not just SEMA, but with them so overarching to include electronic warfare in information operations.

Ken Miller (00:02:31):
This is our first in-person conference of the year. We're slowly getting back to normal, but it's not the first event that we've done as AOC. And we've been actually busy offering a number of different virtual events over the year. And we had an AOC discussions. We just wrapped up a Virtual Summit, Program Manager Briefing Series. And so some of the speakers here today, we have also addressed this previously, but we've also heard from other US military leaders and NATO leaders. What are some of the common messages and themes that you're hearing over the first six months of this year?

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:03:02):
Hearing the need to get back to some sort of normal, but also hearing about that EMSO and the spectrum is critical to any of the operations. We see an awful lot that's going on around the globe with our allied partners and coalition partners in conflicts that are actually going on and how important the spectrum actually is. And then when you have events like a couple of weeks ago with the colonial pipeline and the ransomware and cyber issues and challenges, it brings it to the forefront that EMSO is critical to not just the military, but also even the civilian in the commercial side.

Ken Miller (00:03:49):
So after SEMA, our next major event is going to be our signature Annual Convention and Symposium in November. And the theme, as you alluded to earlier, is all domain operations integrating effects across the spectrum. So we will have a more in-depth conversation on this concept of JADC2 at the convention. What are some of the top priorities for our military forces moving forward, especially coming out of SEMA that we need to look at, as the AOC over the next few months?

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:04:19):
I think watching what the military and what even the government is and how the DOD budget plays out, where is EMSO in that and what are those priorities, and seeing how the services continue to work together, seeing what new or next-generation systems are out there and being developed and how they are being crossed between the services. I also think we want to be taking a look closer at that commercial civilian side, because as we see, that is being impacted as well. And we know that spectrum is still being... There's areas that are going to be sold off. What is going to happen with 6G? We've seen what has happened with 5G. So what's going to happen when 6G comes out? There's a lot of challenges there and what are we building into systems? Electromagnetic protect is becoming more to the forefront as we see systems being exploited. So how do we protect them? And that goes for anything on the Net, whether it's military, civilian commercial, there are vulnerabilities out there.

Ken Miller (00:05:34):
So there are listeners to the podcast out there who are not members of the AOC, and they may be exploring a little bit more about their profession or how their profession touches EMS. So what do you want people listening to the show today to know about the AOC and our mission and how we can help them professionally?

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:05:53):
That the AOC, one is involved in stem and growing young engineers and new engineers. They're the future. The spectrum is going to be around and the AOC will continue to be a major part of that for discussions, advocation. And what we want, what we need is new ideas, new innovations, how can we further technologies, how can we further involvement across, again, academia, industry, government, DOD? And it's global and it's not just here, it's global. And so how do we do this globally? Because we've seen how connected the globe is, especially with the pandemic, doing all these virtual summits. I kicked off AOC Europe a week ago, which was great, being able to be at my location in New Hampshire, but being able to work with the folks in Great Britain.

Ken Miller (00:06:58):
Stay connected with the world a little bit through our international membership. Absolutely. Well, thank you Powder for joining me and I'll let you get back to the conference and look forward to talking with you throughout the week. All right. Bye.

Glenn "Powder" Carlson (00:07:09):
Okay. Thanks again. Appreciate it.

Ken Miller (00:07:15):
I'm very pleased to be here with Lieutenant General Stephen Fogarty. He's the Commanding General of Army Cyber Command. Welcome, General Fogarty.

General Fogarty (00:07:22):
Ken, thank you for the invitation to share some thoughts this afternoon.

Ken Miller (00:07:26):
So you just completed your keynote address at our SEMA conference here this morning. What was your walkaway message to the audience?

General Fogarty (00:07:32):
I think the key message was we need to achieve information advantage to enable supported commanders to achieve decision dominance. And the evolution of 21st century warfare mandates the need for speed. And we have to quickly achieve operational outcomes, account for the human atrial war, and implement innovative technologies that serve as force multipliers and combined arms and multi-domain operations. But in order to achieve information advantage and decision dominance, we must be able to see ourselves, see our adversaries and see relevant actors or activities quicker and better than our adversaries. The model that our cyber uses is SUDAA, which is sense, understand, decide, act, and assess. And that's really our organizing principle behind the capabilities that we provide to the Army and to the joint force.

Ken Miller (00:08:32):
Can you update us on the Army's efforts to converge a signals intelligence cyber in EW. And do you anticipate in eventual full convergence of the technology and manpower, resources and all that, or do you expect there to still be some space between these important capabilities that we're bringing to the force?

General Fogarty (00:08:49):
So currently Army cyber is experimenting with the best ways to effectively achieve information advantage and decision dominance, the supported land commanders scheme to maneuver, and that's dependent on SIG and cyber in electronic warfare convergence. So the short answer is I absolutely believe that those three must converge. Now they may have different authorities, different organizations, different capabilities that will actually generate the information and the data, but the real convergence is how we pull all of this together.

General Fogarty (00:09:33):
Now this summer we're going to be experimenting with enabling US Army Pacific, First Corps and the Multi-Domain Task Force out in the Pacific with capabilities that will enable them to achieve information advantage and decision dominance. And we're going to provide a full range of capabilities. And this is the first time that they'll get really the full menu that army cyber can provide. And ultimately, independent of these individual capabilities is going to be our ability to converge the sensors, the information, the data, so that the commanders at those three echelons actually can sense, understand, decide, act, and assess faster and more effectively than the competition or their adversaries in the theater.

Ken Miller (00:10:31):
Now you mentioned that this is the first time that you're going to be contributing in this way. And I think this is good to show how the Army is progressing. And you've been speaking to AOC conferences now for a little bit. And one of your recurring themes is how army cyber command is managing this pivot for an information advantage and decision dominance. And I think that this kind of exercise, it shows the progress in that area, and it not only governs how we fight, but also the capabilities that we have to use to fight. And this is no easy task. What are some of the major challenges that the Army must address to ensure convergence, but also compatibility across the force? There's a lot of different systems at play for obviously the joint force and large sums of data. So what are some of the challenges and what does this mean in terms of joint war fighting that you're going to experience with this exercise over the summer?

General Fogarty (00:11:26):
So I think first of all, there are two categories of challenges. There's probably many more, but there's two that I normally try to bend as I'm organizing myself. One is technical. The second is cultural. And I think for the most part, the technical challenges, although they're real will overcome all of those. Sometimes it just takes time, it takes repetition, it takes compromise by all of the multiple players because I think that's very important to stay is that army cyber is just one player in this information advantage space. So it runs the gamut from public affairs, psychological operations, military information, support operations, intelligence, signal, efforts that our partners are doing throughout the depth of the [inaudible 00:12:19]. In some cases with systems that were not designed to be compatible with each other. And so I think that's one of the things we're going to have the opportunity to experiment with and learn.

General Fogarty (00:12:33):
The second piece is actually cultural and I describe them as tribes. We have the PSYOPs regiment, the Signal regiment, the Intel Corps, the Cyber Corps, a bunch of other players across multiple functional areas, different services. And so sometimes those challenges can actually be more daunting. But I think what has occurred over the last few years as we come together, for instance, in Afghanistan, with some of our partners, that's been a great place for us to figure some of this out. And I think as we look toward the Pacific this summer, it's a different scenario. There are different players and it's really going to give us a chance to figure out how we make our systems more compatible, how we'll be able to unify our platforms, what the architectures and the data flow requirements are going to be. How we protect, defend all of that is going to be very, very important.

General Fogarty (00:13:44):
All of this depends upon network that is secure, it's resilient, and it actually can reach across the multiple parts of this problem. So everything from the electromagnetic spectrum to very conventional IT networks, TRUST Rail, to satellite, to base. So as you can imagine, there's been a lot of warning this summer, and we consider this as part of our campaign of learning on how to bring these capabilities down to the war fighters at echelon.

Ken Miller (00:14:22):
After summer, looking onto the horizon for the next one to two years or so, what is one development across any aspect of what we call DOTMLPF, Doctrine, Organization, Training and so forth? What is one development that is especially exciting to you and that you believe will be kind of the linchpin to successful Army SEMA operations moving forward.

General Fogarty (00:14:43):
I'm going to give you a capability. It's Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool, and that's something that the Army has been working on for several years now. And it was this basic recognition that if you look at who the principal players in the electromagnetic spectrum were from at least an army perspective, it was the Signal regiment who had responsibilities for managing the spectrum and then using the spectrum to enable command and control, ISR, fires, logistics, and med evac, all those things that information in each army requires. So, been a major player and then there's Intel Corps who does intelligence blockchain in the spectrum. And then we had the EW team who had a principle responsibility for electronic protect, electronic attack. And then the Cyber Corps was also a major player. We became the fourth element in this because of our use of the spectrum to conduct operations. I think you could add the space team into there also.

General Fogarty (00:15:54):
But the bottom line is all those who are using the spectrum, we had built stovepipes over many years. Our planning tools for spectrum were different than the collection management tools that the G2 uses to separate capabilities that the Electronic Warfare team use. And so EWPMT really gives us the potential to unify all those disparate threads into a capability that allows all those players to understand what each other is doing in the spectrum, and then predict where there may be conflict. So if we're dependent upon a key read from an adversary that the Intel team is collecting on, I don't want to jam that necessarily, or in a certain period, I may not want to jam it. Likewise, in the part of the spectrum that friendly forces are operating in, I can be very discriminate about employing electronic attack capabilities.

General Fogarty (00:17:01):
So this capability will be the principal tool for the SEMA cells that the Army is fielding to the Brigade Combat Team, the division and the corps level. And then it will link into the platforms that the Intel Corps and the Cyber Corps, the Electronic Warfare arm of the Cyber Corps are going to be using it, brigade, division and corps level. So I'm watching that very carefully to make sure that it can actually do what I described. And the good news is we've got a great team that we're working with that can make required changes as we identify shortfalls or exploit opportunities that we discover.

Ken Miller (00:17:47):
Great. One last question. You mentioned adversaries. Russia and China are identified as really primary peer competitors, and each has made significant strides in their ability to gain an advantage in the information dimension. But as we've discussed on other episodes previously from the Crow's Nest here is they each provide very different capabilities, different vulnerabilities, different opportunities in this dimension. And as we try to prepare to compete with them, we not only have to look at what we need to do to obviate their capabilities, but we also have to look to how to impose cost and risk in their decision-making processes. So it's not just about destruction, it's more nuanced than that. So a lot of that's going to have to fall on the Army and other services to how to impose cost and risk. That is a little bit harder to measure. So how is the Army positioning itself to compete with our adversaries in the information environment with regards to these types of capabilities? And then how is Army Cyber Command pursuing the capabilities specifically to impose cost and risk on the adversary?

General Fogarty (00:18:55):
That's actually a great question. If you think about the, as I started my remarks this morning at the conference, what I discussed was what Phil Karber really discovered through personal reconnaissance over in the Ukraine. And it's this idea that we have to watch our adversaries, observe how they operate in both the information dimension and the cyber domain, how they use their capabilities to support a combined arms maneuver. And do the same thing for the PRC, DPRK, Iran. Any of our adversaries are our competitors. And start with this foundation of knowledge and create understanding so that we understand the threat and then we can apply appropriate capabilities against that threat.

General Fogarty (00:19:57):
So that's actually what we've done starting back in 2014, as Dr. Karber started making his reports. A significant influence on the work we were doing at that time at the Cyber Center of Excellence. And it actually gave us the argument that we needed to not only retain the electronic warfare capabilities, but up gun them. And so, a couple of decisions were made. One is to fold the EW functional capability into the cyber branch. The second was to look at how we take all of our capabilities right down the stove pipes between, which I had just discussed between the Intel Corps, the Signal Corps, and the EW and cyber team, and actually be able to fully converge those capabilities. And then there was the equipping portion of this. So there's some exciting developments as we're looking at building a [inaudible 00:21:04] BCT as rapidly as possible.

General Fogarty (00:21:08):
So I think where we're at right now is the force is threat informed. We understand the importance of convergence to allow us to sense, understand, decide, act, and assess faster and more effectively than the adversary. And then we will see fielding capabilities that are going to allow us to compete with the adversary. And if we have to transition to conflict that they'll be able to do what is required. But I think this is an exciting time to be working this problem set. We do it in conjunction with our principle partners from USASOC. We've learned tremendously from them, the PSYOPs regiment, and 1st Special Forces Command has been a tremendous partner for us. Our work with the Intelligence Center of Excellence and the Intel Corps and obviously the work we do day-to-day with the Cyber Center of Excellence, which has the Signal regiment and the Intel Corps. And between the doctrine, the technical capabilities, and then the ability to actually get out and operate together, I think we're positioning ourselves well for a current threat and then the threat as we forecast into the future.

Ken Miller (00:22:41):
Excellent. And it's very exciting to see the progress that the Army is making on this front. That will do it. I greatly appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join me here on From the Crow's Nest, General Fogarty. You had a tremendous presentation this morning. Really thank you for all the support you provide at the AOC. And we look forward to having you at a SEMA conference again in the near future.

General Fogarty (00:23:05):
Absolutely, Ken. Thank you very much.

Ken Miller (00:23:06):
Thank you.

Ken Miller (00:23:11):
I'm here with a Brigadier General Rob Collins, Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, or C3T. Welcome, General Collins. Great to have you on From the Crow's Nest here at SEMA.

General Collins (00:23:24):
Great to be here on this beautiful day, overlooking the waterfront.

Ken Miller (00:23:28):
Yes. We are back in person for the first time in over a year. It's been a great experience so far. So you are PO of C3T and your office develops, acquires, fields and supports the Army tactical network. What was your message here today to the audience at SEMA?

General Collins (00:23:45):
So I think one of the things that our message was, as we start to look to the future battlefield, it's going to be one where it's a game of speed. And I'll tell you, as you look historically back on battles, there's normally been a parody of capability about he who is able to understand, be able to act quicker. Right after World War II, there was a pilot that discussed the OODA loop, if you will, the observe, orient, decide, and act. And so we believe there's going to be a tremendous competitive advantage of those that can be able to understand, be able to process, be able to disseminate and be able to act.

General Collins (00:24:27):
And so really one of my messages today was our ability to contribute from an Army perspective into what we call that JADC2 construct to be able to get after that speed, that range, that convergence so we can get into that decision dominance, that decision cycle of being inside that decision loop. And so there's a couple areas that we need to focus in on, whether it be networking, whether it be the convergence of how people visualize the battle space, how we're interoperable. I mean, one of our strengths is our ability to operate as a joint force and a coalition force. And then certainly we have to do so in a very survivable fashion, but to be able to collectively-

General Collins (00:25:02):
... in a very survivable fashion, but to be able to collectively do all that is going to require a degree in heavy reliance on data. And certainly many would say that data is the oil of the 21st century, so he or she who controls that can be able to ingest that understand that is really going to have an edge on the future battlespace.

Ken Miller (00:25:22):
And the amount of data that is out there in the battlespace right now is just growing exponentially and it's hard to keep up with that and process that at speeds that you need to for the command.

General Collins (00:25:32):
Absolutely, and so there is a whole host of data out there from sensor data, full motion video to three-letter agencies collecting data, geospatial data, cyber domains bringing in a tremendous amount of data, so we have to be able to harvest all that, synthesize that, do so at speed and then be able to distribute that. And so hence the importance and the critical linkage of the network, and that's really one the Army's main modernization focuses.

Ken Miller (00:26:01):
And we're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second, but just for those who might not be familiar with your office, you have a huge office, you oversee about 45 different programs, and we can't cover them all here today, but what are a few of the programs that you're most excited about that tap into this ability to collect and analyze and distribute the data so quickly?

General Collins (00:26:22):
Yeah, thanks. And so for folks who don't necessarily understand what a PEO is, there's about 12 PEOs in the Army. I recently just spent time with the Intel and Electronic Warfare Organization, and now I'm moved over here to Communications and Mission Command, and so I do believe I bring a unique perspective of kind of understanding some of the landscape. But I'll tell you, as I mentioned, for me, it starts and ends with making sure that we're focused to enable the Army's contribution of JADC2. So a couple programs we're probably really focused in on is pushing capability down to the lowest tactical edge. We just completed a leader radio and a man packable radio that's being able to distribute new mobile networking wave forms, new satellite wave forms. So that's probably one big program on the convergence front, our command post computing environment, where we're starting to establish the foundation of a data fabric and collapsing applications on top of that from intel fires logistics.

General Collins (00:27:19):
And then I'd also tell you from a survivability perspective, our command post, we have a CPI2 program, it's a command post program. Now after 20 years of small-scale contingency operations, we have to get back to command posts that are expeditionary, mobile and survivable too. And so we've got a number of experiments pilots that are ongoing, not only with brigades, but divisions, how we do that. So that's probably a couple of our key focuses.

General Collins (00:27:45):
Really the last foundational focus I would tell you too, is that data fabric. And so we've got a concept that's been initiated Rainmaker. And so Rainmaker, I think in our SMT community provides the blueprint, and I kind of differentiate sometimes big R Rainmaker, which is that blueprint, and then little R Rainmaker, which are the material contributions that may make that up. And that's really where I'm counting on industry to come in, because there are a lot of innovative, novel, new data fabric elements across the industry, whether it be finance, whether it be medical, whether it be banking insurance. I mean, everyone has some of the similar things they're trying to do is harvest lots of data, keep it cyber hardened and allow folks to be able to action off of it.

Ken Miller (00:28:29):
Now when we're talking about network modernization, a large part of the CEMA vision and effort is this need for the Army to pivot and basically align a lot of your modernization efforts to the JADC2 environment, which you talked about. So could you talk a little bit about how the Army is aligning the network modernization efforts for JADC2?

General Collins (00:28:50):
Yeah. I mean, one of the things I want to continue to underscore is this is really a game of speed, and the Army is really... One of the things we're focused in on is really providing the ground network within the domain of the JADC2. And so as we continue to focus not only on speed, but also talking about the range, the convergence and really trying to get after the decision dominance, I would tell you, we have looked at the JADC2 construct and develop what we call four lines of effort or swim lanes that we're focused in on, swim lane number one, being our unified network, and those are things that, whether it be ground aerial space, where we put edge compute forward, those are all those inherent things that you think of, of a network to be able to move data.

General Collins (00:29:37):
The second swim lane is really that, that convergence, the common operating environment, if you will. And that's where we're trying to set the foundation of a data fabric on a common infrastructure and then you can host applications which really serve as the single pane of glass from which users can be able to view, whether it be the ground domain, whether it be fires domain, intelligence domain, and really the new cyber domain.

General Collins (00:30:02):
The third swim lane is we certainly know that some of the things that make us great as a nation, one is our decentralized ability to operate, but the other is fighting with joint coalition partners, so the third swim lane is interoperability. And so some of the areas that we're focusing on is, how do we improve the ability to exchange data, have transport connectivity with our coalition partners and joint partners?

General Collins (00:30:23):
And then finally the fourth domain being survivability. We certainly know that you have got to be cautious as you communicate on the future battlefield to lower your probability of intercept, lower your probability to detect, and then ultimately lower your probability to be geo located, to be targeted. So what I'd say is we've organized against these four swim lanes, and then we've also adopted what we would call an incremental, iterative fielding strategy across two year cycles. We call those capability sets. In fact, we're roughly about halfway through fielding our Capability Set 21, really focused on pushing expeditionary and intuitive capability down to the lowest edge for our tactical units, CAPSET 23. And we'll follow that on continuous two-year cycles, and all really bounded by experimentation to help inform along the way.

Ken Miller (00:31:10):
So I want to go back to the capability set. So you mentioned 21, so you're fielding that and you're doing some experimentation for what you call combined JADC2. So could you go into a little bit more detail about how does the Army stand with development of the capability set for 23?

General Collins (00:31:25):
Great question, and it's a very timely question because we just finished up a major milestone in the Capability Set 23 initiative. The first thing that I would tell you is Capability Set 23 builds upon capabilities that we've already provided in Capability Set 21, as I talked about expeditionary intuitive. And then really with Capability Set 23 we're adding in increased capacity, we're adding in some resiliency and we're really focused in on convergence.

General Collins (00:31:52):
One of the things I would say too is, yes, we are moving quickly, but we're also doing so with a sense of deliberate process. And so one of the things I would say on caps, each cycle we started out with a series of design goals, then the design goal is turned into decomposed requirements. And then for Capability Set 23 specific, when we come into a preliminary design, architecture, it allows us to then go out, experiment. Some things work, some things may not necessarily work. There may be things that we didn't even realize that we could take opportunity of and so we're able to do that. We then finalize with a critical design review, and then we head out from a fielding perspective.

General Collins (00:32:31):
Along the way in CAPSET 23, let me just hit two additional points, we're continually looking at requirements. Do we have concepts for employment accurate? Do we have mature technology? And then at the end of the day, I think as all of our viewers are probably aware of, we have to be fiscally aware of what's going on from an affordability perspective. Some of the specific things in CAPSET 23, I would tell you, we're looking at commercial SATCOM, mid earth orbit is probably a big area. I've already talked about convergence, data fabric is a big area we're going to roll out. We're looking at collapsing some additional domains, cyber situational understanding being one of them. And then from an interoperability perspective, we're really looking at some coalition aspects.

General Collins (00:33:10):
So CAPSET 23 and the preliminary design, we've got another year to go out and experiment, and then we'll wrap it up and we'll be ready to focus in. And the last thing too is, CAPSET 21 was focused on infantry units, CAPSET 23 more on strikers. And then when we get to CAPSET 25, looking at armor brigade combat teams.

Ken Miller (00:33:26):
Now when you're going through these capability sets and you're doing experimentation, you're holding events, are you realigning some of the parameters for the capability sets along the way, so that when you get to 25, it might look different than you originally thought back here in...

General Collins (00:33:41):
Absolutely. And so one of the things, I'll just take a minute, inherently, when we designed the CAPSET initiatives, it was designed to be an iterative process. You've probably heard a lot about DevOps and DevSecOps, and one of the things I would tell you is the big idea here is really to link the user community with the developers. And so in the previous environment you would develop this very lengthy, several hundred page requirement document, put it on the conveyor belt, and it would spit out a widget and then we'd see the widget, then we'd provide it to the unit and they'd say, "Well, that may not necessarily be what I need." So collapse those in parallel. And then adding the security, how do we take into account cyber security, interoperability checks, the test community, so we can do things at speed, at the speed of need faster. And so I think within the CAPSET strategy we have embraced DevOps, soldier touchpoints, what I would call a soldier centric design, and really the beauty of Project Convergence, unlike how we used to do things previously, we were able to do experimentation early. So as I talked about, are technologies mature? Do we have concepts for employment? That allows us very early before we finalize the requirements and programs of record. And if you really study about success or challenges with programs, it really starts back in that early period to understand, how mature are technologies and do we have the right requirements in place?

Ken Miller (00:35:06):
I wanted to kind of go back to the concept of speed of need. In the JADC2, and generally EMS superiority, generally speaking, it is a joint requirement. So much about speed has to regress in how you are interfaced and integrated with the other services. So how is the Army working with the Air Force and Navy and Marine Corps and all the other components for this joint fight in a way to keep that speed, give you the speed that you need to move forward?

General Collins (00:35:37):
Yeah, it's a great question. In fact, back early in the fall, it had been quite some time where we had a very senior level Army/Air Force talks between our chief and the Air Force chief, and really codified an agreement to do a number of things collectively with the Air Force. We have since expanded that, in fact, not too long ago, right here at Aberdeen Proving Ground, which I jokingly say is a vacation destination, people just don't quite realize it yet. We were able to host Admiral Gilday, we were able to host General Brown and General McConville, our service chiefs down.

General Collins (00:36:13):
And really, I think a number of things that we agreed to work together. I mean, first being experimentation, and I think one was not necessarily doing an episodic fashion where we set up, we conduct event, we tear down and then in a couple months we continue to repeat the cycle, we want to set up a persistent lab environment. So even right here in Aberdeen, we have a integration lab that allows us 24/7, 365 to do experimentation.

General Collins (00:36:39):
I think some of the other areas too is increased a dialogue between both the requirements and even the material communities. In fact, I've been out to see a Rear Admiral Smalls out at Project Overmatch, we've been out to the Air Force and the ABMS On-Ramps with the Marine Corps. I do with General [Desaigen 00:36:57], we do a lot of continuous dialogue to see where are there opportunities for us to be able to share technology interest, to tackle things together. And then I think in general, that is helping us to take on and work with industry in a much more collaborative fashion.

General Collins (00:37:13):
I'll tell you finally, and probably most importantly is the data. In fact, the J6 is really a scene that is probably the most vital area for focus. We have got to come to some semblance of a data fabric, not necessarily being common, because that denotes one for all, but a federated type of a data approach where if we have common things in interest, position, location type information, red threat information, fires types information, we need to be able to share some common themes. Obviously, from an Army perspective, we operate in a unique scale. We have a unique disconnected, intermittent limited bandwidth environment, so that's kind of my role to make sure that I represent some of those equities. But I think experimentation, the material concepts sharing and I think data is probably our three big focus areas to work more collaboratively as a joint force.

Ken Miller (00:38:04):
Well thank you for joining me, great message here at CMS. I greatly appreciate your time and look forward to working with you in the future.

General Collins (00:38:12):
Great, thank you very much.

Ken Miller (00:38:13):
Thank you.

General Collins (00:38:13):
All right, take care.

Ken Miller (00:38:18):
One of the features of AoC Conferences is the interaction that we have with our industry partners. And I am pleased to be here with one of our platinum partners, Raytheon Intelligence & Space, and specifically Mr. Ernie Winston [inaudible 00:38:32]. He is the senior manager at Raytheon, and we are here to talk about an important capability that Raytheon has taken a lead on, the EWPMT, which is Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool. So Ernie, great to have you on the show with us and appreciate you stopping by.

Ernie Winston (00:38:46):
Thanks, appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Ken Miller (00:38:47):
So let's get into the EWPMT system, because we've heard this come up a number of times here during the conference. What is it and what does it do?

Ernie Winston (00:38:55):
It's a program record for the Army, and the easiest way to describe it is a way to graphically depict what is happening in the EMS. A soldier or a decision-maker can look at a computer screen and see what is being admitted, both friendly and "enemy" emitters that are out there. We have a pretty robust modeling and simulation, in fact it started out as a modeling and simulation and that's what we came here to talk about, to present here at CEMA. It is a predictive tool that will depict graphically what is going to happen, or it's integrated with multiple sensors and can show what is happening.

Ken Miller (00:39:32):
And so one of the things that it can do is kind of help to kind of break down some of the stove pipes, because the spectrum kind of touches everything that the Army's doing out in the field. The EWPMT, that kind of helps create a clear, more comprehensive picture of the battlespace for the commander?

Ernie Winston (00:39:49):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And it displays it graphically, I know I'm a visual learner and it's easier for me to see pictures of things. If you have a unit that's moving to a point on the battlespace, from an EMS perspective, you will be able to tell or predict if you'll have communications back to upper echelon, you'll be able to know if he's going to be jammed, if there's line of sight issues without jamming, or if you have another jammer, a friendly jammer in another location, if that is going to be impacted as well, an EMS fratricide, if you will.

Ken Miller (00:40:21):
And then it's really geared to... You talked about sending the picture up echelon as well as down to the guest brigade level, it's meant for across the force for the Army.

Ernie Winston (00:40:33):
Correct, multiple levels, brigade division. It can be run on something as simple as a laptop for our individual user, and then it can also be run on a server to take all the inputs in as you get higher headquarters.

Ken Miller (00:40:48):
Now this program has been in development or has evolved over the last couple of years, could you talk about that process and where it's come from over the last couple years and where it's going and moving forward?

Ernie Winston (00:40:59):
So it did start as a modeling simulation tool and a planning tool. It started as, what will happen if I deploy over here? How will the atmospherics, how will the terrain impact me? Will I be able to communicate? And then as different capability drops, as we call them, CD2, CD3 came on as an added capability, and we're eventually getting to a point where we want to integrate multiple sensors and multiple effectors as well, to be able to not just predict what will happen, but in the future we want to see what is happening live, and then send a command to an effector to start jamming or to move or send to a unit to move to a cleaner location.

Ken Miller (00:41:42):
So what comes next for EWPMT then? Could this be used by the other services?

Ernie Winston (00:41:48):
Absolutely. Because it's already a program of record with the Army, it is a pretty natural fit to move into the joint force, Air Force and Navy would have multiple applications that they could think of. Just off the top of my head, thinking about the Navy wanting to operate in EMCON, to be able to go in to a contested environment. They can say that everything's turned off, but these systems are so complicated that maybe somebody missed a switch somewhere. If we could tie in a spectrum analyzer, it would create a graphical depiction for that ship or for that group of ships to see that they, yes, actually are EMCON, or somebody's actually emitting something. And they can make a real-time decision too, of what that is, they can see what it is to communicate to shut that off or figure out if there's a malfunction.

Ken Miller (00:42:33):
Important program that Raytheon is involved in is the next generation jammer, could you go in a little bit of detail about where that program stands?

Ernie Winston (00:42:41):
Yep, we are approaching milestone C, this year. There should be an approval for a low rate initial production. And we have done several test flights. We've done power generation flights. Flown it on the Growler. Integration is growing well, and we are gearing up for production of it. It's been a long program, I've been with... The next generation jammer program, I started in 2015. So seeing it from a development, a PowerPoint presentation and multiple engineering drawings to something actually flying is pretty neat and getting ready for production is kind of fun to watch.

Ken Miller (00:43:16):
Great. Well, thank you Ernie. I appreciate you taking time to be with me here today and I look forward to working with Raytheon in the future.

Ernie Winston (00:43:22):
Thank you very much, it was my pleasure.

Ken Miller (00:43:28):
So I'm here with Colonel Chad Bates Ph.D. He is special assistant to the Commanding General US Army Cyber Command, and he just spoke, gave a presentation on modeling and simulation framework for cyberspace electromagnetic activities. So welcome Colonel Bates, great to have you on From The Crow's Nest.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:43:47):
Hey, thanks Ken. I'm glad to be here.

Ken Miller (00:43:49):
So I want to get into your presentation. It's a very complicated topic, but I wanted to know what your main message was to the audience today, and then we'll get into some of the details.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:43:59):
Well, I think, as a lot of the keynote speakers like General Fogarty and General [Hershey 00:44:04] talked to us this morning, and they brought out the whole thing as we start looking at taking cyber and electronic warfare and what General Hershey says, and information assurance, that's complex. It's very complex. And if you really take a step back, especially with the Old Crows when you talked about electro magnetic or electronic warfare. That is a man-made environment. It is a cognitively difficult environment to wrap your brain around. So how are you going to prepare the fighting force to actually be successful multi-domain operations? One of the things is you have to create that environment. You have to have an environment where they can do a lot of reps, they can see what's right, what doesn't work, but at the end of the day, they can really start understanding the complexities that cyber EW and everything from the electronic EMS is going to bring into it.

Ken Miller (00:45:00):
You mentioned complexness, a term that we've used quite a bit in describing. We know it's a lot of users, a lot of data, could you kind of go in and talk about how all these entities in the battlefield, what are these entities that make this such a complex environment, and how are they interacting with each other?

Colonel Chad Bates (00:45:17):
So when the Army and actually the Department of Defense creates a modeling and simulations, right now where we have on the books, it's a lot of force on force. And when you're talking about that, an entity, or in that an aggregate entity like a formation, how do they interact with each other? So now when we start bringing multi-domain operations into it, it's... Now we look at the entities as like, "Oh, hey, it's an individual." But now they have signatures off of them, they have personas. Now, actually looking at the human factor of it, now what are their loyalties, who they are, because at the end of the day when you do cyber or EW, we don't want to break a system, we want to influence human behavior. As General Fogarty was talking about, you want to get into the decisions. We want them to act a certain way, so you have to take that whole package into it.

Ken Miller (00:46:10):
In modeling and simulation how do you go about introducing new variables and some of these new entities? How do you build that in progression?

Colonel Chad Bates (00:46:19):
At the end of the day when we have a training exercise, what are the training objectives? And you really go from there, because unfortunately right now, what we currently have are modeling and simulation programs we have out there, they're built with 1990's technology. So there's very limited, it's very scripted. And right now what we're doing is to actually able to execute these kind of things we have to wrap different capabilities around them. And the synthetic training environment that they're building for the future, they're going to try to address some of that, but right now it is a breaking point and it's a balancing act to have to say, "This is how much I can add to it because the system has a limited processing, power bandwidth and all that." And then what do you do on the wraparound? We actually do an exercise that is interaction between the training audience and also the instructors.

Ken Miller (00:47:14):
Could you go into it a little bit more detail? In your presentation you discussed the modeling and simulation framework components that make up this effort.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:47:23):
First of all, when you start breaking it down, it's a communication part, because at the end of the day with this modeling simulation framework is we want to provide a capability to the user, to the war fighter that they can easily understand moving forward. So there's an ontology, which is really breaking down an action into its components, because when you do modeling simulation, how is the end user going to understand it? But also, how does the engineer actually put it together so you can actually run it.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:47:51):
And then there's the governance piece, which is okay, who's putting this together, who's driving this forward? Like right now I'm leading the governance effort, and one of the aspects of it is communicating and addressing it to a larger audience like here at CEMA 2021. And then on the parts of it is what is the data exchange models, the components of it, how do you actually put it together and framework? And at the end of the day is with mission threads and everything else moving forward on that one.

Ken Miller (00:48:23):
So what are some of the major activities that you're involved in with this new framework that you're working on?

Colonel Chad Bates (00:48:29):
Right now is talking to a war fighter, and working on these mission threads and these ontologies. It's like, okay, what effects do you want to be able to replicate? And how do you communicate that to the commanders and staff that working with? So, well, what do you want, how do we get that? So we start building these ontologies, these mission threads, and then we go out as new capabilities and simulations are being developed by different Army organizations or joint organizations, we bring those into it. And then say, okay, now then how does this fit into that ontology, into that mission thread as we move forward on that one.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:49:08):
And then looking at really physical things like cyber and EW, but hey, information assurance and information ops and all that stuff that the different senior leaders and keynote speakers talked about this morning. How do we integrate those complexities into this overall framework as it evolves, as it grows and as it's governed?

Ken Miller (00:49:29):
Early in our podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with General Fogarty, and he was talking about the capability sets in 2021. And there's a number of priorities that the Army's pursuing. From a modeling and simulation standpoint, what are some of the gaps that you're trying to address in 2021, moving forward?

Colonel Chad Bates (00:49:49):
As I said, the synthetic training environment, that's 2025 and farther out. And what we're working at is what I have this coalition of willing participants is, what do we have now that we can start working after that cognitive? Because there's...

Colonel Chad Bates (00:50:03):
... That we can start working after that cognitive. Because there's three main things that we have a problem is when we start talking about simulations in the gaps themselves is one, the simulations that we currently have don't have any cyber capability readable capability. It has some, but it's not, doesn't meet their training requirements that are required and so we need it to, or they have a lot. Like a high fidelity model that in the testing environment, which you can't utilize in your model and simulation network. So how do we replicate the network? How do we replicate what the effect would be like on the network or on the different systems that we utilize? Because going back to what I originally said, this is a man-made environment. We have to rely on technology to actually sense it. So that reliance on that technology is a vulnerability for us. But also as a complexity of, you have to simulate the operating environment so you can actually stimulate the systems that we have.

Ken Miller (00:51:01):
We were talking earlier about the challenges of stovepipes that are present in pursuing jet-ski too. And these stovepipes exist across all the services. But can you share how the army through your modeling and simulation initiative is helping to break down these stovepipes across the surfaces?

Colonel Chad Bates (00:51:17):
That's a very good question because it's something that we work all the time trying to solve it. So I mean, it goes back to this cyber EW modeling decision work group that was stood up in 2017 by the Army Modeling and Simulation Office. And this is really a coalition of the willing. And over time I've had this, burning more different services and joint people in because at the end of the day, having this coalition of the willing, they say, Hey, did you know, the air force has this giant program that simulates GPS or, Hey, the Navy has this RF lab, which has replicates RF frequencies very well. And taking those and working with those people on this work group and more or less bringing new people on it, because now I'm sure after I talk today, more people are going to reach out and say, Hey, I want to be part of this work group and from different services and then to joint environment. And then that's working yet and bring it together.

Colonel Chad Bates (00:52:21):
But now it's at the end of the day is, and I go back when one of my slides is, cyber for cyber, which is really focusing on how do we train our internal force? And that's when you get into the high fidelity, that's for the cyber guys, how many riders, networks and details. EW, you're talking about power, frequency, atmospherics, and terrain. But then under cyber for others or SEMA for others. And that's how the effects are. Right now, their overall in the army, who's leading that? We're working on force, and that is still a growing type of environment because it hasn't really caught on that much. So it's still a very difficult topic to understand. It's intimidating and it's hard. You have the conversations with senior leaders before their eyes glass over because you're talking technical stuff.

Ken Miller (00:53:14):
Well, thank you Colonel Bates, for joining me for this special episode of, from the crow's nest. I appreciate your time and look forward to working with you in the future. At this time, we'll take a break to hear from our episode sponsor, PenTech.

Speaker 1 (00:53:29):
Setting the standard for digital signal processing solutions. PenTech supports the war fighter. With superior technology for radar software, radio, electronic warfare, signal intelligence, and other cyber electronic activity. PenTechs' mission is to provide the defense embedded community with leading edge, open architecture board and system level solutions. When real-time results and critical decision-making is a must. At PenTech we unlock the spectrum of innovation. PenTech empowers the war fighter and the defense program community to build systems that support cyber readiness. PenTechs' product solutions enable application success in communications, countermeasure activity surveillance, and helps the war fighter identify and locate friend from foe. By providing cutting edge interoperable, deployable board and system level solutions for the most demanding high performance requirements. PenTech arms the defense community with the electronic tools they need for mission readiness and success. PenTech the company that sets the standard for digital signal processing and unlocks the power of innovation. Learn more at www.pentech.com/go/ew.

Ken Miller (00:54:52):
I'm here with another one of our platinum industry sponsors, Leonardo DRS. And I'm sitting here with Mr. Tom Gorsuch, who is director of business development and strategic technology initiatives at Leonardo, out of their airborne and intelligence systems division. Welcome to from the crow's nest.

Tom (00:55:06):
Hi Ken. Great. Thanks to be here.

Ken Miller (00:55:08):
So you've been here all week, and I know you're heavily involved in a lot of the topics and discussion here at SEMA 2021. Can you tell us a little bit about the role that Leonardo DRS is playing and what are some of the issues that are important to the attendees here from your perspective?

Tom (00:55:25):
Right. We're very involved in the TLS set of programs and we've been involved from the very beginning with the CMOSS and SOSA alignment. And we develop a lot of the sensors that are critical to enabling of the vision here. And we're excited to stay involved and to understand what we're trying to do and to play our part.

Ken Miller (00:55:50):
And we talked a little bit about the CMOSS the suite of standards, and some of the opportunities and efforts on that front. And I noticed that at your booth, you were displaying a few, few specific programs. Can you go into some of what you had here to show the attendees.

Tom (00:56:09):
Right. What we're showing in our both here are CMOSS, SOSA aligned product suites. Probably most notably our Vesper, a product line, which is of transceivers and multichannel. Transceivers that are fully compliant and been developed over a series of years. And also what's not shown in our booth, but we do applications on top of those. So we have a full set of app applications, including very low swap, full applications for direction finding, electronic warfare and cyber activities. And those include, software applications, user interfaces, the antennas, the entire thing. A big part of what we've been working on are AI and machine learning capabilities that at the edge, at the tactical edge. And that's been talked about here in the conference a lot. So what lasts reliance on the communications? So we've made a lot of advancement in that regard.

Ken Miller (00:57:13):
And can you talk a little bit about how the Army's pursuit of their monetization plan that has been heavily focus on CMOSS open standards, as well as addressing some of the challenges of big data and processing that. How that has influenced your business areas in the past few years and moving forward.

Tom (00:57:35):
Right. Like I mentioned, we've been involved in the Vita standards from the very beginning and also from the CMOSS, SOSA standards. We've big proponent of that. It really helps us guide where we're putting our investment dollars because we understand architecturally where things are going. Yeah. So the products you see is laying out on the table there, they don't happen overnight. They're multiple years of investment to get to where we're at. And it's very significant in terms of the ability to keep up with the way electromagnetic activities going and wave forms and new wave forms coming out all the time. In order to be able to have a standard that people can build upon and then to replace a card when you need it for a new way form. That's critical to being able to keep up in today's RF environment.

Ken Miller (00:58:25):
All right. Well, thank you for joining me on [inaudible 00:58:26] I look forward to seeing you at a future AOC Shows.

Tom (00:58:29):
Thanks Ken. It's been a great show and thanks for having me.

Ken Miller (00:58:32):
Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. I'm here with Mr. David Tremper SCS. He is the director of EW and the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. Good morning, David.

David (00:58:45):
Good morning.

Ken Miller (00:58:46):
So you just provide an opening presentation here on day two at SEMA. And I know your time is short with us. So I wanted to dive right into what you wanted to share with the here this morning. Specifically, the emphasis areas that your office has focused on.

David (00:58:59):
Yeah. So I think as we're watching budgets start to level off, and in some cases decrease. One of the areas that we're paying specific attention to is what we call investment efficiency. So EW offers opportunities to leverage investments across the services because of the common challenges of the hardware, both in digital and analog. And so what we've been working with the services do is to start highlighting areas that one service may be ahead of the other services, but there's a need. And recognizing that service where they have invested in hardware say, digital or analog, where the software could potentially be leveraged across the other services to meet threshold or objective requirements. And in some cases, the other services are saying we would like to have that capability, but it's a long stretch. If we can connect, say a Navy investment to an army op objective requirement, then suddenly they have the capability to get that almost zero cost and development, more of just refined to the digital integration cost.

Ken Miller (00:59:53):
There's a lot of competing factors in the defense budget moving forward. We are still waiting for the formal FYI 2022 requests. So there's a lot of uncertainty moving forward. How has your office managing both the competing interests, but also looking, having a long-term perspective on the resources that you need to fund a development of programs?

David (01:00:12):
So one of the things that we have been focusing on is both where are their capability commonalities that would allow us to leverage investment. But also how do our EWEP challenges translate to operational issues? Right? And so one of the things we have seen is within the radio-frequency community or the EOIR community, where you have these scientists and engineers who can talk that because they've lived it for 25 years. Translating what they see as challenges to senior DOD leadership can be an issue. And partly because those senior leaders, they don't talk that language. And so what they need to understand is they need to understand what's the impact on kill ratios. What's the impact on attrition rates? What's the impact on operational plans? So what we've been attempting to do lately is bridge that gap between say a radars vulnerability, or an ES vulnerability and the operational impact, because it's when you translate it to the operational impact, the senior leaders start to understand the significance of it. And then you can start starting. You can see the budget impacts resulting from senior leadership awareness of those challenges.

Ken Miller (01:01:14):
You mentioned EP electronic protection. When we talk EMS superiority, or EMS dominance, we oftentimes focus really heavily on the EA side. They think maybe forget, or don't pay enough attention to electronic protect. We'd like to get your thoughts on investing in electronic protect. What does that mean? And how difficult is it to, to educate leaders across DOD and other stakeholders on the need for EP?

David (01:01:37):
So it's actually easy to educate leaders. The challenge is implementing any change on EP. And the reason is that the EW community is very aware of the EP vulnerabilities of radars and comms and PNT, because that's what we do. We attack those things, right? So then when we have to look at our own EP challenges, we look at it from the red force op force side, and say from an EW perspective, can I defeat my, our own radar PNT systems? And we can find those vulnerabilities. We can present those vulnerabilities to senior leadership and make senior leadership aware that we have a radar problem. We have a comms from PNT brown. What becomes challenging is then that the part of that, that then implements change on those radars, those comms and those PNT systems because those programs and those systems are not managed by the EW community.

David (01:02:22):
So despite the EDW community, understanding the challenge. EP is not a system. It's a feature, right? It's spectrum hopping or it's frequency hopping, or spread spectrum that a radio does, or a radar does to survive in a contested or congested environment. The EW community has no say on how that is done in a radar or a comms or a PNT system. So we can present the issues to senior leadership, but it's not until someone points at that radar program and says, you need to go fix that. That change will occur. And the EW community can't implement that change. We can only inform senior leadership that there's an issue.

Ken Miller (01:02:57):
And we might understand the vulnerabilities, but sometimes it's hard to really know for certain what we need or how much we need until it's in the field or facing the real threat. And instead versus early development of the system.

David (01:03:10):
That's exactly right. And so it requires really opt for during the development and testing to show that there's a challenge there that was not accounted for. So a radar can say, Hey, I need EAP features and design them in. But very often what happens is the testing or the exercising of that EP gets cut when the budgets or the schedules or the performance gets constrained. And as soon as that happens, then the program says, well, I designed EPN. I should be good. Right. I have frequency hopping. I should be good. What we've learned from radar developers and comms developers and PNT developers is it's not until you bring that in the field, as you suggested, that you see that your designs may not actually be sufficient for the environment you're going to go into.

David (01:03:49):
And it's not until you test it, that you have funded the testing, you have scheduled the testing, and you've taken that out into the field to see that it happens, that you learned that there's a problem, and you can take it back and troubleshoot it and fix it. But as I suggested earlier, budget constraints, schedule constraints, performance constraints, and suddenly the EP testing is one of the first things to go. You don't get that opportunity to exercise the EP. And suddenly they go to the field with what they designed in which in many cases is not sufficient.

Ken Miller (01:04:15):
Interference is a little bit tricky to understand. In your presentation you talked, it's not just DOD that struggles with understanding the role of interference also in the commercial sector. And you pointed to a report where in with 5G, starting to understand that there's a potential 5G interference. Could you go into that? Because when, earlier in our show sat down with Powder, AOC president. And we talked about the need to interface more directly with the commercial sector and learn from them, but also have a conversation about some of these common issues.

David (01:04:44):
Yeah. I think, this also gets at spectrum management challenges, right? So I think in my history in SNT, I've seen a lot of efforts that looked at. I'm just going to build a grid and I'm going to take that grid. I'm going to tell the radars, you operate over here and your EDW systems operator here in comms, you're operated here. I think anybody who has worked in say, counter IED, recognizes that if you put a radio next to a high sensitivity EW receiver, you're going to have interference. Even if those things aren't operating in the same band. Right. We're seeing that start to happen as the spectrum becomes more congested. And that red car report that radio technical communications for aeronautics report, showed that 5G radar transmitters that are in a band that is a few hundred megahertz away from our radar altimeters and civilian aircraft is causing interference where it can't cause interference.

David (01:05:31):
And it's caused because the radar altimeter has a roll-off receiver that can pick up signals from the 5G transmitter band and the 5G transmitter is putting noise outside of its band that the radar altimeter can hear inside of its band. And you get this cross interference problem. One of the fundamental issues there is you've got a 5G communications transmitter that has a much higher noise floor than a radar altimeter receiver. And if you have that noise floor mismatch, you end up in a situation where the radar altimeter is detecting signals that the 5G transmitter hadn't accounted for because it's in, it's noise. But it's above the noise in the radar altimeter. So the commercial world has to start paying attention to this too, because as the spectrum becomes more congested, we're going to start seeing what's called electromagnetic compatibility problems. That is blue on blue interference. When historically we've talked about EP in terms of hostile jammer, taking out my sensor. We also need to be very careful about my own radios, interfering with my own EWS systems, interfering with my own radars.

Ken Miller (01:06:32):
And we're already starting to have a conversation about 6G and so forth. So if we don't solve the problem, now it's only going to exponentially get worse down the road.

David (01:06:40):
That's exactly right. And it gets back to your point earlier. That this understanding needs to be at the very beginning of design and development of our spectrum using systems. It's not historically been accounted for because we had enough spectrum that we could operate wherever we wanted. And be unimpeded, whether it was our own blue signals or hostile red signals. But now we have to be very careful about it. We need to understand the phenomenology that's happening in that RF propagation space. Which means you need scientists and engineers that understand electromagnetic propagation to be able to start accounting for some of these issues. And in the case of that, RIPCA report, there were scientists and engineers who are RF propagation experts that were part of that, and they missed that, right. That could potentially happen was not accounted for. So there's even phenomenology that we can't predict, and we need to be able to have the EP in our systems to account for things we couldn't predict.

Ken Miller (01:07:31):
And then for our listeners, we'll download that report and make it available on the AOC sites. Because I think there's a lot of interesting recommendations and findings, in there, that our community would like to take a look at. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. I want to move briefly to another capability, another technology that you mentioned in your presentation and that's directed energy. In the last episode, from the crow's nest. I sat down with a Congressman Jim Langevin. He is a leader in Congress on directed energy. And we were talking a little bit about some of the challenges of operationalizing directed energy. Moving it from the lab into the field. And I was wondering if you could address some of those challenges and where DE is today.

David (01:08:09):
So DE predominantly, exists in that still, in that SNT world. The undersecretary for research and engineering is really the expert on DE. There's not many, if any directed energy programs of record. Right? So I think we're starting to see that migration from the SNT world into operational systems. And there are some operational systems it's just that the acquisition process isn't overseeing those types of systems. So what we're looking at now that we are electromagnetic warfare is how do we incorporate that DE perspective into our EW portfolio, so that it is part of the EM electromagnetic conversation. Right now, there is a seam there. I would say we don't have inherent expertise on DE.

David (01:08:51):
We rely a lot on the research and engineering side to provide that the expertise. But I think we're going to start to see growth. And I think we're going to start to see that high power microwave, DE, EW convergence. Because they're all spectrum using systems, very different power levels that they're using. But you can imagine DE systems that can tailor back power to do EW effects. And even you can imagine radar systems that can create DE effects. So I think we're going to start to see DE sprinkled across a lot of different programs, existing programs of record that are already using spectrum. Potentially future programs that that will use the spectrum.

Ken Miller (01:09:26):
Great. One last question. I know your time is short. Many of our listeners and people here at SEMA today, know your role in the EW executive committee. But there are quite a number of listeners that might not be familiar with how that's organized and what the role of the EW exec committee is. So I was wondering if you could just go in briefly and tell us about your role in that capacity.

David (01:09:44):
So I'm the executive secretary, co secretary with the joint staff J which has operational requirements. So we have an EDW capabilities team, which feeds the EWX comm. We are the chairs of that team. We research topics. We bring in speakers from across the department, talk about challenges, issues, opportunities. Then we craft that into a story to bring to senior leadership. So senior leadership includes all the under, most of the undersecretaries in the office of the secretary of defense. It includes the vice chiefs of all the services and includes the service acquisition executives and some of the co- comms. They sit around the table and we put in front of them, what our findings were effectively from the EW capabilities team. Here are issues that we have here are opportunities that we have. And in that EXCOMM forum, it allows the undersecretary for acquisition to immediately comment to the undersecretary for research and engineering. That, how are we addressing this?

David (01:10:37):
How could we address this? And at that point, the undersecretary for research engineering says, we can do this, or we could do that. And the service acquisition chiefs can hear that. And the vice chiefs can hear that and make from their service perspective on what they're doing to effectively account for that. So what it has created is it's created that environment where we can educate senior leadership on the challenges. Senior leadership can immediately make recommendations on action to help address those challenges. And we see that happen. I think, one of the challenges we have with the EXCOMM is everything we do is classify. So, so publishing the results of what the EXCOMM has done becomes a non-starter. And so there's this perception that the EXCOMM what is the EXCOMM doing, they haven't made significant change. There was a lot of change happening. It's just that it doesn't happen in an unclassified world. It happens more in the classified space.

Ken Miller (01:11:22):
Well, thank you for taking time to join me this morning, and I greatly appreciate it, your remarks. And I do look forward to having you on a full episode from, the crow's nest in the near future. We'll be reaching out shortly, but we've been talking about this for a little bit. So looking forward to having you on for a much fuller discussion here in the near future.

David (01:11:37):
Absolutely. I look forward to it. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. We're going to move on to my next guest. I have with me here, Colonel Kevin Finch. He is the program manager for EW and cyber. Welcome Colonel Finch.

Kevin (01:11:52):
Hi, good morning. And thank you for having me on. It's the role that AOC plays in the electronic warfare and the EMS has been very important. And I will say I've been very impressed with how the AOC is dealt with the pandemic and ensure that we continue to have outreach. Currently, right now we're having the SEMA conference in may. This is the first live event I've actually been to in the last, over a year or so, but I just want to thank the organization for their perseverance and continuing to be able to provide an outlet for government and industry to collaborate and to say what the current state of affairs is. So I want to thank the organization.

Ken Miller (01:12:39):
We want to thank you too, because you have been a frequent contributor here with the AOC. And I know you just spoke a couple months ago on a program managers, briefing series, always appreciate the message that you have. So your office oversees the development of several key programs that are important to the Army's a persistent monetization plan. You just got done speaking to SEMA here on day two. So what was your key message to the audience today?

Kevin (01:13:06):
The focus of the SEMA conferences, MDO, 2035 and beyond. And I've talked about this before, but the army really divested the majority of the TW capabilities at the end of the cold war. And for us, we really had a clean slate and how we're going to, get the army posture to address the national defense security strategy and address this those pure threats. And so from that perspective, we've really laid out a aerial layer, a terrestrial layer, and a foundational layer of capabilities that we need to be able to execute MBO, 2035 and beyond. And those are really, the starting points.

Kevin (01:13:49):
Now the big thing with these systems that we have is making sure that we have them in a way that we can pace the threat. So it becomes very important, but really what we wanted to do is show a roadmap of, how do we have those three layers. How do we have those interoperable? And so we also talked about the SEMA architecture to make sure that we have interoperability amongst all the systems. Like I said before in the past, we've been really good at making stovepipes, but we're very cognizant to make sure that we have systems that are interoperable and they have a architecture that supports that are interoperable.

Ken Miller (01:14:34):
You mentioned architecture and basically, the need to adapt to change and to win and fight under any condition and important to that is open standards, open systems, architecture, particularly CMOSS which C5, ISR, EW modular, open systems architecture.

Kevin (01:14:52):
Sweet standards. Yeah. So people have to remember that. Sweetest standard.

Ken Miller (01:14:57):
Yes. So could you discuss the role of OSA and preparing the army for the future fight and how...

Ken Miller (01:15:03):
... the role of OSA in preparing the Army for the future fight, and how that improves the systems that you put on the field.

Kevin (01:15:06):
Very much so. And so, I really think the key to future success in our domain, is to maintain those open standards. And the reason why is, I can go out to industry right now and say, "Hey, I want you to build me a black box that addresses the threat as it currently is." And they'll do that. And it will do exactly what you need it to do, for that particular moment in time. But we all know that the only thing constant is change, and that the enemy is going to continue to adapt. Technology is going to continue to progress. Why would we have a system that's static for a moment in time?

Kevin (01:15:44):
And I can't remember the Air Force chief of staff who said it, but he's like, "Hey, we're not making airplanes anymore, we're making software that flies." And so, from that perspective we really have to make sure that our systems are really more software- based, and then the hardware becomes a commodity. So that way, as technology changes, we can easily adapt new hardware into that software architecture, that allows us to be able to take advantages of advancements in technology.

Kevin (01:16:18):
The other thing as well, is as compute continues to improve, we have to make sure that that software is continually updated, to make sure that we're taking advantage of that hardware. You have two streams going on simultaneously. You have to have a software baseline that allows you to take advantage of the new hardware, and then continually to re-fresh that hardware, as the technology improves.

Kevin (01:16:42):
So that's really the big key to open systems architectures, is not to get yourself locked into a point in time, but being able to easily integrate third-party capabilities into a system after it's already been fielded.

Ken Miller (01:16:55):
Because you're not always aware of the adjustments and change that you need to make, until you're actually in the field facing the real threats? And you have to be able to do that real time.

Kevin (01:17:04):
Right. And so, the threat's going to continually change. And so, you almost have to go to look at a wholesale change in the way that you look at sustainment. Because you're not really sustaining capability anymore, what you're really doing is maintaining the capability to address the threat. So what does that really look like? So, let's just do it in instance. We use a lot of commercial off the shelf computing technologies. Why would I go buy a lifetime buy of current technology compute, when I know industry is going to invest the money to improve that computing technology? I don't even have to invest in the R&D in that. We're just taking advantage of what's happening in our industry.

Kevin (01:17:48):
So from that perspective, why would I just buy what I put in the system today, knowing that technology is going to continue to progress? We need to have that open systems architecture, that allows me to take advantage of those investments that are happening outside of the military, and easily inject that in. So really, from that perspective, we have to be continuing to realize that our sustainment strategy is really a maintained strategy, and continue to insert those new technologies as they advance.

Ken Miller (01:18:22):
I want to talk a little bit about your portfolio specifically. You have a lot of very important programs to this community, and that you mentioned in your presentation, you have the Terrestrial Layer System, MFEW, multi-function EW, EW planning management tool, and others. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of these programs, where they're at today? Where they're going? What are some of the points on the horizon that the attendees, and defense industry here today, should be looking at?

Kevin (01:18:48):
Okay, great. When I talked a little bit before, I talked about the three different layers, so I'll go through those with the different layers. So, the foundational layer. The primary system that we have there is the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool. We're just finishing up increment one, actually as we speak. We have teams in Colorado doing the developmental testing for that system. So, we're really excited where we're at with that.

Kevin (01:19:16):
We had capability drop three, of increment one, as a part of the SEMA ONS efforts, and also all the ONS efforts that we've had. So we've got a lot of soldier feedback from that particular capability, and we've improved it. So Colonel Jason Marshall, who's my PM for electronic warfare integrations done an outstanding job, making sure that we have those soldier touchpoints built into the system. And we have really matured that very significantly.

Kevin (01:19:47):
Now, from a DT perspective, we also have the Terrestrial Layer System coming online, and we also have MFEW Air Large coming online. So, we'll have to go back and do some iterative testing with the EWPMT, to make sure that we can clearly demonstrate that sensor to shooter piece with EWPMT. But I'm very confident, just based on the performance that it's had with our ONS's effort that it'll do well. So, we're DT testing with the EWPMT and preparing to field that in '23.

Kevin (01:20:20):
So with the aerial layer system, we have MFEW Air Large. That system currently has been performing in a number of different demonstrations. And so we've integrated it on the Gray Eagle with folks out of Fort Campbell. We've been doing a number of demonstrations at Edge 21 and at Project Convergence this summer, to continue to demonstrate the capability, and what it brings to the war fighter.

Kevin (01:20:48):
Now, MFEW Air Large is very important, because as far as having a EW System at altitude, it's going to be the highest, going to probably have the best range out of any system that I have in my portfolio from that perspective, because it's on the Gray Eagle.

Kevin (01:21:05):
But really looking forward to getting some feedback from Project Convergence this summer, I think it's going to be a really exciting event. It's going to be in the Pacific. So I think it's going to be able to really demonstrate its capabilities very well there. So, we're looking to go in to test next year. Just recently had a Milestone C decision from our PEO. And so, we're in the process of buying some of those pods right now. But really excited about that. And then also getting it integrated into the multi-domain task force. One is out at joint base Lewis McChord. So, really excited about that.

Kevin (01:21:42):
As far as the Terrestrial Layer goes, we have a lot going on. From an ONS perspective, we're finishing up the fielding of our TEWS and tool systems.

Ken Miller (01:21:56):
And the TEWS is the tactical EW system?

Kevin (01:21:58):
Right. And so that was our quick reaction capability that was on the flat bottom striker. So we're finishing up the fielding of that, this FY. And then the tool as well, which goes to light units is the Tactical EW System Light. And so that's really giving those brigades that initial capability that they've really lacked. A vast improvement over Receiver Fury, which is a system we had in the field before. So we're in the process of de-fielding that, and we'll finish up with the twos this summer.

Kevin (01:22:31):
The Telus BCT is the next system. And so that system, from an acquisition perspective, we've really been at warp speed. And I just want to thank our partners, or our two OEMs that are providing that capability. We just got done with an operational capability demonstration, Bravo. So we have to actually see the compute piece of this out at the range during the March time period, and actually next month. And we're going to be going to Arizona to actually see their integration of the A Kit.

Kevin (01:23:09):
So, we're actually seeing this integrated on the striker. So that's going to be really exciting times for Telus BCT. It'll continue to go under a series of evaluations this summer, and we're expecting an up select to one vendor in late summer time period. So a lot of goodness going on there.

Kevin (01:23:25):
The next big one we have is TELA CAB. And so that's echelons above brigade. And so we gave a presentation on that during our briefing and it gave you kind of the current state of play, but that'll be a new start in FY22. But that'll be providing the extended range capability to the multi-domain task force division in core. So, a lot of goodness going on there as well.

Kevin (01:23:49):
The other one that I just want to highlight is the Tactical Cyber Equipment. So when you talk about CEEMA, there is some cyber in that. And so, we can't forget about those. And so, the Army is formations, you have the 915th, the Cyber Warfare Battalion. So they have a number of teams that they're going to be service retained, that they were provided to the brigades to provide cyber capabilities to the BCTs. And so we're really excited. I went down in January to the critical design review for the tactical cyber equipment capability. And we're getting our first prototypes this summer, and we'll start to doing some evaluations of those systems over the next several months. But that's going to really provide that initial capability to the 915th.

Kevin (01:24:42):
Now, where this gets really exciting, is that tactical cyber equipment, MFEW Air Large, Telus BCT are all using the same CEEMA Standards. So it's the EWC CEEMA Standard. And why I corrected you earlier, when you said it was the standard, like CEEMA it's a suite. So you have to really define within that SOSA/CEEMA Standard, which one you're going to use. Because, I don't care how hard you push, you're not getting a 6U card into a 3U slot. So, and also the pin out is very important as well.

Kevin (01:25:18):
And so from that perspective, I wanted to make sure that we have interoperability across our portfolio. So all three of those are using the same standard. And so, a lot of goodness there.

Ken Miller (01:25:30):
One last question with the future years defense budget, you have a very aggressive schedule moving forward, and you've made a lot of progress. Just realistically, you can expect DOD wide, some contraction in some of the limited resources that are available for future defense. And in our previous episode, with From The Crow's Nest, I was sitting down with Congressmen Langevin, and we were talking about the defense budget. And he mentioned that we have to be smarter in how we invest.

Ken Miller (01:25:56):
While there is going to be contraction, that doesn't mean there has to be a lot of pain with that, realized. So what steps are you taking to be smarter in the way that you invest, to make sure that you can maintain this aggressive schedule moving forward? In the new reality that there is some contraction, there is some uncertainty in resourcing moving forward.

Kevin (01:26:20):
Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the the answer that I'll give you is, it really comes back to the key of how we've architected these systems. And so, as we progress forward, if you end up having that software architecture as the key, and you're able to integrate the hardware, it doesn't mean you have to integrate all of the hardware at one time.

Kevin (01:26:40):
So, one of my deputies said before, "Initially you're going to get the rental car version of this capability. And then over time, we're going to iterate." At this point, I think we have to be very smart as we see those budgets contracting, is making the smart decisions on, hey, what are the key capabilities that have to be in the system, and what are the nice to haves?

Kevin (01:27:06):
And then, from that perspective then, as funding becomes available, or the technology progresses to make that capability cheaper, we're able to easily integrate it into the system. So, from that perspective, I think what we have to do is, it all comes back down to that modular open standards. Like, hey, we don't need to have it to do everything right out of the gate, which saves costs. And those are conversations that we have going on with a number of our different programs.

Kevin (01:27:35):
One of the big things as well as is incorporating cyber capabilities. And so, there's obviously some cyber capabilities that we need to incorporate into these systems, but it takes time and effort to do that. But it's one of those things that you have to make sure that the system is architected correctly, in order to accept those capabilities at a later point in time.

Kevin (01:27:57):
I told my PMs with me, "What is winning in electronic warfare" And the answer to winning is, hey, the system needs to do what it needs to do today, but winning is two PMs from now. They're easily able to upgrade these systems to pace the threat. But that also means, if the budget cuts occur, that if there's a technology, that we have to delay for whatever reason, that it's able to be easily integrated into that system as well. So that way we have that architecture already laid out that allows us to upgrade it over time, as funding becomes available.

Ken Miller (01:28:38):
Well, thank you for joining me this morning, and I appreciate everything you've been doing in support of the AOC shows. And it's great to see you back in person here once again. So thank you so much.

Kevin (01:28:49):
It's great. Actually, this is the first time I haven't done a Zoom thing for AOC in a long time. So it is great being here in person.

Ken Miller (01:28:56):
It's a much different reality here.

Kevin (01:28:58):
It is. It's great to see folks. It's amazing how much comradery there is in the Association of Old Crows. And it's been great to see some old friends, and also see some new faces as well. So it's been really exciting.

Ken Miller (01:29:11):
Well, thank you so much for joining me.

Kevin (01:29:12):
No, thank you.

Ken Miller (01:29:12):
Thank you.

Ken Miller (01:29:17):
At this time, I'd like to welcome another platinum industry partner here at AOC CEEMA 2021, a Lockheed Martin corporation. And I'm here with Mr. Joe Ottaviano. He is program management director for Lockheed Martins Maritime and Air Cyber EDW Division. Welcome Joe, to From The Crow's Nest.

Joe Ottaviano (01:29:34):
Yeah, it's good to be here Ken, thank you.

Ken Miller (01:29:36):
So, we're just wrapping up two great days of presentations, and I would like to get your thoughts, from an industry perspective, on how the army is pursuing its CEEMA vision, and what message do you want attendees here at CEEMA, to take away in terms of Lockheed Martins role in this effort?

Joe Ottaviano (01:29:53):
Yeah. So, if you look at the pillars that the army has as their CEEMA approach, which is the Cyberspace Operations Electronic Warfare and Spectrum Management. The message is that with advances in open architecture systems, all of that can be made available to the war fighter today.

Joe Ottaviano (01:30:16):
The days of having stove pipe systems that do each one of those are quickly dissolving behind us. And again, a lot of it in industry and Lockheed Martin investment, along with the army itself, have gotten to a point where we've kind of hit a nexus. Cyber electronic warfare signals, intelligence, and spectrum management. Where these can be done seamlessly, you can integrate across multiple sensors now, by leveraging such advancements as the advancement, open architecture and CMOs, and really bridge the gap for the war fighters. So all that information is available, in what used to take hours in real time, today.

Ken Miller (01:31:08):
And that's been a recurring theme here. We heard earlier on this episode from General Fogarty and General Collins, both mentioning that the need to operationalize at the speed of data, and connecting sensors to shooters. I'd like to know if you could go into a little bit more about how Lockheed Martin is contributing to this effort, specifically to meet some of these requirements? Both converging EDW and cyber, and also just the compatibility the systems need in the battle space today?

Joe Ottaviano (01:31:35):
Yeah. So, I'll use a clear example, our MFEW Air Large Initiative, which again, Lockheed is invested in the open architecture and moving this converged cyber electronic warfare and spectrum management capability forward. And if you look at what we've brought forth in the MFEW Air Large capability, it's important to see how, again, you can move across multiple disciplines to get that data to the battlefield as they'd like it, the speed of data in connecting the sensors to the shooters.

Joe Ottaviano (01:32:11):
I think what we've shown is, you can use the MFEW Air Large pod to do all of that, including spectrum management. The system can sense, see what the environment's doing, adjust it, and give the war fighter a better picture as it's detecting, and then providing whatever effects that are deemed necessary. On top of sensing the environment, providing that it brings this open architecture we've already demonstrated, can plug into multiple platforms rapidly, without the long integration stroke that you would typically see. And gives them a way to bring this to bare now. So you can integrate it. It provides real time converged spectrum dominance, across the pillars.

Ken Miller (01:32:58):
And you mentioned MFEW Air Large, and that is a technology that you're exhibiting here in the floor today. What are some of the milestones that you're looking forward to, moving into the future with that program?

Joe Ottaviano (01:33:10):
Yeah, so we continue to demonstrate and expand the capability. We recently just come off a series of demonstrations, and there's at least two additional demonstrations up and coming. I'll refer you to the customer on those specific demonstrations. But we continue to demonstrate the milestones this year, expanding beyond the original mission of converged, but also converged and spectrum management capabilities at the same time. Cyber, EW, and the spectrum management. So, we'll continue to move those demonstrations forward.

Joe Ottaviano (01:33:44):
And that's driving a lot of interest to across the service, and even some interest from other services based on the capability it provides.

Ken Miller (01:33:53):
You're talking about driving interest and Lockheed Martin, of course, is a global company you have. And what are some of the technologies that Lockheed Martin is looking into, even outside of just CEEMA, where you're driving a lot of interest across the services, and also throughout the rest of the defense industrial base?

Joe Ottaviano (01:34:09):
Yeah, that's a great question. Where we're driving our investment, again, is the focus on leveraging cutting edge, commercially technology, packaged in an open architecture way, such that you have the latest advances in chip level architecture. But the way you package it, it's a drop-in upgrade without going through that long integration stroke, as I mentioned before. That's key to one of the tenets of what we're trying to provide here.

Joe Ottaviano (01:34:42):
We've got a version for instance, of advanced digital processing and advanced Data Ds in the system now. We're in the process of just dropping in upgrades to leverage the latest RF system on a chip. But we packaged it in such a way that it's not a new architecture, it's leveraging that CMOs and that open architecture, and it drops in very quickly, as a good example.

Ken Miller (01:35:12):
Great. Well, hank you so much for joining me here on From The Crow's Nest, Joe, and AOC certainly appreciates the support of Lockheed Martin at our events. And we look forward to seeing you at our next event, which will be the AOC Convention and Symposium here in November. But thank you for joining me.

Joe Ottaviano (01:35:27):
Thank you very much, Ken. It was a pleasure

Ken Miller (01:35:29):
Take care. That will conclude our special episode of From The Crow's Nest here at AOC CEEMA 2021. I'd like to thank our episode sponsor, Pentek. Pentek provides cutting edge interoperable, deployable, ord, and system level solutions for the most demanding high performance requirements. Pentek arms the defense community with the electronic tools they need for mission readiness and success. Learn more at pentek.com/go/ew.

Ken Miller (01:35:57):
I'd like to thank all of our speakers and our industry partners here this week for joining me for this edition. And I'd also like to thank Voxtopica, our podcast consultant, for being here with me to help make the special episode a reality.

Ken Miller (01:36:11):
I'd also like to mention that our sister podcast, History of Crows, will be released today. You can learn more at crows.org/podcast. Thank you for listening.