Army officials released an updated notice Thursday for the service’s 2019 Cyber Quest event calling on industry partners to demonstrate readily available tools to better detect electronic warfare (EW) attacks and improve jamming operations across the entire spectrum.
The Army’s white papers request for its next EW war gaming event details near-term and midterm capability needs including new sensors and Electronic Attack capabilities.
“The Army needs to be able to search for, intercept, identify, and locate or localize sources of intentional and unintentional radiated electromagnetic energy for the purpose of immediate threat recognition, targeting, planning, and conduct future operations,” officials wrote in an amendment to the request for white papers.
Proposals are already being accepted to participate in the 2019 Cyber Quest, which will take place at the Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence in Ft. Gordon in Georgia and focus on cyber-electromagnetic tools for multi-domain operations to inform current capability gaps and rapid acquisition priorities (Defense Daily, Aug. 8).
Thursday’s updated notice emphasized a near-term need to acquire updated EW sensors over the next two years with the ability to do precision geo-location, detect on frequency ranges from high-frequency (HF) through super-HF, and include open architecture compatibility and interoperability with UAS systems.
For the mid-term, the Army is looking to find tactical EW sensors that can identify EW targets on unidentified emitters and send information to its cyber-electromagnetic management tool.
The tactical sensor must be able to detect on frequency ranges from HF to Ka Band and include extended sensor range from 5 kilometers to 10 kilometers past the forward line of troops.
Army officials said their goals for electronic attack (EA) in the near-term include improving the ability to jam across multiple frequencies, adjust operations based on spectrum activity, and conduct deny, disrupt, degrade, deceive and manipulate operations within the same system.
Over the next five years, the Army would look to upgrade electronic attack with deception techniques that cause confusion or delay and employ extended range technologies .
“Army EA is planned and deployed with the Cyber Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) Management Tool at the Brigade and Battalion echelons for employment in the deep fight. The CEMA Management Tool can remotely manage, activate or deactivate the EA platforms automatically or as mission dictates,” officials wrote.
Chemring Technology Solutions (CTS), a global firm specializing in EW capabilities, successfully demonstrated a manpack geo-fencing capability at the most recent Cyber Quest, the company announced Thursday.
CTS’ VIPER tool is a new mission support system capable of more rapidly pinpointing EW targets.
“Cyber Quest supports the evolution of EW systems for US and other militaries worldwide, and provided us with the ideal platform to demonstrate how VIPER delivers a new level of EW capability,” Ben Vogel, CTS’ regional manager for North and South America, said in a statement. “VIPER was developed by EW operators for EW operators and the Cyber Quest trials allowed us to engage with end users to show them how we have created the most capable and user-friendly EW manpack system. VIPER’s deployment at Cyber Quest has shown how it offers the next step to counter current and evolving threats.”