By Nick Brunetti-Lihach

Prelude

“We have lost the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s a huge deal when you think about fielding advanced systems that can be [countered] by a very, very cheap digital jammer.”—Allen Shaffer, Department of Defense Chief of Research and Engineering, 2014

“Success in past conflicts has relied on information superiority on the field of conflict; this information superiority has been largely dependent on widespread use of modern sensor and communications electronics hardware and software.”—Defense Science Board: 21st Century Operations in a Complex Electromagnetic Environment, 2015

The enemy maneuvered around our networks. On D-Day, their informatized system of fixed and mobile jammers swept the skies and seas with impunity, severing critical re-supply and our kill chain. We had no counter-attack. As lethal and non-lethal projectiles rained down upon us, we were clueless to the fact that we’d set the conditions for failure years earlier. Their invisible bullets penetrated each gap and seam in our command and control. Like we did to the Iraqis in the first Gulf War, the enemy exploited every mistake. Our failure to protect the electromagnetic spectrum and control our signatures cost us tempo and decision speed. 

For years we remained vulnerable in the spectrum due to legacy systems and poor training. Despite the well-publicized Strava scandal and Bellingcat MH17 investigation, we neglected fundamental field craft. Undisciplined emissions bred bad habits and steadily exposed critical vulnerabilities. There were pockets of excellence where electronic warfare and communications were integrated from the top down, but they were the exception to the rule.

The Marine Corps is not prepared for a battle of signatures. Despite being smaller and lighter than the Army, the Marines are no less vulnerable to attacks from spectrally aware adversaries. In today’s operating environment, stand-in forces in the littorals are heavily dependent upon information for sensing and cueing weapon systems. Yet soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines take the electromagnetic spectrum for granted. The communication of information presents a signature and increases vulnerability. To preserve the kill chain and increase survivability, Marines must practice spectrum warfare at the lowest tactical level. To achieve information superiority against modern threats, the Marine Corps must update training and education, modernize command and control systems, and re-organize for spectrum warfare.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps charted a bold vision in his Commandant’s Planning Guidance and followed up with renewed focus on modernization with Force Design 2030. The service has identified programs to divest itself of, reorganized units, invested in ship-killing missiles, and reinvigorated naval integration. The service is also creating “purpose-built” stand-in forces to operate in the contact layer. Yet while Force Design calls for “greater resilience in our C4 and ISR systems,” how the service plans to develop spectrum warfare capability is not clear.

There is widespread agreement the U.S. military has lost dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum. In 2015, the Defense Science Board report found that U.S. military command and control systems are “jeopardized by serious deficiencies in U.S. electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.” A 2017 Government Accountability Office report noted systems continue to contain critical vulnerabilities, despite warnings.  The Chief of Staff of the Air Force recently characterized his service as “asleep at the wheel” regarding the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Commandant has acknowledged the Marine Corps is “under-invested” in spectrum warfare-related areas, to include signature management and electronic warfare. Yet the loss of spectrum dominance is also due to legacy command and control systems which will not survive in a conflict between peers. Individual units are also not organized for spectrum warfare, and training and education does not adequately prepare for peer-level spectrum competition.

Friendly communications are routinely subject to detection, interception, and exploitation. Threats range from radio direction finding systems, electro-optical and infrared surveillance, and airborne and celestial systems. While military communications are designed with security in mind, the underlying technology in use today by the Marine Corps to secure their radio transmissions (frequency hopping, waveforms) are decades old. Worse, following the Cold War, the Marine Corps cut electronic warfare systems such as the EA-6B Prowler. As a result, electronic warfare capability in the Marines is only a shell of what it once was, and has led the Marines to adopt systems from other services.

Communications and electronic warfare communities are two sides of the same coin. Both rely on the electromagnetic spectrum to provide and protect access to friends, or deny the same to the enemy. But at the tactical level, the Marine Corps does not possess electronic warfare capabilities needed to stress its systems against formidable peer capabilities possessed by Russia and China. At the same time, Marine Corps legacy command and control systems light up the spectrum with emissions.

Marine Corps doctrine outlines a maneuver warfare philosophy to identify surfaces and gaps to avoid or exploit through planning and analysis. Against a peer adversary, the ability to maneuver in the electromagnetic spectrum is a critical capability, while secure communication networks are vital requirements.

Today, planning and coordination between communications and electronic warfare personnel is deficient. Furthermore, within combined arms Marine Air Ground Task Forces, the aviation and ground communities operate different systems to support their networks, detect threats in the spectrum, and manage information. For example, while the Link 16 tactical data network is being touted as a core element of future networks, few communicators have experience or training with the capability. Aviation units have the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System “drone killer” to detect and jam drones, but ground units do not. As a result, the ground side lacks familiarity with aviation command and control systems, and both lack unity of effort with the electronic warfare community. This results in a wide gap in skill sets, interoperability, and real-time coordination in the electromagnetic spectrum. Given the future links envisioned by the Joint All Domain Command and Control concept, this will better prepare Marines for the spectrum warfare environment.

#1 People: Train and Educate as We Expect to Fight

“People, ideas, and hardware – in that order.”—John Boyd

Materiel and organizational change cannot overcome gaps in training and education. As the Navy is re-learning spectrum warfare, which it calls electromagnetic maneuver warfare, is extraordinarily challenging. Unfamiliarity with the complexities in the electromagnetic spectrum environment is evident when Marines play wargames that envision conditions in a future operating environment. However, there is also a lack of training and education in electronic warfare, and Marines have identified gaps in electronic warfare at the The Basic School.

Pre-deployment training in 29 Palms should not be the first time a Marine is formally introduced to spectrum warfare. The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept anticipates Marines will operate in a spectrum denied environment under persistent surveillance. Yet as Jonathan George has written, most units still lack electromagnetic spectrum training standards. To address this acknowledged challenge, the Marine Corps should introduce spectrum warfare at entry level schools. Today, other than a small cadre of technical experts, few Marines receive formal training on friendly or enemy radar systems, but are expected to plan or operate in and around active and passive sensors. Most subject matter expertise in spectrum warfare resides far from the battlefield within organizations such as Marine Corps Information Operations Center.

Second, commands can leverage wargames to teach Marines how to think about operating in a spectrum-contested environment. Wargaming is an inexpensive way to train and educate. In recent years, commercial and military wargames have added the dynamics of the spectrum environment, to include communication links and electronic warfare. For example, DARPA has developed a computer-based wargame that uses an array of communications links and jammers to stress a player’s ability to complete an assigned mission. Wargames can supplement exercises and perhaps in some cases more effectively represent the dynamic challenges of the spectrum environment.

Third, the Marine Corps should add a spectrum warfare curriculum to all officer and enlisted career-level schools. Training and education in spectrum disciplines vary across training and education units, along with standardization and properly trained instructors. Baseline curriculum should be developed within the Deputy Commandant for Information community, with input from all relevant communications and electronic warfare disciplines, anchored by observations from recent unit deployment and force-on-force training after-action-reports.

#2 Ideas: Organize Tactical Units for Information Superiority

“Proliferating systems, rapidly procured and fielded, are making for an increasingly crowded spectrum. Our freedom to operate is jeopardized. As our adversaries learn to get the most from their asymmetric strategies and close the gap with us technologically, our edge in combat will increasingly rely on our singular competencies in integration and operational excellence.” –Huber, Carlberg, Gilliard, and Marquet, Joint Forces Quarterly, 2007

Electronic warfare seeks to detect, identify, and exploit enemy signals. Conversely, communicators enable command and control. While both communities are dependent upon the electromagnetic spectrum, they often operate in parallel. In recent years, more voices have argued for greater resources and integration, but only incremental progress has been made at the tactical level.

In today’s dynamic electromagnetic spectrum environment, battalions, squadrons, and regiments must be organized to sense and fight within the spectrum. For example, per Marine Corps doctrine, a Battalion Landing Team is co-located with an Air Support Element to coordinate and de-conflict air support and fires. Yet no such coordination exists at that level for spectrum warfare. Doctrinally, Electronic Warfare Coordination Cells only exist on a Marine Air Ground Task Force staff, but subordinate maneuver units lack an organization to integrate spectrum warfare.

In contrast, the Navy centralizes this function in every tactical formation through the Information Warfare Commander. Marine Corps maneuver units require an integrated spectrum warfare role to function in a manner similar to the Navy’s Information Warfare Commander, to fuse spectrum warfare operations and assure information superiority. At the tactical level, communications and electronic warfare functions would be combined under a spectrum officer with responsibility for all electromagnetic emissions.

Ground and air units at the battalion and squadron level should have full-time planners trained to integrate friendly command and control networks with electronic attack, protection, and support activities in real-time. This requires a centralized organization with links to distributed maneuver units. The Army has experimented with multi-domain task forces since 2017, combining intelligence and information operations with space and cyber. Accordingly, every maneuver element, down to the platoon, must possess spectrum awareness capability. This gap is not exclusive to ground forces. Aviation units have also noted persistent challenges aggregating the vast quantities of data in the information environment.

#3 Hardware: Replace the Systems

“Today we generally use the EM spectrum and cyberspace as an enabler for land, sea, air, and undersea operations. We have not yet taken full advantage of the warfighting potential afforded by the merging of the EM spectrum and cyberspace, or the pervasiveness of the EM spectrum into every facet of military operations.”—Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert

If Marine (and Navy) units dispersed across the littorals are to have a fighting chance, the Marine Corps must upgrade its command and control systems for greater survivability. The U.S. Army is heavily investing in this effort, to include a new alternative system to GPS location and timing. The Army is also leaning forward in fielding new electronic warfare systems at the tactical level. While hardware upgrades are an expensive undertaking, the alternative for inaction will be grim on the modern battlefield. While the Marine Corps is experimenting with minimal command posts, currently fielded command and control systems are nowhere near adequate. This effort should include all radios and waveforms without resiliency or survivability characteristics in a contested spectrum environment, such as jam resistance, and low probability of intercept and detection.

The speed at which modern digital electronics can shift operating modes and techniques has vastly increased. Proven systems and waveforms are available today: SATURN waveform to replace HAVEQUICK, Mobile User Objective System for satellite communications on the move, hand-held Link-16 to enable ground forces to link with aviation networks, and the AN/PRC-160 to replace legacy High Frequency radios. Many other new anti-jam, anti-spoof commercial systems are available on the market capable of operating across a range of frequencies. For the cost of one F-35B, the Marine Corps can field 5,000 next generation radios, improving the survivability of hundreds of maneuver elements.

Second, Marine Corps units need tools to dynamically manage the spectrum. A commander today at the tactical level has no situational awareness in the electromagnetic spectrum. Without a common spectrum picture, communicators cannot coherently sense or map the spectrum in real-time, and information cannot provide commanders the ability to make informed decisions. Hardware and software exists to enhance network visibility into a fused display, but over the years program officers have not fielded a common system. Spectrum visualization and RF Mapping tools, such as Radio Map, can provide real-time awareness of the spectrum at the tactical level. The Army has also recently developed a quantum sensor capable of detecting the entire radio-frequency spectrum.

Spectrum warfare becomes more complicated for Marines operating from ship to shore. Shipboard systems are controlled by the Navy, and often even older than tactical Marine Corps systems operated ashore. This paradigm has to change if sailors and Marines are to fight across the Indo-Pacific and rely on “any sensor, any shooter” as the Joint All Domain Command and Control concept envisions.

Third, establish Marine Corps-wide interoperability standards, and work closely to synchronize efforts with the wider joint force. Marine Corps Program Managers routinely field distinct systems that cannot share information, and it gets worse when factoring in NAVAIR, which owns all naval aviation systems. There must be an individual coordinating authority for command and control, to include electronic warfare sensors, across the service with guidance and direct access to Navy program offices to ensure unity of effort.

The Army is investing heavily in electronic warfare, and has wisely established a suite of open architecture standards for added flexibility and interoperability between requirements for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, and communications links. As one of the Defense Department’s leaders recently noted, the ability to integrate information is perhaps a culture problem first.

Fourth, pursue systems with the capability to send and receive data through local telecommunications networks. For example, Marines or sailors in the littorals will operate in and among high density civilian populated areas with existing cellular and wireless telecommunication infrastructure. Leveraging these networks will be akin to finding a needle in a stack of needles. This technology is currently available, and has been in use for years by organizations within the Department of Defense.

Finally, equip units ashore and afloat with passive and low-power sensors, and invest in laser and light-based transmitters, which offer significantly reduced signatures. None of these activities should be undertaken without close coordination with the Navy, and the joint force. Imagine an autonomous electronic decoy launched by a Marine unit in the littorals, prompting a kinetic strike on the decoy by an Army or Navy platform, thereby unmasking themselves and revealing their position.

Conclusion

 “So the third principle, this is the combination of guided munitions and informationalized warfare, will span all types of ground combat, a regular, hybrid, nonlinear, state proxy and high-end combined-arms warfare.  And that means, like the Israelis found out, that the foundation for ground force excellence is going to be combined-arms operational skill.”—Bob Work, former Deputy Secretary of Defense

Force Design is an opportunity for the Marine Corps to improve its ability to maneuver in the electromagnetic spectrum – on offense and defense. This requirement is a historical road block for the technologically challenged Marine Corps. As historian Allan Millett has written, “The challenge facing the Marine Corps is whether its military culture, based on human qualities… can adjust in a war dominated by microchips.” On the modern battlefield, Marines ashore and afloat must practice spectrum warfare for survivability, and to maintain information superiority. To compete in this modern paradigm, the Marine Corps must update training and education, modernize command and control systems, and re-organize functional areas for spectrum integration.

As the joint force seeks to move toward a highly dynamic and fluid “all-domain” warfare, the Marine Corps must achieve unity of effort across all functions, especially communications and electronic warfare. We must stop admiring the problem and settling for incremental change. A holistic review of the information environment at the tactical level is in order, with a focus on the people, ideas, and hardware needed for information superiority. As Commandant Berger and General Brown recently acknowledged, investment in “truly all-domain command and control” must be accelerated.

Information superiority alone does not guarantee success in war. But if long-range precision strike and distributed forces are critical requirements, then information superiority is essential. This means critical vulnerabilities – command and control systems – must be protected. Marines will be vastly more lethal and survivable – a more credible threat – with integrated spectrum organization, modern systems, and updated training and education.

Featured image: U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Jacory Calloway, a radio operator with 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, sets up a long range communication system while demonstrating expeditionary advanced basing capabilities Oct. 7 to 8, 2020, as part of Exercise Noble Fury. (U.S. Marine Corps photos by Cpl. Josue Marquez)

By Brian Kerg

Signatures, Success, and Failure: Two Vignettes

January, 20XX: With the likely election of an aggressively pro-independence candidate as the new president of Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China initiates a plan to reunify this ‘rebel’ province with its homeland. Chinese anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) assets are activated across the theater. Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleets steam to key chokepoints, deterring foreign intervention, while conducting live-fire missile exercises around the Taiwan Strait to intimidate Taiwan and potential interlopers. With the Chinese Weapons Engagement Zone (WEZ) ensconcing the area of operations, Beijing is confident that no foreign force can interfere with their plans without drastic escalation that no country will accept.

But across the area of operations, small U.S. Marine and Navy detachments operating out of Expeditionary Advanced Bases (EAB) within the first and second island chains rapidly deploy several long-range precision fires systems. Launching swarms of unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater reconnaissance systems, they acquire the locations of the most critical ships of the Chinese fleet, communicating this data to American maritime and joint operations centers.

With targets acquired, Washington informs Beijing that the PLAN fleet will be sunk unless the threat of military action against Taiwan is withdrawn. In the diplomatic dust-up that ensues, America and its partners close the trap with Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), sending disaggregated fleets into the area of operations, further pressuring China with the threat of massed effects from maritime forces.

China sees the off-ramp and takes it. Ships return to port, Taiwan breathes a sigh of relief, and normal maritime commerce resumes. Deterrence by denial avoids a shooting war between great powers.¹

The preceding vignette illustrates how Expeditionary Advanced Based Operations (EABO) and DMO, aided by emerging fires and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies, can prevent America’s adversaries from applying fait accompli strategies. But consider, instead, another way the story might have played out:

Unbeknownst to U.S. planners, China detected the American EABs long ago. The naval forces communicated using predictable techniques, on easily detectable spectrum, while exercising poor transmissions discipline and signature management. The PLAN had a reliable laydown of American EABs in their theater long before Beijing executed its reunification plan.

As China closed the noose around Taiwan, PLAN forces simultaneously isolated the EABs in the electromagnetic spectrum, cutting off their primary communications pathways. Targeting information was spoofed, rendering the long-range precision fires systems at the EABs useless. Isolated and blind, the EABs were caught unawares as Chinese amphibious forces landed in Taiwan, forcing the sorely outgunned U.S. forces to surrender.

With the U.S. unable to check Chinese aggression without escalation that would lead to large-scale combat, the rest of the international community looked the other way as China forced Taiwan back under its control.

EABO and DMO are the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ bid for success in disrupting the fait accompli strategies of great power competitors, providing the deterrence by denial called for in the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS). In order to succeed in the A2/AD environment cultivated by America’s adversaries, EABO and DMO will necessarily be facilitated by emerging fires, ISR, and communications technologies. But the critical vulnerability to EABO, DMO, and consequently to deterrence by denial, is signature management.

The risk assumed in EABO and DMO puts signature management at a premium. Detection or denial of Command and Control (C2) systems will hamstring the promise of both operational concepts. Emerging C2 techniques and technologies provide viable solutions to signature management, validating EABO and DMO, and ensuring the sea services will maintain a critical edge in competition and in war.

DMO, EABO, and Deterrence by Denial

The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) describe strategic competition with revisionist powers, namely China and Russia, as the central challenge facing the United States now and in the future.² In pursuing advantages, such competitors flout the rules-based international order to further their own interests at the expense of those of the United States and its allies. To prevent the United States and others from rolling back their gains, competitors secure their advantages through pursuit and application of fait accompli strategies that quickly seize objectives and create A2/AD zones, preventing opponents from having the time or political will to strike back, as prolonged escalation may be deemed too costly.³ An example of a successful fait accompli was the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. Even though the annexation was internationally condemned, wresting control of Crimea back from Russia would almost certainly require large-scale combat operations that would be considered unacceptable.

Historically, the U.S. deterred adversaries through a strategy of punishment. However, the growing military and economic strength of potential adversaries, combined with fait accompli strategies, makes deterrence through punishment nonviable. Instead, deterrence by denial is emphasized by both the NSS and NDS as the preferred means of countering adversary fait accompli strategies. It is the responsibility of the joint force to develop viable deterrence by denial options. While all of the services are working on this problem, the Navy and Marine Corps are supporting deterrence through their respective sea denial and sea control concepts, specifically EABO and DMO. These concepts look to overcome the challenges of the current and future security environment by transforming the application of traditional military principles through disruptive technologies and concepts of operation.

The Navy and Marine Corps are refining the mutually supporting concepts of DMO and EABO to provide joint force commanders with feasible options for deterrence by denial. DMO is premised on the disaggregation of naval forces at sea, distributing their offensive capability geographically.⁴ Forces are distributed, increasing their survivability, while offensive effects are capable of massing through synchronization and aggregation of sensors and shooters across a theater. This distribution accounts for the ever-increasing threat range of adversary WEZ, reducing the risk to U.S. warships.

DMO is complemented by EABO, in which Marine Corps forces enable sea control and sea denial by establishing and operating from EABs at sea and ashore, using a variety of platforms deployed in littoral regions. Once established in their EABs, naval forces deploy and operate sensor, shooter, C2 systems, and other capabilities required to persist forward as stand-in forces.⁵

Operating inside the WEZ, EABO enables the stand-in naval forces that provide sea control and denial,  and changes adversary decision-making to favor U.S. interests, deters aggression, and prevents conflict. During full-spectrum combat operations, EABO-enabled stand-in naval forces allow joint and naval commanders to exploit opportunities to leverage stand-off forces and win battles at sea and ashore.⁶

The EABO concept is highly promising and could resolve the wicked problem presented by adversary A2/AD capabilities combined with fait accompli strategies. But EABO is characterized by an extremely high level of risk for EAB-hosted inside forces. The most immediate problem is enabling C2 while reducing detection to ensure EAB survivability, and reducing jamming to ensure lethality and utility at the decisive moment.

Once deployed within an adversary’s WEZ, inside forces are at constant risk of detection; they must put a premium on concealment. The increasingly contested electromagnetic spectrum, and accelerating capabilities to detect and intercept signals of any kind, mean inside forces will be challenged to communicate with a higher headquarters. This is an imperative because it is required for the command to fire on targets that will incur operational and strategic effects.

As stand-in forces aim to be deployed to key maritime terrain allowing them to employ fires against adversary ashore and afloat targets, they will often be within detectable range of shore-based and afloat direction finding (DF) systems. Communications using higher-power settings needed to successfully connect to higher headquarters will be highly susceptible to detection. Space-based ISR will also be regularly conducting surveillance on this key maritime terrain. Any misstep in the use of current C2 systems will reveal the locations of EABs, allowing adversaries to take steps that will mitigate their utility to any plan for deterrence.

Signature Solutions

Emerging tactics and technologies can be employed to overcome these signature challenges, mitigating the greatest risks to the inside forces that will be conducting EABO.

For the purposes of communicating while avoiding detection and allowing inside forces to reduce signature and remain concealed in the electromagnetic spectrum, the High Frequency (HF) band is the premier option. In the EAB environment, communications systems using frequency bands higher than HF remain easily detectable; in concert with their low footprint, rapid set-up, and network flexibility, HF radios are the most viable candidate for successful signature management.⁷ But even HF in normal operating modes is likely to be detected if the location and direction of propagation are being scanned by current DF systems at the time of transmission.⁸

HF Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) is a tactic that rapidly varies the power output and frequency of HF channels used to transmit, greatly reducing the likelihood of detection.⁹ With appropriately trained personnel, certain maritime communications systems are currently capable of employing HF LPI.

The challenge is that no training standard currently exists by which to prepare naval communicators to use this technique. Whether HF-LPI is employed or not, and how well it might be executed, is completely at the discretion of individual ship and unit commanders. Though the principles behind HF-LPI are decades old, disruption must first occur in existing standard operating procedures and communications practices across the fleet to ensure HF-LPI is a technique in which personnel are reliably proficient. Such an initiative would be remarkably simple and affordable to implement today, providing an asymmetric advantage over enemy DF capabilities, if the will to employ HF-LPI is exercised.

Institutionalize over Time by Automating Spectrum Modulation

While training in HF-LPI techniques provides a short-term solution, automating this and similar means by which to conceal presence in the electromagnetic spectrum is the long-term answer by which to revolutionize signature management. Emerging spectrum modulation techniques, embedded in systems being researched and developed, will provide this capability.

While Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) is a tried-and-true method to rapidly move across frequencies, new variations provide greater protection. Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) currently avoids crowded frequencies to support Bluetooth, but can be similarly used to avoid frequencies that adversaries are scanning or monitoring. Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) randomizes bit transmission, and is currently in use supporting Wi-Fi networks. While most applications seek dispreads to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, anti-intercept methods would be complemented by reversing this process, hiding the signal in the noise. Fielding systems that automate these spectrum modulation techniques will minimize signal detection, interception, and exploitation.¹⁰

Guarantee Signal Integrity – Systems-Based Interceptor and Jammer Rejection

Eventually, inside forces will have to increase their signature when they employ their fires systems for the purposes of achieving deterrence, and when this time comes, signal integrity will trump the need for signature concealment. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently developing communications technologies with the potential to achieve this end. The Hyper-wideband Enabled Radio-Frequency Messaging (HERMES) system works with extremely wide radio frequency bands, while deploying several interceptor and jammer rejection techniques, such as processing gain, integrated filters, and active cancellation.¹¹ The broad spectral spreading further challenges detection systems and increases interference resistance.¹² Similarly, the Protected Forward Communications (PFC) program allows military forces to persist and operate in a contested electromagnetic environment using a structured system engineering method.¹³ The PFC program would protect not only external communications from an EAB to higher headquarters – for example, the order to fire from an EAB at an enemy ship – but also internal communications and signals, such as the signal for a system to fire from an operator within the EAB, and signals from a sensor that would guide ordnance onto target.

Hide in Plain Sight – Nuke the Spectrum

It is not hard to hear a single voice, even in a large room. However, it is very difficult to hear that voice in a crowd. We need to build the haystack in which to hide the needle. At present, EABs and ships operating in the first and second island chains present isolated voices that are susceptible to detection and targeting at even a single breach of signature management discipline. Artificially raising the signature baseline will provide a robust electromagnetic canopy under which inside forces can conceal themselves. Rather than operating under an overarching philosophy of carefully maintained silence and signature control, saturating the spectrum with numerous false emissions can overwhelm an adversary’s ability to make sense of the environment and provide openings for one’s own forces to emit and communicate.

Currently, swarming technologies are being developed and fielded to provide combat power via small, cheap, attritable unmanned systems. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) are presently testing a ‘ghost fleet’ of small, interconnected attack boats.¹⁴ Similarly, DARPA is also experimenting with its Gremlins program, providing low cost swarms of interconnected, unmanned aerial systems launched from a larger aircraft.¹⁵ While these systems aim to provide sensor and shooter functions, the concepts can be easily modified to serve a signature deception function. Outfitting swarms of unmanned vehicles instead with transmissions systems that communicate on the same frequencies, power levels, and data rates as those C2 systems employed by inside naval forces, they would provide a swarming mask of signature in any operating environment.

A functional example is the Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD), jointly developed by DARPA and Raytheon. The MALD is a low-cost, expendable air-launched system that simulates flight profiles and signatures of aircraft.¹⁶ Combining this system with similar decoys deployed across the maritime domain will further confound adversaries.¹⁷ By providing a litany of other targets to detect and target, naval planners will have ‘nuked the spectrum,’ creating an exasperating targeting dilemma for adversaries who will have to dedicate an untenable amount of resources to separate the signal from the noise. Naval inside forces, whether operating on EABs or aboard ships supporting DMO, will have the concealment they need to mass effects inside the WEZ and provide sea denial and sea control.  

Managing Signature for Deterrence and Denial

The sea services aim to provide deterrence by denial through the related concepts of DMO and EABO. Stand-in forces operating from EABs inside an adversary’s WEZ can overcome enemy A2/AD, prevent competitors from employing fait accompli strategies, and secure U.S. interests across the globe.

However, the high risk assumed by inside forces makes signature management a paramount requirement for success. Conventional means and methods of communications and combat systems operation mean inside forces run a high risk for detection and jamming. By applying emerging tactics, such as HF LPI, along with emerging technologies, including HERMES, PFC, modulation techniques, and spectrum deception, stand-in forces can manage their signature and maintain signal integrity. In acquiring, fielding, and employing these tactics and technologies, EABO and DMO will be viable concepts by which deterrence by denial can be realized. Signature management secured in these ways will ensure the sea services maintain our nation’s advantage to prevent, and if necessary, win the next war.

Brian Kerg is a Marine Corps officer and writer currently serving as the Fleet Amphibious Communications Officer, U.S. Fleet Forces Command. He is a Non-Resident Fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity. His professional writing has appeared in War on the Rocks, Proceedings, The Marine Corps Gazette, and The Strategy Bridge. His fiction has appeared in The Deadly Writer’s Patrol, Line of Advance, and The Report. Follow or contact him @BrianKerg. 

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16. Raytheon, “MALD Decoy,” Raytheon Missiles & Defense (accessed 03 August 2020: https://www.raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/capabilities/products/mald-decoy).

17. Walker Mills, “A tool for Deception: The Urgent Need for EM Decoys,” War Room (accessed 03 August 2020: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/tactical-decoys/).

Featured Image: U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Dylan Griffen (Left), a field radio operator, and Lance Corporal Brent Millard (Right), an anti-tank missileman assigned to 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, conduct pre-flight maintenance at San Clemente Island, California, May 1, 2020. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Manuel A. Serrano)