Army Builds Electronic-warfare Teams

The Army is developing its own electronic warfare teams to move away from relying on the expertise of the Air Force and the Navy.

The initial goal is to train more than 1,600 people from enlisted ranks through the officer corps by 2013, and to double that in the following years, giving the Army enough of these specialists to rival its sister services and surpass all the NATO allies combined.

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli was the first to say the Army's neglect of electronic warfare was endangering troops. Chiarelli was the No. 2 commander in Iraq when he sent a memorandum to Army leadership at the Pentagon in February 2006, warning that soldiers were unable to operate new high-tech gear that was being rushed to the war zone to counter the threat of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

"When I first got over there in 2004 and in 2005, we didn't have any Army electronic warfare capabilities," said Chiarelli, now the Army vice chief of staff. The Army reached out to the other services for help, and the Navy immediately responded .

Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chief of naval operations but since promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered to Iraq hundreds of sailors who specialized in electronic warfare.

"They saved a lot of lives when they came over," Chiarelli said.

"They became the most important person in each formation down to the battalion level. They were sought out by soldiers who knew they had to learn this kind of warfare."

In the three years since then, hundreds of Air Force personnel have also served as electronic warfare specialists with ground units fighting in Iraq.

In that time , the Army has produced a doctrine on electronic warfare that will join other new field manuals, including a better known one on counterinsurgency, that are now transforming how the service prepares for and fights wars.

The Army's new field manual, "FM 3-36, Electronic Warfare in Operations," instructs commanders in how to integrate electronic warfare into all tasks, from planning to carrying out military operations. It also lays out a program for training personnel and sets the requirements for equipment.

"We simply have to look at ways to attack, and to protect ourselves, all across the frequency spectrum," said Col. Laurie Moe Buckhout, chief of the Army's electronic warfare division.

Managing communications, and protecting those transmissions, is complicated enough in the civilian world, but the problem is magnified in a combat zone.

Military risk assessments note that potential adversaries, from nation-states to terrorist groups, are seeking to increase their ability to attack electronic frequencies. The goal would be to scramble radio and cell phone traffic, block signals from convoys that allow headquarters to track the movements of troops and supplies, or jam data from satellites that feed vital navigation systems.

"The enemy's ability to weaponize the spectrum to detonate an IED was just the tip of the iceberg," Buckhout said.