U.S. Representative Rick Larsen (WA-02) lauded the work of Naval Air Station Whidbey and the EA/6B Prowler and EA/18G Growler squadrons during a keynote speech he delivered on electronic warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which hosted an all-day conference titled “Addressing an Increasingly Congested and Contested Electro-Magnetic Spectrum.” Larsen is the Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Electronic Warfare Working Group, an organization dedicated to educating senior policymakers, including the Department of Defense and Congress, about the importance of Electronic Warfare to our national security. This is particularly important to Northwest Washington, which is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and the Navy’s Electronic Attack Wing-Pacific, the military’s premiere Electronic Warfare unit.
Maren Leed, Director of the New Defense Approaches Project at CSIS, introduced Rep. Larsen to the over 100 attendees from the military, academia, and private industry present at the conference.
“(Rep. Larsen) is deeply steeped in these issues, he’s been a great advocate for the broad capability nationally, and he’s really been a leader in the House in developing a broader understanding across all the relevant committees about the importance of the Electronic Warfare component of our national defense,” Leed said.
“I appreciate the opportunity to draw attention to the outstanding work being done by Electronic Warfare experts at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island,” said Rep. Larsen. “I will continue to highlight the unique skills of this community as I keep working to make sure that our military is focused on current and future Electronic Warfare threats.”
The following is Rep. Larsen’s remarks, as prepared for delivery:
CSIS Keynote on Electronic Warfare
September 15, 2010
You can’t touch the spectrum, you can’t see the spectrum, and the devices which manipulate the spectrum are a mystery to everyone but technical experts. It is a challenge to explain Electronic Warfare to Members of Congress and even senior officials at the Department of Defense. But controlling the Electromagnetic Spectrum is essential to winning wars and protecting our service members.
So I would like to thank CSIS for hosting this conference to help folks here in Washington DC understand Electronic Warfare (EW) and why it is important to control the electromagnetic spectrum.
EW, broadly defined, is the fight to control who uses the electromagnetic spectrum, and how they use it. People in my district associate EW with Airborne Electronic Attack – essentially, EA/6B Prowlers and now EA/18G Growlers carrying high-powered jammers to confuse and incapacitate enemy radar systems.
As the Representative for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State, where the Navy’s Electronic Attack Wing is located, I am a strong advocate for these capabilities.
Some folks associate EW with the work of JIEDDO – the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization – which was established during the Iraq war to defeat roadside bombs.
But EW is much broader – we use electromagnetic energy in a wide range of offensive and defensive weapons systems including radars on ships, electronic countermeasures on helicopters, and jammers on ground vehicles, to give just a few examples.
The most visible and publicized example of EW in the last few years has been the fight against Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq. Insurgents in Iraq built IEDs which are detonated by simple devices such as cell phones and garage door openers.
This was a somewhat basic form of EW but it was a very effective form of EW.
As the military struggled to meet this threat, they turned to the Navy, which has maintained the strongest investments in EW technology and personnel since the end of Vietnam. Many Navy Electronic Warfare Officers from my district deployed with the Army and Marine Corps to Iraq and Afghanistan to help control the spectrum, and nearly 250 technical experts at Naval Station Crane are currently working to support Marine Corps and Army jamming programs.
This is a success story - we have made great progress in developing and deploying technologies that can defeat IEDs, and this has saved the lives of U.S. troops.
Further, our military remains focused on this threat. They have mobilized engineers to stay ahead of the new techniques that insurgents might develop, and the Army is training EW experts to help win the ground EW fight.
In my view, the key issue is what happens after the clear and present threat of IEDs fades? What should we be doing to make sure we are focused on spectrum issues moving forward?
The Congressional EW Working Group – which I chair along with Rep. Joe Pitts from Pennsylvania - started looking at some of these issues in 2008. We met with representatives from industry, academia, and the military services to learn about what steps the Department of Defense should take to ensure that we continue to control the spectrum long into the future.
We published our findings in a report by the Association of Old Crows entitled the “Future of Electronic Warfare.” We recommended that the Department of Defense focus on three key areas:
- Training/Readiness
- Technology
- Leadership
Readiness – EW capabilities are really human capabilities. We need to have a core group of highly-trained individuals to help each service identify threats to the spectrum, develop and deploy solutions to these threats, and perhaps most importantly, to coordinate EW systems in theater to make sure that we control the spectrum during operations.
There has been some progress on this issue – the Army has established an EW training school and the Air Force has announced the creation of an F-35 EW squadron. These are new organizations, but they should yield long-term results as more people understand what EW is and why it is important.
Investment – During times of war, our men and women in the field realize how important it is to invest in the spectrum, and money pours into EW. But during times of peace, EW is one of the first places that gets cut because it is not as visible as ships, planes, and tanks. It is easier to fight for a ship than an electromagnetic wave.
We need to move away from this “feast or famine” mentality. The military needs to continue stable, coordinated investments in EW technologies – even if the overall defense budget is flat or declines in the future.
Further, the Department of Defense needs to make sure that it is on the same page with private industry. The EW hardware we are developing today will be around for years if not decades, but commercial technologies that use the spectrum evolve more quickly. The military needs to work with private industry to make sure that we are making the right investments so we can have high quality EW hardware that can be upgraded as threats evolve.
Leadership – I think one of the most important steps we can take to improve our ability to control the spectrum is to improve EW leadership – within the military services, at the joint level, and within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This is not just the view of myself or the EW Working Group – U.S. Strategic Command performed a Capabilities Based Assessment and determined that the lack of unified EW Leadership was the #1 problem facing our military’s ability to control the spectrum.
Creating a leadership structure for EW will create a more obvious career path for EW specialists, and high-ranking leaders will have more clout when it comes to setting policy and fighting for resources.
At a minimum, I believe that we need to see the following changes in our leadership structure for EW.
- Each service needs to have a general or flag officer who focuses on EW.
- There should be a joint military organization to coordinate EW across the services and advocate for the EW budget.
- DOD should create an EW position within the Office of Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics to make sure that there is appropriate attention on EW within DOD.
This type of leadership structure will ensure that as the immediate threat of IEDs fades, senior policymakers will be reminded of the importance of controlling the spectrum.
The Department of Defense is focused on the challenges of EW investment, training, and leadership, and is conducting various studies on how it manages EW within the services.
The services and DOD are seeking to define the relationship between EW and Information Operations, and they are working create an EW enterprise that can handle the broad challenges of setting policy, researching new technologies, coordinating acquisitions, and training EW experts to deal with both electronic attack and the tough issue of how we use an increasingly congested spectrum ourselves. These studies should help inform the POM-12.
As DOD continues to work to improve its EW capabilities and management structure, I am working to raise awareness in Congress about the critical need to control the spectrum. I sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that requires the Department of Defense to submit an EW report to Congress each year for the next five years. The law requires the report to include information on the Department’s EW strategy, its EW leadership structure, and the major EW programs that the Department is working on right now.
The report was due last February but has not yet been submitted – we are going to continue pressing DOD to get this information to Congress, as required by law, as soon as possible. I have spoken with Chairman Skelton and believe that this report, when submitted, would be a good topic for a hearing early next year.
I would like to conclude by talking about Afghanistan. I just returned from a CODEL to Afghanistan where I met with many of our troops and our military and civilian leaders.
The demand for EW capabilities in Afghanistan is high from both U.S. Forces and our NATO allies. General Cartwright, during his confirmation hearing last year, noted that a lack of Airborne Electronic Attack was a key deficiency in Afghanistan. To meet that gap, the Navy will buy 26 additional EA/18G Growlers, and they will deploy to Afghanistan in support of the war effort.
EW is saving lives in Afghanistan - our EW systems are frustrating to insurgents and forcing them to change their tactics.
I think an area for improvement is our cooperation with our allies on EW. We need to continue to focus on making our relationship with NATO more “need to share” and less “need to know” so that we can work more with our partners to defeat insurgent weapons.
Cooperation with NATO is critical to our success overall, and I hope that our partners in Europe will step up and dedicate more resources to Afghanistan during the Lisbon conference in November.
I would like to end by thanking our host CSIS again and opening up for questions.
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