Airborne Electromagnetic Warfare in NATO: A Critical European Capability Gap

Airborne electromagnetic warfare (EW) capabilities are critical to Western airpower, but they are also one of the areas in which NATO countries have the greatest dependence on the US military. The scale of this dependence represents a potential risk for the Alliance if Russian aggression occurs when American reinforcements and support capacity are either tied up with a concurrent crisis in another theatre or are otherwise unavailable at scale.

• No single European country has either the existing foundations or sufficient suitably qualified and experienced personnel to rapidly be able to add meaningful capabilities across all aspects of EW. Therefore, creating end-to-end capability within Europe will require genuine multinational partnerships and cooperative specialisation.
   
• The UK has maintained world-class signals analysis and mission dataprogramming expertise, especially through the Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Centre and the tactical data-focused Typhoon Mission Support Centre. However, maintaining these vital and scarce capabilities in electromagnetic support measures (ESM) and electromagnetic countermeasures (ECM) in an era of rapidly evolving digital threat systems will require increased investment and rapid adoption of AI- and machine learning-enabled toolsets.

Read the full article here.