Warfighting in a saturated radio spectrum places a premium on command and control, and spectrum management. The US Joint Electromagnetic Battle Management system should help both.
War may be raging in Ukraine but, for the most part, cell phone coverage is available. Broadcasters near the front transmit their footage and reports across satellite links. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation provides military and civilian users alike with broadband internet coverage. Ukraine’s heavily tasked emergency services use their radios to communicate. Meanwhile, Russian and Ukrainian troops use their transceivers to share voice and data traffic. Much of this civilian and military communication takes place in very/ultra high frequency (V/UHF: 30 MHz to 3 GHz) wavebands in the radio segment of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Credit: Signals Analysis Training_(USMC;Staff Sgt Samuel Ruiz)
The COMINT battle
Communications Intelligence (COMINT) operatives in both the Russian and Ukrainian military must search and locate their Signals of Interest (SOI) in this morass of electromagnetic noise. The collection of COMINT at the tactical and operational levels has two key roles: Firstly, COMINT operatives are trying to locate and identify hostile radio emissions. If you are a Russian communications intelligence operative, finding the location of Ukrainian military radios in a specific locale is a key part of the land battle. It is a truism of electronic warfare (EW) that if you find an enemy radio, you usually find the enemy. Soldiers, platforms, weapons, sensors and bases, henceforth known as assets, all depend on radio communications. These signals carry command and control (C2) and situational awareness (SA) traffic. By plotting where hostile radio signals are discovered, COMINT experts can plot the locations of hostile units.
Simply observing these signals can reveal much about the prevailing tactical and operational situations. If radio transmissions suddenly cease on the other side of the frontline, does this mean that an enemy attack is imminent? Are troops observing radio silence to this end? Similarly, if hostile traffic begins to increase, does this mean units are sharing plans in preparation for manoeuvre? If the observed radio signals are moving, is manoeuvre occurring? It may be possible for COMINT operatives to break into encrypted communications. Unsurprisingly, militaries prefer to keep their communications discreet. Significant work goes into making signals as difficult as possible to detect. Radio transmissions are often extremely discreet, being as ‘quiet’ as possible. The intention is to ensure these signals largely disappear into the prevailing electromagnetic noise discussed above.
If radio traffic is discovered, encryption will hopefully add an additional layer of protection. COMINT cadres will have to break through this encryption in order to exploit the information carried in the traffic. This may be easier said than done. The sophistication of the encryption may mean it is not possible to do this in real time. Nonetheless, once codes are cracked, traffic may give up its secrets, revealing important intelligence which can be exploited. Communications intelligence experts will then be able to see the C2 and situational awareness information zipping between enemy units. This COMINT can be exploited for the edification of one’s own side. Alternatively, once the hostile radio networks have been hacked, false or misleading radio traffic can be implanted to hamper command and control, and SA.
As seen in Ukraine in the past, breaking into a hostile radio network may enable the insertion of malicious code. Military assets all depend on digital systems to some extent. Computerised battle management systems aid command and control. Digital fire control systems aid artillery. Troops rely on zeros and ones transmitted across radio networks for maps and reconnaissance pictures and inserting malicious code via a radio transmission into these networks can wreak havoc in these systems. Alongside cyber effects, COMINT efforts which identify hostile radios and their accompanying networks indicate jamming targets. These radios and networks can be targeted by hostile jamming waveforms which will do their best to get the former off the air.
Managing the spectrum
The sheer saturation of radio communications in military and civilian life makes the efficient management of the COMINT mission vital. According to statista.com, a data analysis and business intelligence platform, as of 2022, over 88% of the world’s population had access to cellular coverage. Impoverished countries including Afghanistan and Iraq, where US-led coalitions waged operations in the recent past, have featured ubiquitous cell phone connectivity. The reality is that tomorrow’s wars will be fought in environments were thousands, if not millions, of signals will inhabit the ether. This may even be the case across comparatively small areas. COMINT cadres have several tasks: Firstly, SOIs must be found in the cacophony of noise. These SOIs must be located and identified. Once this process is complete, decisions must be made on how these signals of interest will be engaged. Will the signals be jammed? Will they be exploited for intelligence? Will identified radios, and their networks, be used as conduits for cyberattacks? Will the signals, radios and their networks simply be left alone instead perhaps for exploitation at another date, or simply to silently watch to learn about the enemy’s situation and intentions at that moment?
Credit: Alexey M., via Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-4.0
Automating this process as much as possible makes sense. Even if operations are being performed over a comparatively small area, this area may be deluged with radio signals, particularly if it is an urban environment. At the operational level, jointness will be essential. It may be an army’s electronic warfare units that are tasked with jamming a hostile radio network, but; it could also be a naval unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operating over land that discovers the network in the first place. This information needs to be taken from the UAV, analysed and then shared with the army EW unit. Navies, armies, air and space forces, and cyber forces, often maintain their own tactical and operational level signals intelligence (SIGINT) C2 systems. These C2 systems will handle COMINT and electronic intelligence (ELINT). ELINT is a catch-all term for any radio signals not associated with communications. Such signals can include radar transmissions or position, navigation and timing signals from global navigation satellite system constellations.
To ensure the smooth flow of operationally and tactically relevant SIGINT between deployed forces, it is necessary to break down the stovepipes which may exist between service signals intelligence C2 capabilities. The US Department of Defense (DOD) is embracing this approach via the Joint Electromagnetic Battle Management (EMBM-J) system. As its name suggests, the EMBM-J is an operational-level SIGINT software-based command and control system for use by the joint force. The EMBM-J will act as a clearing house for SIGINT with ELINT and COMINT received from across the joint force analysed by the EMBM-J and then shared with whichever part of the joint force needs this.
US government documents provide useful insight into the EMBM-J’s architecture and mission. The US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is responsible for the system, was contacted during the preparation of this article for comment, but declined to participate. Palantir Systems, a key EMBM-J contractor, also left several emails asking for more information on their involvement with EMBM-J unanswered. Available US DOD documents state that key EMBM-J capabilities include the following: to extract and analyse information from multiple sources across security levels; to enable situational understanding of the electromagnetic operating environment (EMOE); to create and display the EMOE browser-based desktop environment and identify impacts of electromagnetic interference; to enable a suite of tools that provide SA, C2, decision-support and training, and provide the near real-time integration and display of foundational data and processed electromagnetic spectrum feeds. These feeds are essentially the streams of incoming SIGINT that the EMBM-J will process.
Credit: DISA
As the documents make clear, the EMBM-J has clear operational and strategic roles to play. In the first instance, the system supports the US DOD’s prevailing Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (JEMSO) doctrine. Published in May 2020, the JEMSO doctrine stipulates how US forces will manoeuvre in the electromagnetic spectrum to achieve positions of electromagnetic supremacy and superiority (E2S). Echoing airpower doctrine, electromagnetic superiority is the condition in which the red force is only capable of isolated and sporadic challenges to blue force’s ownership of the spectrum across a specific locale. Electromagnetic supremacy is the condition where the red force cannot meaningfully contest blue force spectrum ownership; While electromagnetic manoeuvre is intended to win and sustain E2S at the expense of one’s adversary, the ultimate goal is to deprive the latter of the ability to exploit the spectrum to support their warfighting.
The strategic role of the EMBM-J is to support the wider DOD’s Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy. The strategy was published a few months after the JEMSO doctrine in October 2020 and in its own words: “(The strategy) seeks to align EMS (Electromagnetic Spectrum) resources, capabilities, and activities across the DOD to support our core national security objectives while remaining mindful of the importance of US economic prosperity.” The strategy takes a whole-of-government approach. The approach covers the DOD’s use and exploitation of the spectrum. The protection of domestic spectrum use within the United States is also a key aim of the strategy. Civilian reliance on the radio segment of the electromagnetic spectrum means that access to it must be safeguarded. In addition, “(the strategy) addresses how (the) DOD will develop superior EMS capabilities; evolve to an agile, fully integrated EMS infrastructure; pursue total force EMS readiness; secure enduring partnerships for EMS advantage; and establish effective EMS governance to support strategic and operational objectives.”
Implementation
According to the US government documents, over USD 43 million may have been spent by the DOD on EMBM-J over 2023 and 2024. Work on the initiative appears to have started in 2017. A further USD 19 million is expected to be spent on the EMBM-J in 2025. During 2024, DISA will continue to develop the EMBM-J’s mission capabilities in support of the overall Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy. This overarching task includes situational awareness software releases. The releases build towards what is termed the Minimum Viable Capability Release (MCVR). Progressively more data and functionality will be loaded into the EMBM-J architecture via the SA releases to achieve an MCVR status which can be made available to the user community.
Credit: US DoD
Alongside the SA software releases to support the move towards MCVR, work on the EMBM-J will include the development of a decision-support tool as part of the systems’ architecture. The tool is intended to support joint electromagnetic spectrum planning processes and is a key element of the EMBM-J. The decision-support tool is needed so that the software can assist tasks such as operational spectrum deconfliction. Broadly speaking, spectrum deconfliction is the process of managing the radio spectrum to avoid events such as electromagnetic blue-on-blue. For example, in EW there is the attendant risk that some jamming degrades friendly electromagnetically-dependent systems, including radars or radios. This is a particular concern when blue forces use similar frequencies to those employed by red forces. Likewise, it may be vital to ensure that joint spectrum operations do not adversely affect civilian spectrum use. Excessively impeding the latter for military ends could be counter-productive from a ‘hearts and minds’ perspective. Blocking out cell phone coverage through excessive jamming could, in some cases, alienate the very populations that US forces are deployed to protect.
Raytheon’s Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT) equipping the US Army as an operational/tactical level EW C2 system was chosen as the basis for the EMBM-J’s decision-support tool. However, the government documents noted that the EWPMT “does not fully satisfy requirements”. Instead, a prototype decision-support tool will be developed. Other tasks performed in 2024 include planning for the integration of the decision-support tool and SA software updates into the EMBM-J architecture. Work is ongoing to integrate the situational awareness capabilities of the EMBM-J into the US DOD’s Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS). The JWICS is a classified intranet housing top secret information. Planning is also afoot to realise an EMBM-J training capability alongside developing the system’s command and control functions.
Credit: US Army
The US government documents continue that work in 2025 will focus on the development of the EMBM-J’s mission capabilities while bringing the SA software releases to a conclusion. Next year, DISA will deliver the decision support tool prototype and begin developing the EMS joint planning process functionality. Work will continue integrating the SA and decision-support tools into the wider EMBM-J architecture. This work is expected to conclude in 2026. Over the longer term, efforts to develop and implement the EMBM-J will continue until at least 2029.
The US armed forces will receive progressively more EMBM-J functionality as the software is developed and rolled out. It is interesting that the documents mention the EWPMT which is one of several US tactical and operational EW command and control systems with similar capabilities in the navy, air force, marine corps and space force.
The US DOD’s articulation of both its JEMSO doctrine and Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy provide useful guides and aspirations around which the EMBM-J can be fashioned. The system’s design underscores the fact that electronic warfare, particularly the electronic attack element of the EW triumvirate, alongside electronic protection and electronic support, cannot be separated from spectrum management. Wars are fought within civilisations and E2S must be won and sustained while those civilisations use the spectrum. The advent of the EMBM-J will help to manage this delicate reality.
Thomas Withington