The U.S. needs to pay more attention to electronic warfare

A guest post by Steven Glinert.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

When I talk about U.S.-China competition, I usually talk about the economic side of things — industrial policy, export controls, tariffs, and so on. But it’s also important to think about how economic strength can and should be translated into military power — after all, the U.S.’ goal is to deter China from launching a major war, and that requires a powerful military. In this guest post, Steven Glinert (who has been a previous Noahpinion guest contributor) argues that the U.S. needs a greater sense of urgency about electronic warfare — the use of EM radiation to jam, trick, or intercept enemy communications.

The Ukraine war has vividly demonstrated the importance of electronic warfare — as drones have become the indispensable weapon of the modern battlefield, disabling or tricking those drones has become essential. Russia, unfortunately, has what many observers believe are the world’s best electronic warfare capabilities, and the U.S. is racing to catch up. The implications for a U.S.-China war in Asia seem both urgent and dire, and as Glinert argues in the post below, we need to get more serious about it.

Steven Glinert is the founder and CEO of a semiconductor startup called Sphere Semi. He lives between Singapore and the Bay Area.

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Source: CSIS

The following scenario is a realistic one. The Chinese themselves often point to it as a preferred state of affairs. It’s also one that helps us frame the importance of advanced electronic warfare. 

It’s the year 2029, and China has launched a massive military exercise, simulating a blockade of Taiwan—an island it considers its own. Rhetoric had intensified over the past several months, leading to this exercise aimed at “punishing Taiwan” for its “unlawful moves towards separatism.” A week later, with the blockade firmly in place, China announces it will launch “a special law enforcement operation against the province of Taiwan.” They begin turning away sea-borne traffic and prevent Taiwanese cargo ships from leaving the island. What started as a fake blockade has now become extremely real.

The Chinese and the United States, in this scenario, are both seeking to push the other side to back down with actions short of kinetic. The first stop for the Chinese is a cyberattack at the same time as the announcement of the law enforcement action. If it’s effective enough, they believe, it might deter the US entirely. 

The cyberattack against the Japanese and US militaries in the Pacific rattles but also emboldens. The US and allies decide that they need to call China’s bluff and move a carrier strike group through the blockade line on the Eastern side of the island, accompanying LNG shipments. It’s a risky maneuver. The carrier stays back and a number of destroyers and support ships attempt to run the blockade.

China warns that this action is approaching an act of war and declares that if the United States tries to move its fleet through the “law enforcement area,” it will be forced to respond. They lay down a red line. Despite this, U.S. ships begin moving through the blockade line. 

Electronic warfare is their go to choice in this scenario. What follows is not some fantasy I've invented; China has written about this exact response extensively. Since at least 2001, they have developed an electronic warfare strategy specifically aimed at countering and deterring the United States, which they now decide to deploy. 

We do know some broad strokes about what they might do. Specifically, the Chinese think of electronic warfare as something short of an act of war and draw a direct line between it and deterrence. They also think of electronic warfare as something you do with overwhelming force, in their own sensational language, “an electronic pearl harbor”. We also know that this “pearl harbor” would be most effective in a Taiwan scenario, as they would pursue extensive jamming from on-shore assets in Xiamen. 

First, they move in electronic warfare surface assets to launch a combined electronic attack. For now, they decide against using EMPs or anti-satellite weapons, opting instead to jam and blind the U.S. fleet.

Here’s how the Chinese see this playing out:

As the United States ships start moving through the blockade line, the Chinese will move their electronic warfare platforms into position. The intended effect of this all out attack will be to leave the US fleet blind and confused. A combination of airborne jammers, shipborne electronic warfare systems, and most prominently, ground-based jamming systems will disrupt or render completely useless the communications and sensor systems of the US fleet. While brute force jamming will be the main thrust of such an attack, the Chinese forces will also employ more deceptive techniques to create false targets and create confusion. 

While radar systems and infrared systems might work intermittently, the ships will be unable to coordinate between each other or communicate with the carrier strike group. At that point, the Chinese will hope US leadership will order their fleet to turn around, tail between its legs, all but ceding Taiwan to them without firing a shot. 

This does not have to happen. We can make decisions today to prevent this.

Introduction: What is This Article About?

Electronic warfare (EW) is a bit of a sleeper in the US arsenal. The US invented its modern form and has used it to great effect in every war we’ve fought, especially since 1990. Indeed, if you want to know what the literal “war” in “chip wars” is,  it’s this. The US spends about as much on it as its much cooler and flashier younger sibling, cyberwarfare (around $5b) and spending is due to increase. Likewise, the Chinese think of it as essential to their victory in a potential war against the US. Finally, it has become a defining aspect of the war in Ukraine, with Russian and Ukrainian forces playing a cat and mouse game between drones and electronic attacks. 

The purpose of this piece is not to do a deep dive on military strategy and tactics. That’s not my area of expertise and someone out there better qualified can do that. This piece is about understanding what electronic warfare is, why it is important, and what technological and industrial strategies are necessary to win. 

My specific prescription is a strategy around nimbleness and autonomy. The Chinese are investing heavily in EW and if we want to remain dominant, we need to be able to adapt fast. This nimbleness and autonomy will come out of some amount of industrial policy, but the primary locus will be improved AI and autonomy.

There are three policies we can pursue today. One is an industrial policy and the other two are tech policies. These are: 

1. A flexible (and homegrown) supply chain for electronic parts, especially chips.

2. A short term defocusing on the hardware aspects of electronic warfare (which the primes like because they can charge for it), towards more flexible AI and software (which favors startups).

3. A long term focus on autonomy, which allows us to escape the framework of EW altogether. 

Electronic warfare has been a feature of war since at least WWI, but the increasing data and information processing needed for precision warfare has transformed it from a background feature to something potentially decisive. Ukraine has been a watershed moment. Russia has jammed many of the hi-tech weapons we send to Ukraine. For example, precision missiles struggle to phone home, which has rendered them often useless.

The United States is the incumbent power and has been the primary innovator in electronic warfare in the past (with Israel being a close second). The precision warfare revolution was our revolution. A multipolar world means we are facing aggressive enemies. We need to respond with our strengths. That is to say, agile AI based platforms that are nimble enough to adapt quickly and a flexible industrial base to back it up. 

What is Electronic Warfare?

Source: GlobalData

First, some basic science. Electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, making them ideal carriers for information over distances. We encode data on these waves and transmit them wirelessly between devices. Most communication systems operate on this basis, including military ones, from telling another ship where you are to targeting a missile. Electronic warfare simply is a way to either bluntly attack or hijack this transmission system. 

Electronic warfare is distinct from cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare can be integrated into EW attack, but cyber attacks would more likely be used to confuse an adversary before battle begins. EW is usually more tactical and physical, deployed on actual weapons systems, operating in close range. 

Let’s return to our scenario for a moment...

The Chinese and the United States have transitioned to operating militaries, where all platforms are integrated into a “precision strike complex”. You’ll hear lots of buzzwords around this, like “net centric warfare” and “reconnaissance strike complex”. 

Let’s push past the buzzwords. Battlefield operations move at high speeds and with extremely precise weapons. The US fleet sitting off of Taiwan is an integrated machine. Some systems find the enemy and then communicate back to other systems about the enemy’s position, before launching precision weapons that rarely, if ever, miss. Data and communications and triangulation and sensors are all key. If I can see you, I can kill you. Gone are the days of inaccurate artillery, mostly used for softening enemy lines. In this form of war, latency is the enemy. Once an enemy is scouted, the rapid and increasingly automated launch sequence for precision weaponry begins. 

This means that if the Chinese can slow down or block our communications, they can kill us before we kill them, which is why a non-kinetic EW attack that succeeds would be fatal enough to cause a US fleet to turn around. Any kinetic attack would be a formality. 

The core concepts of electronic warfare can be bucketed into two easy categories. The first is what the Chinese are attempting to do, “electronic attack”. That is, the use of electromagnetic energy at a specific frequency (or a set of frequencies) to “jam” an enemy’s communication systems or, in a more complex operation, deceive them. The second is what the United States needs to do, “electronic defense”. This includes frequency hopping, spectrum management, or adjusting the way the signal is emitted. 

How does this all come together?

First, a simple diagram. 

Source: USNI

The military has some truly deplorable graphics. But, let’s actually dig into some basics: As with all communication systems, there is a hardware and software layer. The hardware is at its root, chips, both analog and digital, attached to an antenna, for both transmitting and receiving. 

The analog chips are for interfacing with the world. The digital chips, signals processors, FPGAs, and GPUs are what connect this hardware infrastructure to the next layer of the stack, the software. 

While traditionally chips have been the star of the show, software increasingly plays a key role. Software is the integrator of data and in the control seat of increasingly complex operations in EW. 

In our scenario, the Chinese want to launch an electronic warfare attack and the US needs to field an EW defense. Both of these have a hardware basis, but with an increasingly integral software component. 

The most common type of EW attack is jamming. Jamming, at its most basic, is just sending an EM pulse at a specific frequency. The pulse is white noise, decreasing the signal to noise ratio. In the simple diagram below, we can see the missile attempts to reflect a signal back off of its target and a jammer puts out noise to confuse its position. 

Source: Wang & Wang (2013)

However, much of magic happens at a software layer. The entire loop prior to that white noise signal being transmitted involves identifying the target, scanning the spectrum to understand what frequency the target is transmitting at, and then integrating this data before firing that beam off.

To drive the point home, the United States, here on the defensive, is even more reliant on software. Platforms must integrate across the entire process: from realizing that you are being attacked to rapidly switching spectrums or switching transmission patterns. If the US fleet is going to succeed in dodging this attack, it will need to integrate this data rapidly, across complex communication hardware, a purely software level problem. 

How Can We Win?

Electronic warfare might not decide the conflict, but the ability to weather this hypothetical attack and maintain superiority in the electromagnetic domain will be necessary. For both industrial and technology policy in EW, the overriding theme should be “be nimble” and going into the future, “be autonomous”. We’ve already seen the importance of this in Ukraine. Russian missiles missed their targets in the early days of the war, but updates to their anti-EW technology have fixed that.

Nimbleness in industrial policy means having a robust domestic chip production ecosystem and a strong relationship between those companies and the military. We need to localize our chip supply chain, in particular around analog chips. I have spoken to leaders in the navy who have complained about the inability to readily hotswap chips.

More importantly than industrial, we need investment in AI, moving the software layer from something that is algorithmic to an AI based adaptive strategy. Spending on faster and faster hardware is a fool's errand when the game changes so often. We need intelligent radio systems that can make AI-driven, dynamic decisions to sense and adapt to the electromagnetic environment, making real-time decisions to optimize communication and counter enemy signals. 

Long term, however, none of this will be enough. The best way to win at electronic warfare is to not play (as much). While autonomy does require some level of connectivity, autonomous agents reduce the cumulative amount of connectivity needed, especially across longer distances.  

Both AI and autonomy, however, will require the government to move away from working with primes solely for providing platforms. Startups will be the engines here, primarily. 

None of this sort of military innovation is beyond the reach of the United States. We’ve been the leader in every military revolution since 1941. We’ll nail this one too if we do what we’re best at. 

To close with a few policy suggestions:

• Continue to invest in domestic chip production and reinforce our military supply chain to allow for hot swapping chips. 

• Create a better regulatory interface for AI and tech companies to interact with the more classified parts of our military. Right now, the interfaces between defense and the tech world are highly limited to a few powerless bureaucrats. I have massive respect for L3 Harris and Lockheed, but this is a young man’s game. 

Citations:

McReynolds, J. (Ed.). (2017). China's evolving military strategy. Brookings Institution Press.

Elsworth, A. T. (2010). Electronic Warfare (Defense, Security and Strategy). Nova Science Publishers Inc.

Poisel, R. A. (2013). Information Warfare and Electronic Warfare Systems. Artech House.

Wildenberg, T. (2023). Fighting in the Electromagnetic Spectrum: U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Electronic Warfare Aircraft, Missions, and Equipment. Naval Institute Press.

Adamy, D. L. (2009). EW 103: Tactical Battlefield Communications Electronic Warfare. Artech House.

Tingstad, A., Vedula, P., Guffey, R. A., Mehta, K. R., Menthe, L., & Roberts, J. (2023). Outsmarting Agile Adversaries in the Electromagnetic Spectrum: Executive Summary. RAND Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA981-2.html

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