US Army Secretary Eric Fanning announced [in August 2016] a new Rapid Capabilities Office to accelerate the development of cyber, electronic warfare…That rapid technological progression is on full display, for example, in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian soldiers have been battling Russian-backed forces since 2014. For example, Russian-backed separatists have used EW and GPS-spoofing to jam and misdirect the drones that Ukrainian troops use to scope out enemy positions. “Over the past several years we’ve learned from what we’ve seen from Russia and Ukraine, and later in Syria, and from the different capabilities they’ve brought to the battlefield. We’ve seen the combination of unmanned aerial systems and offensive cyber and advanced electronic warfare capabilities and how they provided Russian forces a new degree of sophistication,” said Fanning…
“My guess is … that after 15 years of doing largely counter-insurgency operations in the Middle East, the Army is now taking a look at how it would do large force-on-force conflict in a place like Europe. ”
The pace of innovation in EW — in the form of novel new waveforms that can disrupt an adversary’s electronics, paint enemy stealth aircraft* etc. — has surprised many in the military. That’s because EW innovation has become less and less a hardware challenge and more of a software challenge. You can make a new weapon as quickly as your algorithm can pull together a new waveform from the spectrum. But the military, too often, still procures EW assets the same way it buys jets and boats. Slowly.
Excerpts from To Counter Russia’s Cyber Prowess, US Army Launches Rapid-Tech Office, DefenseOne, Aug. 31, 2016
*Radar-absorbent material (RAM), often paints used on aircraft,: absorb radiated energy from a ground or air based radar station into the coating and convert it to heat rather than reflect it back thus avoiding detection by the radar.
Law-In-Action 