When it comes to responding to new threats, the US military’s electronic warfare enterprise should take a page from SpaceX, according to the Pentagon’s director for electromagnetic warfare today.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk claimed that Russia had jammed Starlink terminals in Ukraine for hours at a time after the company sent Starlink terminals to the country in February in an apparent effort to help Ukraine maintain its internet connection amid the country’s war with Russia. Starlink was back up and running after a software update, according to Musk, who added on March 25 that the constellation had “resisted all hacking & jamming attempts” in Ukraine.
Assuming Musk’s public comments are accurate, a private firm defeating Russian EW attempts with software updates is the kind of thing that makes Pentagon EW experts sit up and take notice.
“That is fantastic from the standpoint of an EW technologist. “That paradigm and how they did it is a little mind-boggling to me,” said Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Pentagon’s acquisition office. “We need to be able to upgrade in the same way that Starlink was able to when a threat appeared.” We need to be able to change our electromagnetic posture, to be able to change what we’re trying to do very dynamically without losing capability.”
The Russian military has used electronic warfare extensively in Ukraine’s Donbas region, using electromagnetic signals to uncover the positions of Ukrainian forces and disrupt equipment such as drones. The current conflict may be exposing the limits of Russia’s EW capability, with urban warfare posing a new challenge for Moscow.
Another challenge for Russia has been a lack of training and expertise, with major embarrassments such as the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva and continued logistics failures.
