Army Electronic Warfare Investment Lags Russian Threat

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/army-electronic-warfare-investment-lags-rhetoric-russians/



The Army disbanded its Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence (CEWI) units, like the one shown here, after the Cold War.

Army Electronic Warfare Investment Lags Russian Threat
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on March 21, 2016 at 4:00 AM

There is a great disconnect in the Department of Defense. Leaders at the highest levels realize we are falling behind — or have already fallen behind — Russia and China in electronic warfare, the invisible battle of detecting and disrupting the radar and radio transmissions on which a modern military depends. Even in the traditionally lower-tech world of land warfare, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told me EW was a pillar of the future Army, alongside the new domain of cyber and the traditional arts of fire and maneuver.

Yet the US Army, the largest armed service, has few EW sensors, no long-range jammers, and no funded plan to field them before 2023. While Army leaders now acknowledge the importance of EW, and units are training harder on how to operate when the enemy is jamming them, the service is investing very little in fighting back.

t’s true that Army modernization is squeezed tight. But even in a diminished budget, Army EW investment is a rounding error. Out of $17.6 billion in procurement requested for 2017, just 0.8 percent — $142 million — is listed under “electronic warfare,” very broadly defined: $99.9 million of that $142 goes to specialized radars to detect incoming mortar fire, which isn’t really EW. Out of a $7.6 billion 2017 request for Research, Development, Testing, & Evaluation (RDT&E), just 1.6 percent — $118 million — is EW-related. These numbers, small as they are, are actually up from prior years. Not reflected in these figures is recent infusion of $50 million to accelerate the Army jammer program — by all of three months.

So while the Army’s 2017 budget request makes many much-needed investments in other areas, said analyst Jim McAleese, it still shortchanges electronic warfare.

[LiberalArkie]

1. It is hard to make a billion dollar radio jammer.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Creative accountants don't come cheap,

don't you know.

[LiberalArkie]

3. It reminds me of the $10,000 hammer. It was a standard ball peen hammer except

that the DOD "engineer" just cut 1/32" off the dimensions of the head so that it would be a custom made device. And yes when you order 100 of a custom made custom forged tool, they do cost a lot.

[Ghost Dog]

4. ... + Don't forget the necessary testing and certification of each piece,

with perhaps specialised equipment being necessary for that - at long as that's what it says in the footnotes to the accounts...

Hmmm. I should get myself retrained into that field. That or forensic accounting.

[LiberalArkie]

5. Probably the departments are a lot like regular big business, if you don't use all your budget

you loose it.

I saw an IT department have one quadrant of a floor sawed up and new conduit laid in only 6 inches from the existing run of conduit. The department wanted the main aisle to be a little wider. All that cost over $100,000 for all the work. The next year a different group moved in and wanted it back like it was because they had different cubes they wanted to use. Another $100,000 spent. But none of that mattered because at that time they did not have to worry about the layoffs taking place in the rest of the company. The managers just had to make sure that the budget was spent.