I always find the early electronic warfare very interesting. The jamming in particular while not thought about often was very prevalent but unknown in the Korea and early in the Vietnam era
Hell one can say that WW2 was decided by it, at least in the West it was. The Germans fell time and again for injected, non-existent threats looming on the horizon. But also the other way around, it's a bit murky since especially this area has been infected with more Mythology (as I dubbed it) than any other. Simply because a lot of the stuff remained classified for so long. There's no clear "victory" in an EW-contest, the not suffering of losses is often the victory, the surprise in the surprise-attack is the victory. It cannot be measured easily, in fact I'd say not at all if it's done correctly, since not getting caught is *also* a victory 🙂
What you can't see can't hurt you... but with EW it will certainly allow other things to kill you since it keeps you from knows what's up until it's too late. A good primer on the subject Chris.
I have experience with electronic surveillance (including Vietnam) and electronic countermeasures (aggressor simulation). I hold Navy Military Warfare Subspecialty Code 0046S (EW). As a Navy Airborne Electronic Warfare Officer I never met an "expert" in the field, just people who didn't realize how much they didn't know. Electronic warfare is more of an art than a science.
@@willedwards693 - I met several so-called "experts" (civilian and military) who did not know near as much as I did and I KNEW I was not an "expert" even though I held Military Warfare Subspecialty Code 0046S in EW. What sort of degree do you think was/is required to become an EWO? May I ask your background in EW?
@colkelley One thing that I observed in this video was that everything was focused on EW as something you do _to_ an opponent. Back several decades ago -- so my experience is _long_ out of date -- I was part of a group that developed computer-aided training for a Navy EW course, teaching EW trainees to recognize different types of jamming, so that they would be able to apply the best countermeasures to degrade or eliminate the effectiveness of the jamming. And that's what was missing from the video -- that it's not just a 'go out there and jam their signals' situation, but a two-way street, where you have to apply countermeasures against their jamming so _your_ signal operations can continue -- a continuously-evolving arms race.
I'm sure that most of us (the subs/viewers/audience) are, and for that reason I thought that it was a little too much of an oversimplification of the subject.. Oh well, the guest may have been lecturing toddlers just recently;) Great channel and enjoy the quality, top job and research done!
This is great, please do more on EW. People talk about it as if everyone knows what it means. Maybe it's a "me problem," but I really do not have a firm understanding of what EW means. I can make educated guesses but I really don't have much to go on. "Transfer kinetic energy from one object to another" describes a lot of what goes on in wars, but leaves a lot to be desired. I'd guess that the lack of clarity is by design. I feel like I have a decent enough understanding of what "2,000 LBS JDAM" means, but I couldn't say the same about EW.
Jamming is like an annoying kid blowing on a whistle, it out shouts anything that can hear it and will make it obvious to his parents which bush the kid is in. but the dogs and cats are busy trying to dig a hole to avoid a migraine
It's helps to remember that radio waves and visible light are both electromagnetic energy, just at different frequencies. Many of the EA methods have analogous examples you personally have experienced. Like everybody has had their eyes (broadband) jammed, whenever they've walked out of their house on a bright, sunny day or had a flashlight shined in their eyes in the dark. The cones and rods in your eyes are so overwhelmed by energy, it's hard to perceive anything else. Whether or not you're jammed (EA) by it depends on distance and direction, and as less power actually makes it into your eyes, you can see more and more things (burn through). The problem with broadband jamming is that it is very energy intensive and can negatively effect your own forces. If you, for example, have a friend sending you a message in binary (communication signal) by clicking his flashlight on and off (OOK modulation), there are techniques (EP) to make sure you get that message in the presence of jamming (EA). Instead of using a flashlight that sends out energy at all visible frequencies, you can actually put all that energy into a specific frequency, like to make an ultrabright blue flashlight. Then, by putting on glasses that only allow blue light to pass, the amount of energy that makes it to your eyes from your friend is much greater than what the broadband jamming flashlight can produce. So either they have to get much closer to you, or they have to increase their power, in order to successfully blind you. So, instead, your enemy with the broadband flashlight decides to switch to a ultrabright, single color flashlight too (narrowband). The downside is they now need to know what color your friend's flashlight is. So they take a peek and walk through it to check (ES). So you change the color, then your enemy takes a peek again. Thus, the arms race as you keep changing the methods you're using and your enemy keeps trying to figure them out. Radar and Radio work in similar ways. Radar is you holding the flashlight and Radio is your friend doing so, generally (but not always). The flashlight example is basically how early jamming worked, just with radio waves instead of visible. Nowadays, the methods of encoding data and transmitting it can be much more complex, but the overall goal is the same.
It's jamming other electronic systems, like radar, missiles, communications. The best example is the E/A 18-G Growler jet, which is a modified Super Hornet. They escort the fighter jets and prevent enemy Anti-Air or even other fighter jets from being able to do anything to the fighter jets. They cannot lock on, the missiles can't track, their instruments are borked, etc. A Growler jammed a Syrian tank so hard it became completely inoperable permanently. EW can also be for gathering intelligence or doing deception operations. Back in 2014 Russia tracked Ukrainian Artillery personnel using their Snapchat location maps (poor opsec) and were able to destroy the majority of Ukrainian Artillery with precision.
This was excellent. I lived in this world for a long time, as being a part of the last tactical unit in Germany to field the AN/MSQ-103C (luckily, I PCS'd before they had to undergo the arduous task of destroying the systems) and then moving on to (frankly) the epitome of my craft, at a strategic assignment in CONUS. During my time served, I can only hope the intelligence I tendered saved many lives of our pilots in theater.
Yeah and I learned using the FFOB/ZB Fieldtelefons aka "Ackerschnacker" and SEM 52s. The lack of modern communications in the german army prepared it to fight under total EM - silence. If you want jam a SEM 52, you have to be already at bayonette range, because I dont even get the signal from my comrades next trench, oh and please can you tell me at what frequency I was recieving anyway? The Channels were fused in the 60´s. On channel 7 I still get radio free europe. But the Ackerschnacker are low tech solutions for high tech problems, like spy baloons. Making local area networks with wire phones combines 80s and 90s nostalgia pretty well.
Electronic Warfare is actually a really huge topic and includes a lot of things , across all domains ( Land, Sea, Air, Space), so I´m not surprised if people can´t really grasp it. People do understand these days, how important logistics actually are.
Warfare is a human activity. Even in this age of drones, humans make the drones, control them, and program them. EW is not just machines using the EM spectrum to affect machines. Sometimes, it is just as important to use the machine that uses the EM spectrum to affect the humans Decades ago, I talked with a US Army general who suggested that, in the classic case of communication around a ground obstacle to the EM spectrum such as a mountain, outright jamming is not the right tactic. If the general cannot talk to the operating units, he will abandon the radio you can jam and find alternate communication paths. But if you jam intermittently and at varying strengths, the enemy will almost be able to hear each other. Human nature will cause them to try and fix the problem rather than abandon that communication channel for another The latest wave of Artificial Intelligence is just as vulnerable as previous AI to be affected by the same tricks we use to affect humans.
YESSS dude, this is my favorite topic these days...especially in the air domain! The literature out there on it is relatively less available, with everyone keeping their implementations/strategies pretty close to the vest these days for obvious reasons,...so finding good video content on the subject is especially cool and this was great man! Been a fan for quite awhile now, and I clicked immediately when I saw the notification of your video and the title of it being EW...the electromagnetic spectrum is so interesting to me, and seeing this absolutely made my day lol. Great stuff!
any idea what the ECM gear on a EA-18G costs nowadays? When I was working on A-4 Skyhawks, the ALQ-126 jammer was reputed to be very expensive. All I know is that it weighed a lot, and was not easy to wrestle into the "hump" on the back of the A-4M. That was 40 years ago, so the costs must be a few million $ per Growler (or more)??
I've been doing alot of research into what the US did in 1918 in Europe and like you said war never changes in fact back then we had Signal units now we have radio, Cyber and ECW units.
It's an area that the US hasn't exactly neglected, but we've gone all in on stealth as our solution so we haven't put as much effort into active jamming and counter jamming as we otherwise might have. Our passive monitoring is pretty advanced though since that compliments stealth very nicely.
Uh, the US jamming capability is incredible. In the late '60s the SR program had sensors that could detect the inbound SA Missile radar homing signal, copy it, transmit back to the missile the identical signal, but off-time to make the missile lock onto a totally spoofed jet several thousand feet away and at another altitude. The newest jet engine made for the F-35*edit has enormous electrical output. You only need so much, modern radars and computers are very low consumption. The only thing this is possibly for, is transmitting junk signals at extremely high amplitude.
The importance of drones in the Ukraine war makes me think the EU and US will invest a LOT more in electronic warfare in the coming years. Especially with Russia being a combination of a terrorist state and the next North Korea. Hardening energy and communications infrastructure will be necessary to defend against the terrorist attacks Russia/China are currently carrying out. But EW/Counter EW will also play a key role.
Now here is a good question, of all the missiles that hit civilian apartment building in Donbass and Kiev, how many of these missiles were meant for military targets but got thrown off course by electronic warfare?
I was hoping that this video would answer to me why the F-15A Eagle was designed without flares&chaff and instead was to rely on internal jaming equiptment to defeat enemy missiles. So how does jamming against guided missiles work?
The US government had an exercise some years they asked a Marine General to simulate an attack against an adversary, he had a very small unit and he used nothing electronic nothing with the battery in it all runners sign language and he beat him
I thought that SAMs were like modern air-to-air missiles and when the enemy have locked on to his target and fired off a missile it usually too late to use chaffes or flares, because modern missiles are programmed to not fall for this trick. Usally do meaures to confuse the targeting system works best before the enemy had a chance to fire, and that is when you wanna drop your decoys.
No, chaff and flares are carried on all aircraft because they do work. In fact, they are now sometimes controlled by onboard computers that maximize their effectiveness. You can also drop huge clouds of chaff to hide formations of B-52s and the chaff will effectively "blot out the sun".
The issue with russian armed forced is nether offensive or defensive or even EV capability. While yes they are behind the west in all tree, that is not there main problem. The main problem is a lack of exercise, and its not mainly one of staf but one of equpment. In the early part of the ukraine war russia got some terreble losses due to a lack of interoperability of there equpment. That would have shown up on a exercise. China did have the same poblem but they starting to do more and more field practice.
Wow, the details one has to learn about foreign countries' governing systems just to understand how to support your peaceful near-neighbors. (A Dane learning about US House and Senate in order to support Ukraine😂). But, then again, who's complaining ? I'm not! I prefer to learn, and then to act.
Seemingly informative... but not rally informative, at least for anyone who has bothered to spend more than a few minutes reflecting on this subject. PS As an American who has lived in Europe for almost a half-century it always amazes me how successfully we have "vassalized" the countries in our protectorate. As their own "cultures" have whithered and ossified, and creative thinking among them has to a great extent died out, they've mindlessly adopted many of the most superficial elements of our "culture". Well, if that's what they want, guess it should be fine with us... Who are we to stop them from destroying themselves on an intellectual and cultural level?
Its hilarious to hear all the people dehumanizing Russians as incompetent and unable to do anything meanwhile Ukraine's only victories exist on twtitter🤣🤣
youtube don't want this topic being talked about cos civilians are being tortured by their governments with this technology, and the mental health system is covering it up with psych smears. It is utterly grotesque. Hey, you asked.
Vimy Ridge is considered one of the first battles to be electronic and a combined air land operation. I hope a future video goes into radio deception like the fake army radio traffic as part of D-Day.
I’ve been impressed with the ability of Western rocket artillery, HIMARS & ATACMS to defeat Russian countermeasures and reach their targets. There was some conjecture that Russia was evolving their EW response to HIMARS but I’m not certain where the balance currently sits.
@@frankrenda2519 sure has kept the Russians from being able to place their stockpiles undefended and thus limitting their logistics to be further back from the front lines.
