Spotlight Q&A

Chris Johnston is Director of Keysight’s Radar & Electronic Warfare Solutions, where he leads a highly experienced team of solution planners and business development managers. Chris began his career at Keysight (then Agilent Technologies) in 2000 working as a field engineer on strategic defense and component accounts. He moved into his current role in March 2021. Chris has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and he is an AOC member belonging to the Mile High Country Crows Chapter.

JED: What are some of the major EMS Operations (EMSO) trends that you are seeing and how are they driving the types of test equipment that Keysight is offering for the EW market?

Johnston: From a test perspective, we see EMS operational requirements mapped directly to test and evaluation and those requirements go well beyond the capabilities of a single spectrum analyzer, arbitrary waveform generator, or oscilloscope.  Diminishing are the days of testing with a “box” used for one single type of test.  It is a much more solution-oriented approach, which requires the integration and combination of many legacy and emerging test ideologies that drives our business today. Our government and industry customers require us to help to integrate complex test solutions that incorporate next-generation technology, while including importer tools and compatibility with legacy solutions, to not lose years of engineering work.  This is an important requirement.  Otherwise, we are placing the burden of integration on them, which slows down their core business – creating the protection and countermeasures systems and algorithms necessary to protect the warfighter.  

It is the leverage of multiple traditional test assets, or their associated IP, collated to create a more comprehensive solution, which is now the norm.  This includes the drive to develop multi-domain (frequency and time) measurement tools to address more complex test needs to test mixed RF and digital devices. Parallel to improving the hardware, there is high demand on the software modeling and simulation environment required to control – and replicate – both the simple and complex scenarios of an entire A2AD environment.  Recognizing as the A2AD becomes more complex, we must challenge our R&D teams to provide more SWaP-C optimized test solutions, as well.  

To read the rest of this interview at JEDonline, click here.