Closing Spotlight Session: EMSO Within Current Conflicts and Hotspots

	Col Ivan Pavlenko

AOC 2024 closed with an excellent session, "EMSO Within Current Conflicts and Hotspots," which provided perspectives from Lord Stuart Peach, Air Chief Marshall, RAF; Lt Col Erik Bamford, Branch Chief Electromagnetic Warfare, Norwegian Armed Forces; and Col Ivan Pavlenko, Senior EW Officer and Chief, EW and Cyber Directorate, Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Lord Peach, speaking via Zoom from the UK, issued a "…clarion call, a call to arms on counterintelligence, operational security, and importantly, and critically, emission security." He discussed the role the OPSEC played in World War II and the Cold War and the value of it during those periods. "I think we need to go back to some of the lessons from the past, some of the lessons from that Cold War, some of the lessons from operational security, and what we need to try and do as a principle of war, even in a densely contested and operating electromagnetic spectrum, we need to create the conditions for surprise."

He also spoke about the need for more innovation. "We need to innovate faster than we've ever done before," he said. "The Ukrainians have shown us the way. The Russians never stopped doing electronic warfare, and we can see that every day, every night, seven days a week, and others are watching, and others will be copying, and others will be denying us use of the spectrum. And one of the key tenets for me, and I hope this resonates with the conference, is that we need to be really serious with everybody we talk to about operating in a denied environment."

Lord Peach concluded his address with a final challenge to the audience: "Who owns the spectrum will win now and in the future. And we, using simple language as the advocates of electronic warfare, need to say that to our leaders. We need to say it to our classmates, our colleagues, our friends from other services, our friends from other countries, our allies in NATO and beyond."

Next, Lieutenant Colonel Bamford provided some of his personal observations on the Ukraine War. He began by reminding everyone that Ukraine has been the only nation actually fighting Russia. "The first caveat is there's only one champion that's currently deploying successful EW onto the Russians. And we need to acknowledge that the rest of us, we're just bystanders. Okay? We are. Yes, some of us are actively discussing things with the Ukrainian authorities. Some are participating with donations. But seriously, they are the only champions. The Ukrainian armed forces are the only champions that are out there right now."

He went on to say that while Ukraine is doing the actual fighting, it is also sharing a lot of information with NATO nations not only about Russian tactics but also analyses based on its exploitation of Russian equipment. The bottom line is that NATO has been gaining huge amounts of extremely valuable information about Russian EW and other EMS capabilities from Ukraine.

The final speaker in the closing session was Colonel Pavlenko, who began by explaining that from a Ukrainian perspective, its advantages have been realized by robots (drones) and fighting for control of the EMS. Drones (especially first-person view drones) enable Ukraine to fight while preserving its limited manpower compared to the attritional warfare strategy favored by Russian forces. The use of drones by both sides means that Ukraine needs to protect its access to the EMS and deny Russia's ability to use the EMS. Russia is doing the same. He said that in some operations, around 70% of the strikes are performed by FPV drones and "bomber" drones.

Colonel Pavlenko dove into the technical and tactical aspects of the EW-enabled drone battle between Ukraine and Russia, including the expanding frequency ranges used by drone operators and EW systems as Russian and Ukrainian forces try to outmaneuver each other in the EMS. He discussed the breadth of drone and EW technologies involved, the importance of developing software processes that help rapidly deploy mission capabilities, countermeasures and counter-countermeasures.

One of Colonel Pavlenko's slides described Russia's EW force structure across strategic, operational and tactical levels. Russia has fielded 7 EW brigades, 8 EW centers, 36 EW battalions, 245 EW companies and 42 control centers.  This accounts for 296 ground EW military units (245 for EA and 42 for electronic protection) with approximately 28,000 EW personnel across its ground forces. The scale of Russian EW is simply staggering.

Overall, the closing session proved an excellent finish to close an extremely informative and thought-provoking week.