Page 23 - Williams Foundation Future of Electronic Warfare Seminar

A New Approach and Attitude to Electronic Warfare in Australia

For example, “we spend last third of our Growler Tactics Instructor (GTI) training course at the USAF
Weapons School Integration (WSINT) course at Nellis. In fact, every Red Flag now has a Growler squadron
participating.”

We asked about the current disposition of Growlers and we were told that there are more than 100
Growlers currently with 4 expeditionary squadrons to support the COCOMs.

The fourth point was about a ramping up of integration work for the high-end fight.
HAVOC participates two times a year in the USAF Weapons School WSINT course.

“The USAF brings all the platforms together. Everyone is an expert in their own platform when they start
WSINT. But WSINT is about forcing integration into the mindset of participants. They provide a problem set
where no single platform can do the job alone, they need to use other platforms to working together and
need to synchronize to solve the problem and it's something we don't see anywhere else.”

There is a growing demand for electronic magnetic payloads in the digital battlespace is going up and the
kind of integration being fostered will shape modernization as the combat fleet goes forward.

“Everybody is going to keep using electronics and advanced electromagnetic spectrum to their advantage in
fighting and no one is going to forget about it.”
It has been a slow process of rolling out Growler capabilities and clearly there is a need looking forward to
accelerate the modernization process to ensure dominance in this important warfighting area.

“We need to be pushing forward towards the next capability whether it be an aircraft or UAV or a system of
systems bundled capability. As of right now we are 18 years into a 22-year upgrade project on current
capabilities that looking forward to the future needs to happen more quickly to deal with this rapidly evolving
warfighting area.”

We then addressed the need to modify how the USAF and the USN connect in order to more rapidly train
and prepare for high tempo operations.

The team pointed out that it took three months to prepare for the joint training, as security and communication
barriers made the process much harder than it would need to be to get the quick on the fly integration for the
21st century digital battlefield.

Put in blunt terms, the enterprise rules and security rules in place for today’s “Slo Mo” war clearly are not
adequate to preparing for higher tempo ops where the force needs to integrate on the fly to deal with the
contested battlespace.

The team next discussed the need to get better integration earlier in the process of introducing new equipment
or modernized equipment into the force.

“It is not so much teaching the air crews how to use a particular piece of equipment; it is about learning how to
integrate into the fight and to get best value from any upgrade or new piece of equipment. We need to
focus more attention on that part of the equation.”

As an aside we saw the same technology and combat learning dynamic embedded in the US Navy P-8/Triton
community at Navy Jax.

Finally, we discussed a topic which we also discussed with the Hawkeye instructors as well.

Page 22