Page 5 - Williams Foundation Future of Electronic Warfare Seminar

A New Approach and Attitude to Electronic Warfare in Australia

The heart of the seminar was provided by a fascinating and wide ranging presentation by the RAAF and US
Navy Growler participants.

The presentations highlighted the very flexible and innovative working relationship between the US Navy and
the RAAF in delivering Growler to Australia.

This effort provides a model of how to deliver joint combat effects by an allied force.

But both highlighted, that Growler was in many ways a means to an end.

Group Captain Braz emphasized that the RAAF did not want stovepipe EW specialists but rather the delivery
of EW or what we call Tron Warfare payloads in the battlespace.

FIGURE 3 CDR MIKE PAUL

And even though the Aussies are just now getting Growler, the US Navy is just now working beyond the land
wars to sort out how Growler fits into the high intensity battlespace.

And it is clear that the US Navy has much to learn from Australia, a point driven home by the US Navy
representative, CDR Mike Paul, Electronic Attack ‘Wing, Pacific Fleet.

In an interview with Group Captain Graz last Spring in Amberley, he highlighted how he saw the Aussie
approach.

We need to get the experience which Growler can deliver and share the knowledge.

The difficult thing with Growler is that it delivers non-kinetic effects, and sometimes they’re difficult to measure.
We’re used to being able to deliver effects through other systems where the outcome is tangible and measurable.

For a Growler, if you’re attacking a threat system or the people operating that threat system, then often it’s
difficult to truly assess how much you’re affecting that system.

You can do trials and tests in certain scenarios, but it’s never quite the same, and so you get a level of confidence
about what immediate effect you can achieve, but it’s the secondary and tertiary effects that we’re often looking
for that are sometimes harder to measure.

The difficult challenge will become knowing how degraded the network is and how reliable the information is at
any given point.

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