167: Electronic Warfare with Michael Gudmundson

LTC Brian Hancock interviews CW5 Michael Gudmundson on electronic warfare (EW) and how it shapes current and future conflicts. Gudmundson spent four years at I Corps and then transferred to the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa to plan and advise on EW.

FeedSpot ranked One CA Podcast as one of their top 20 foreign policy podcasts. Check it out at: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/foreign_policy_podcasts/

One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

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Special thanks to Zlatno Doba for arranging "Amazing Theramin Music Compilation." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDYvQ8FsZB4&t=502s

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00:00:07    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome to the One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we're going to explore the amazing world of electromagnetic warfare and its implications for the civilian populace. I have with me in the studio, Chief Warrant Officer 5, Michael Gunmanson, one of the Army's foremost experts on electronic warfare. Welcome to the show, Chief. Thanks. Glad to be here. Hey, I'm glad you're here, too. Now, I understand we have reason to celebrate. You recently moved from Chief Warrant 4 to 5. So tell the audience, what does it feel like to not have to ever worry about a senior rater making comments on your OER again?

00:01:24    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I was so worried about it before that like now I just keep rowing, just I'll keep doing what I do.

00:01:30    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, explore the freedom. I think the rest of us are always fighting for top blocks and trying to get those rater comments, which seem to be 90 % of promotions. So enjoy the freedom. I was wondering why you are so happy and now I know the truth of the matter. Okay, fantastic. Let me tell the audience a little bit about you. I'm lucky to know you well. Chief Warrant Officer 5 Gunmanson was selected for the very first electronic warfare warrant officer course taught by the U .S. Army in 2009. Following the course, he spent nine years as a brigade combat team electronic warfare technician. He's completed two deployments, first to Iraq and the second to Afghanistan.

00:01:42    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I know the truth of the matter.

00:02:07    BRIAN HANCOCK
And next, he spent four years at First Corps and then transferred to the United States Army, Europe and Africa, where he has spent the last three years planning and training U .S. Army cyber electromagnetic activities to include electronic warfare. Amazing. I'm really glad you're here. Glad to be here. Okay. Let's give him the standard disclaimer because I know you and I are both opinionated. Reminder to the audience, all remarks made by Chief and I are ours and only ours and do not necessarily represent the views of the U .S. Army or the Department of Defense. All right, Chief, this is a complicated topic and got some pretty smart folks involved in Army and Marine Corps civil affairs, but not all of them spend time working in electronic warfare. So just to set the foundation, I'd like us to define a few terms. that we're going to be using repeatedly through the show. Let's start with that term electromagnetic warfare, EW. What exactly is EW and how does that differ from cyber electromagnetic warfare, SEMA?

00:03:08    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The way I define it is electromagnetic warfare is radio frequency propagation and how the... all of the spectrum -dependent devices that count on radio frequencies. Electronic warfare is the attack and sensing of systems that are dependent on the spectrum. Where cyberspace electromagnetic warfare and SEMA, it includes EW because so many of those systems touch the spectrum. For example... I have an image of a cyberspace person who is always on the keyboard, who is hacking and doing everything on the Internet. And that image, I see that as there is a point in the nodes from the computer. to the Wi -Fi from the Wi -Fi back into a landline, either into fiber or some other system. And then when it gets pulled into a company that's providing that service, it's going to hit airwaves again in another form. And there's just all these different areas where electronic warfare will deal specifically with frequencies and then cyberspace would have to do with the effects on a device.

00:04:22    BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks for clarifying that. It sounds like... If we have the Internet of Things in our house, we're doubly screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.

00:04:27    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.

00:04:29    BRIAN HANCOCK
Amen. You mentioned spectrum. Spectrum, I think, is very important. I don't think we have specific MOSs dedicated specifically just to spectrum. I may be wrong about that. You can correct me. But in modern living, spectrum is kind of like air, right? It's all around us. It's ubiquitous. And everyone is using it for almost everything. Communication. to information, to understanding. Tell us a little bit about spectrum. What is it and who's responsible for it?

00:05:01    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, spectrum management for the U .S. Army, it's an all -NCO MOS that manages the spectrums. And it is what frequency is your device operating on and how much of a specific frequency does it need to function properly.

00:05:20    BRIAN HANCOCK
And I'm glad to hear that we have the backbone of the Army getting after that with spectrum management. I suspect that that's going to become more and more contested over time, just like airspace, probably carefully metered, especially in these dense countries that we operate in, such as Europe. All right, let's switch gears a moment to your current role here at the United States Army Europe in Africa. Tell the audience a little bit about what you do here.

00:05:46    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
What I do is I help make sure that there are enough electromagnetic and SEMA resources for all of the units in Europe and Africa to conduct their missions and operations and training.

00:05:56    BRIAN HANCOCK
So you're kind of like a facilitator or a broker? Absolutely. Well, at your level of excellence, I'm not surprised. You'd be a force multiplier to help all those other people get it right. Do you do any active SEMA planning or coaching, anything like that?

00:06:10    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. If there's a SEMA question that comes up... I'll give my experience and I'll show where electromagnetic warfare and SEMA will fit into the mission.

00:06:21    BRIAN HANCOCK
Great. I wish you would continue that coaching and advice to the people who make GoWarsim and JCATs and these other devices so that we could get a SEMA layer in there. And we'll talk, obviously, later in the show why that's really important from what we're seeing in Ukraine and elsewhere. But keep doing that influencing you're doing. I think we need more of it. All right, let's talk about authorities, right? This is a pretty big topic for any enabler, and SEMA is no exception. What authorities, if any, exist to conduct electronic warfare in Europe or Africa? And how difficult is it to get authorities if you don't have one that you need?

00:06:56    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The Department of Defense has a spectrum management doctrine regulations at how -to, and every piece of military equipment is annotated in that process. And so that process shows which piece of equipment we work with in the U .S. Army and how much of it can be shared with each country. To get after the authorities, the step number one is can we use the equipment in the country we're in? And then the step number two is how do we assign the frequencies to it? Because we're sharing the spectrum, which is owned by the host nation. Each host nation owns every frequency. In order to transmit on what we want to transmit, we have to share the parameters of the equipment. And there's a process for that. And we make sure that that process is. So that's how we get to the authorities. How long it takes with the processes that we and relationships we've built. If all of the documentation is in order, we can do it in. It's nice to have 30 days, but we can do it much faster. And then if that documentation isn't in order, I think we can do it in about 180 days.

00:08:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. I imagine that varies quite a bit depending on where you're operating. Germany, where we are right now, is a pretty well -oiled machine when it comes to bureaucracy process and paperwork. Certain other countries, I think, is probably closer to the Wild West. So I imagine that that could vary quite a bit. But that's great explanation. It's really important as you move up. that you have those authorities to conduct on frequencies for whatever period is time, for whatever purpose, whatever condition. And ideally, we want to build those authorities into our operations plan in advance so that they're pre -coordinated and train them in exercises too, especially force -on -force tactical type exercises. I think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors.

00:08:52    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors. Your eyeballs are as close as you're going to get to sensing the spectrum. Light is on the electromagnetic spectrum, but most of the devices we use, we can't actually feel the spectrum being used. And so we have to go through another medium, a computer, to identify whether it's on or off.

00:09:20    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah. I think all those folks in the... Cuban embassy were feeling the spectrum when Russian turned on the microwave emitters. But maybe not normal.

00:09:30    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. That's where you got to say most. But to get those results from what I understand is very high power and very highly specific systems.

00:09:43    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay, I got it. Many of these folks that we have listening to 1CA podcast are officers and NCOs who have the burden of making things happen. And they have to take senior officers and turn those good ideas into actual executable operations. So they're doing a lot of the sausage mating. So in the intermediate level education that we get on the officer side, one of the things we really don't talk about is the electronic warfare process as to how that moves through boards, bureaus, centers, sales, working groups, all the way to the host nation, the country team, to result in an approved concept of operation that allows us to emit within a host nation. Can you tell those folks who want to incorporate EW into their planning, into their exercises, into their staff products, How do you move an EW CONOP from good idea all the way to firing it?

00:10:49    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, for the U .S. Army, there are units that have been fielded equipment or there are units that have requested for equipment and have acquired equipment. In order to do specifically an electronic and attack CONOP, you just need to find the equipment and the power level and then also to plan it.

00:11:09    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, but can't you get that at RadioShack? Yeah, you probably could. Right? So there's more to it, right, to get an Army approval to do that.

00:11:15    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. In the scenario where you got something from RadioShack and you made a transmitter, you're going to classify the antenna. You're going to measure how far or how powerful it is and at what frequency it's tuned to. And then you're going to have a LAN to do it on. You're going to have to have a sensor to detect it or a device. that you're going to want to jam or interrupt. And the way we do it is you're going to put all of that data in a CONOP or in a request form with the five W's of how you want to perform your electronic attack mission or how you're going to perform your EW effect.

00:11:55    BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. How does that CONOP track through the process? You know, you and I sit at the computer. We ginned something up, and I think it's the greatest idea ever. I don't know if anybody else will, but what's our next stop with that after we've come up with that good idea and dropped it in the format?

00:12:09    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
We start with the signals section, the G6 at UCRF, and that's where they will look at the spectrum needs and determine if they have enough resources for it, if equipment can be turned on, if there is host nation trends. turning on that type of equipment in the location that we want to do it.

00:12:33    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. And, you know, like if it's a training area on foreign soil, we might have some type of standing arrangement which would grease the skids, so to speak.

00:12:42    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
And a lot of times in the planning conferences, if there's an event happening, a lot of people would love to have EW into their event.

00:12:47    BRIAN HANCOCK
lot of people

00:12:50    BRIAN HANCOCK
I really think so. You know, we keep looking at all of the CTC rotations, including JRMC. The senior leaders from Forcecom are talking and they say, every time we try and do any type of jamming, the movement goes to hell because nobody knows how to do that. They've forgotten how to operate without all of these bandwidths and all the devices that depend on it. And that doesn't seem to have gotten any better in the last 10 years or so. So I think at every level from tactical on up, there is a demand signal. to train in a SEMA -denied environment. And I know at the higher echelons in exercise controls, etc., every time we try and reduce these problem sets, units or other folks kind of wave us off because they don't want to add that level of complexity. So are we really training for modern warfare? I mean, we'll talk more about Lucrane and what we're seeing with EW there later, but are we really training for the warfare we're about to face? I would say it depends because...

00:13:48    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
would say it depends because... Yes, there's complexity that goes into the staffing of a process, and we kind of add enough friction to get after a lot of the training we're doing, which I would almost replicate to denied environment. However, at a tactical level, no. We should be building confidence in our systems and that they're hardened so that in a denied environment, we can depend on the system or we have a backup plan to use the map. Or the orders should be, if you don't hear from me, continue to this point until you do meet up with me. And with a mission and intent, any tactical unit could continue on in a denied environment.

00:14:31    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think that gives me a little more thought on how to proceed. I'm going to return to something we talked about earlier, the ubiquitous nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. All around us permeates everything, invisible but critical to almost everything we do. It seems to me it's inherently dual use, right? Civilians, as you said, are using that same spectrum as military and sometimes even on the same frequencies. So we have that complexity to deal with. At this point, most of the world is urbanized and that trend continues to accelerate. How do planners analyze the potential effects of electronic warfare on the civilian population? So we're going to be using those frequencies. And, you know, if you stepped on in the U .S. 9 -1 -1 or out here 1 -1 -2, you know, obviously there's going to be some heartburn that occurs, just one scenario. But how do, in the planning process and the staffing process as we're generating courses of action and plans and O plans and con plans, who is representing the civil population and considering? what the potential effects of electronic warfare.

00:15:40    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
So that's the reason why we start with the six, is because they represent the relationship here in Europe between the host nation for the location of wherever we want to conduct that EW action, but then also the host nation assigns the frequency to the U .S. Army to use to conduct the training. And it works the same way CONUS. The FCC and the U .S. military, they work out the, okay, you can use this part of the spectrum to conduct that training. That way the equipment is legally authorized or the authority for them to turn it on so that we don't interfere with any civilian frequencies.

00:16:16    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
or the authority for them to turn it on so that we don't interfere with any civilian frequencies.

00:16:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
I get that in competition where you have a lot of time to do all that deconfliction development up front. But we have to be prepared for crisis, right? Crisis and conflict. So jumping into that stage, many battles are decided in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Lengthy approval processes can occur. And of course, you have things like inherent rights to self -defense. And I'll tell you, if I'm a company commander and I'm seeing hot rounds coming in at me and I've got some EW kits sitting over there that I think could save my Joe's life. I'm highly incentive to turn that guy off, which can have bleed over to the civilian populace. So when we're looking at conflict and crisis, who is considering the green, the voice of the civilian populace as we start having jamming? I mean, our jamming isn't as robust as some of our adversaries, which have jamming in depth, many bands, many layers deep, which I imagine is very disruptive. though I'm not sure they care so much about the civilian population. But we do. We care about civilians. Who is representing what happens if we start blocking large parts of the spectrum on short notice to deal with some type of contingency in combat operations? We have sensors that we could detect, but also we would inform people who have already have access to that part of the spectrum.

00:17:40    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
We have sensors that we could detect, but also we would inform people who have already have access to that part of the spectrum. So if you're going to attack on a frequency, you know what you're going to program your equipment to operate on. And so before you turn it on or in the case where you had to turn it on and use it for self -defense, I think as soon as you turned it off, you could then inform the people who possibly were affected that we interfered with your service for self -defense.

00:18:11    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, especially if you're emanating from. potentially protected structure you know like a soldier say congregated a hotel right and then uh we get a terrorist attack and there's some type of munitions coming in and and we want to protect that site so we turn on ew kit thankfully we'll say in this case the the weapons miss right um so that you know that was important and that was within the inherent right to self -defense but that time when it was disrupted could cost millions of dollars in damage to commercial business,

00:18:46    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
right? Absolutely. From what I understand, when you purchase your cell phone, you're purchasing part of the spectrum in your contract with whoever your communication service is. And so, like, if you had a jammer and you turned it on near a cell phone tower, the host nation can legally come back to you with a bill for denying every person service provided.

00:19:10    BRIAN HANCOCK
Oh, we'll say we're sorry.

00:19:11    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
say we're sorry. No, absolutely. There are consequences for turning on a transmitter in a populated area, either for protection and self -defense, or if you turned it on and left it on. Right.

00:19:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
Leaving it on, I understand, especially if you're operating outside of your approval, there can be very steep fines. There absolutely are. It's my host nation, so that's de -incentivize us there. In civil affairs, we're no... strangers to Salacia type payments, right? So we took out, you know, a bunch of your comms affected your business. Here's the bill. Okay. I think we've seen that before. Now, ideally I'd like to say, Hey, the civil affairs officer or NCO should be that person representing the civilian population and the effects of electromagnetic warfare. But I'll tell you, we don't get training in the 38 series on electronic warfare. It's kind of a black box to us. It would be very difficult to do that. Some who have transferred from the signal branch, perhaps, on an individual basis could do something like that. But as we're operating progressively more and more in dual -purpose areas and urbanized areas, I just see the potential bleed over of exotic electronic warfare and other technical effects could create a new level of disruption that complicates stability operations. That's absolutely true.

00:19:37    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
In civil affairs,

00:20:29    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
That's absolutely true. For example, there was a period in the United States where you could... easily buy a handheld cell phone jammer back when the internet was less regulated. And then also, I know that you could purchase this handheld cell phone jammer. It wouldn't deny a lot of people, but if you were a teacher in a classroom and you were upset that your students kept using their cell phones, you could easily turn on this handheld device.

00:21:01    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think teachers all over the world are very interested in what you're saying.

00:21:03    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
you're saying. But the problem is it's illegal. And then and there are people who have gotten caught for doing it. You don't want that on your on your record.

00:21:14    BRIAN HANCOCK
OK, you know, in our focus is the civil population and what we do in civil affairs. So let me ask you, you've been around for more than a day or two in this field. deployed competition crisis and conflict. Can you give the audience an example of hypothetical or real, but where there were unintended consequences, maybe some seconds or effect of utilizing electronic warfare in a populated area?

00:21:39    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, I was in a training area and it was a multinational training event and another country came with their EW kit and they turned it on during the exercise and it denied GPS. The area that they had turned it on happened to cover the highway, and motorists' GPSs stopped working, and they started reporting that interference. And when they found out, they ended up charging the country hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ouch. And, yeah, for turning on the jammer at the wrong time.

00:22:17    BRIAN HANCOCK
Oh, goodness. You know, it's not too distant in the future of science fiction where we talk about these remotely piloted vehicles, right, on smart highways or whatever. You start jamming that. Very interesting idea. All the Teslas run off the road.

00:22:32    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
What I like about the automated car or the idea of a driverless or a human driverless car is I think when their safety rating gets to the point where it is safer to get into a... non -human driver car than it is to have drivers or human drivers on the road,

00:22:40    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
think when their safety rating gets to the point where it is safer to get into a... non -human driver car than it is to have drivers or human drivers on the road, then we'll have no problems with it. I think we hit that threshold a decade ago in California.

00:22:55    BRIAN HANCOCK
I think we hit that threshold a decade ago in California. Have you seen how they drive out there? It's terrible. Let's talk about dense urban terrain. We've talked about the world becoming urbanized, right? But there's a difference between suburban sprawl and megacity type. density. And that presents a whole new series of challenges for electronic warfare. More and more military forces, NATO and the adversary are going to have to be operating in these real dense areas. In World War II, we often bypassed large cities because we didn't want to expend all the resources to capture them. And we were able to, but now large cities are often the political center of gravity for many nations. And when you're talking about something like regime change is Certainly we are in Ukraine with Putin's plan to depose the government. He had to control Kiev. He had to. That was an objective. So he's got to go into that very, very, very dense terrain. And there'll be times when we in NATO have to do as well. And when you're talking dense... terrain, lots of background interference, limited lines of sight, extensive subterranean tunnels and sewers and things that you may have to take emitting gear into and hope to talk to somebody. You know, where you have skyscrapers, you even have microclimates where the climate is actually different, which affects electronics, of course, in the shadow of some of these skyscrapers which blot out the sun. How does that impact electronic warfare, both electronic attack and electronic defense, if you have to operate in dense urban terrain?

00:24:32    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
So every structure, the frequency is going to interact with. And most likely, it depends on what it is to if it's going to operate through it. So like with glass, a frequency can get through glass. But like with concrete and any materials that we build buildings out of, it depends on what... size of frequency your device is operating on, but it's going to limit it. It's going to make it much harder. It's harder to create models for those situations, and it's going to be less predictable. You're going to have to run your antenna somewhere. Yeah.

00:25:06    BRIAN HANCOCK
So like a great place for command post, a denser terrain, is a subterranean parking garage. Yeah. If I want to crank up my EW equipment, So I have enough power to get through all that concrete. It seems to me if I take that device outside of that environment, I'm going to start frying people. And I imagine that's highly visible. That back and forth game between your force and the enemy,

00:25:25    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
That back and forth game between your force and the enemy, how strong you're going to set your power level to. It's going to allow you to be seen, but it also allows... you distance for your forces to receive your... More power means more visibility, but also more distance to enhance your command and control.

00:25:42    BRIAN HANCOCK
to receive your... More power means more visibility, but also more distance to enhance your command and control. That's right. All right, it makes sense to me. Hopefully we have decoys. We're going to be setting up a bunch of antennas. If I was the enemy, I'd start bombing buildings with antennas. You know, that's just me. Okay, I don't know if you recently read that article in Foreign Affairs published by Eric Schmidt. It's a good article. Yes, I have. About Ukraine losing the drone war.

00:26:04    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yes, I have.

00:26:08    BRIAN HANCOCK
It's... And in the article, he talks about the main reason why they're losing the drone war is because Russia has deployed electronic warfare capabilities in depth from tactical to strategic. And it is making it very difficult to use their capabilities. They're going astray. They're being spoofed. They're hitting the wrong targets. They're failing in flight. They're having broken links. And, you know, there's probably some ways to mitigate that, at least when it's on terminal entry, right? But that's a serious problem. And then on the flip side of that, of course, Ukraine has benefited from a lot of Western aid. And because that comes with our kit and our doctrine, our training, our knowledge from exercises, etc., they don't have a way to create similar dilemmas for all the Russian munitions coming in. And there's a lot, and it's increasing. What do you think about Eric Schmidt's article? Do you agree or disagree that this is a serious problem in Ukraine?

00:27:12    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I do agree with his assessment. And I really liked the points he brought up about the Orlon and Lancet teams. And so I totally agree with the opinion. If you agree,

00:27:25    BRIAN HANCOCK
you agree, what, if anything, at the unclassified level could we do about it? What I like about electronic warfare is the frequencies are bound by the laws of physics.

00:27:28    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
it? What I like about electronic warfare is the frequencies are bound by the laws of physics. And so, like, if you're a physics nut, a lot of this stuff is based on power levels, size of antenna. And when one side decides how to operate inside on the battlefield, the other side can counter it. And then there will be pendulum swings of momentum back and forth. with the way we use the spectrum, and then who can capture it and then put it into their advantage. Especially from the example of the first person viewing drones. I really liked the visualization from the article that in the past artillery would wait until they saw the troops moving closer, and then they would turn it off. But with the first person viewers, they're able to wait until their forces are... much closer to use that viewpoint to their advantage. And then that synchronizing the spectrum the same way you would synchronize an operation to say, okay, turn on the frequencies to affect these devices now, stop those ones, turn on these frequencies at this time based on the way that the mission's going is absolutely the way to conduct it.

00:28:48    BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. Sounds like we're going to be seeing a lot more of this in the future. Is our investment, in your opinion, where it needs to be? Do we have enough kit and trained forces to be able to rise to the challenge of where modern warfare is taking us? No,

00:29:03    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I don't think that we have enough. However... I think it's a decision of, do we spend a lot of money now or do we spend a lot of money later? I think it's important to train forces now so we can build that culture of synchronizing how we're going to conduct these operations with spectrum -dependent devices. I've also experienced when there's been a surge for money and to solve a problem. But I would like to see more investment in it. And I would like to see assessments done so that we can. purchase more equipment and train soldiers, but then give maneuver commanders and give tactical operations the experience and confidence in their own equipment and in their TTPs so that they can build SOPs that say denial comms. Oh, that's just part of my matrix. I'm going to switch either to an alternate frequency or I'm going to move to this alternate device and I'm going to get the message through. So it's minimal impact on the unit.

00:30:05    BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, I suspect if we had some general officers in the room, they'd chuckle, smile and look at us and say, well, you 17 series guys, you can just wait in line because I'm short this percentage on my M2 of this and short that and they don't have enough of these. And I don't have enough F -35s. I have 10. I wanted 20. They're $122 million each and millions and millions and millions of dollars a year to maintain and fly and everything else. Is CIMA? That expensive? Were we talking $122 million a unit or what could you do with $122 million to advance our EW? Compared to what we have right now,

00:30:39    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
to what we have right now, we could do a lot. However, the decisions have to be made. And again, I think every decision should come with a consequence. But I think also the SEMA and the EW community, we can decide and recommend the right equipment and the acquisition process. And we need to have functioning equipment. So the maneuver commanders are like, oh, the EW guys got this. I've seen them operate in this training environment. And my EW guy, I'll put them up next to that next guy's EW guy. I don't think we're at a level where our commanders are ready to bet on their EW guys right now.

00:31:17    BRIAN HANCOCK
I understand that. From what I've seen, it's been more than a decade that many folks in the EW community have kind of been shouting from the rooftops that we need to start getting serious about this. The tech studies that come out show we're just well behind some of our near -peer competitors, and that costs a lot of lives. However, there doesn't seem to be any real appetite to invest and commit to this. When it comes to R &D and acquisitions, it seems like we're excessively focused on lethality, right? Even though if we put some investment in this, some of our $2 million a shot missiles, more of them would actually hit the target for a fraction of that cost. It seems like something doesn't directly kill somebody. We're somewhat reluctant to invest and develop it in the military.

00:32:05    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
And there are different tools. If we could get a system close enough that would fry the computer system or the programmer takes them and makes it.

00:32:13    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
them and makes it. useless, and then it takes them longer to replace that device. And that's on a directed energy weapon. But then the other side is, with a portion of electronic warfare, as soon as you turn the equipment off, you get your spectrum back. Your system's going to operate correctly. And there are ways that we can take advantage of that. And I think we have a hard time conceptualizing that in seconds. the effect is restored back to normal operations.

00:32:46    BRIAN HANCOCK
Right on. Can't wait for you to get after that when you promote to CW6 and go to the Pentagon and make everything right. I'll make recommendations.

00:32:55    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Commanders will make decisions. I'll make recommendations.

00:32:58    BRIAN HANCOCK
I love it. I'll be one of your henchmen. Right on. Okay. I love where you're going with that. Let's talk about space for a minute. We now have a Space Force. There are a lot of sections which utilize space assets. They're very important for what we do. And space, again, is another one of those areas where we're touching that communal spectrum. I don't know if we have a spectrum warfare division. Maybe we should. But when you're talking about space, space is one of the only ways we can do deep sensing. If you want to take the deep fight to the enemy. You have to have a way to sense and make sense. And space gives you some of your only sensors and assets to be able to enable that level of the fight. The writing on that same spectrum, though, that we're employed by commercial, by the military, by SEMA, by electronic warfare,

00:32:59    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
henchmen. Right on. Okay. I love where you're

00:33:46    BRIAN HANCOCK
given the fact that there's kind of a natural symbiosis, let me ask the question, how closely do SEMA and EW and space work together? And if there's conflict, he de -conflicts that.

00:33:59    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
We absolutely work close together. The only way you're going to affect a space object is through the spectrum. And so spectrum is what ties it together. If there's a conflict or friction between whether it needs to be a SEMA mission or a space mission, both arguments are presented, and the decision maker will say, okay, this one means more to me for this instance, and this one means the other, and then we'll march out.

00:34:26    BRIAN HANCOCK
Awesome. Last question, I kind of want to wrap up with a little bit more on drone warfare, because that really is, I think, defining aspect of postmodern warfare and what we're seeing. I don't know if you had a chance to read Paul Charest's landmark book, Army of None, which talks about autonomous warfare and drone warfare and has some important and in some cases dire predictions for the future. In the Second Nagorno -Karabakh War, place in 2020. There's a fantastic Canadian intelligence product which came out talking about how the Azerbaijanis adopted Russian snow dome operations characterized by rolling electromagnetic bubbles, high -level drones doing spotting for loitering munitions, and then vectoring in either attack drones like a TB2 by actor, Turkish drone, or a Harup, Israeli loitering munition. that they would then strike targets, and there were very few large -scale unit engagements. It was kind of this sense, detect, destroy kind of slugfest that went on for a while with very high attrition rates on both sides for drones. But unfortunately, the Armenians had not really invested in those sensing and drone capabilities, and they were decimated in that war. They lost. badly because they didn't understand that war had changed. And so we're of drones now. Now, fast forward to Ukraine. This is exactly what we're seeing unfolding there. It would be very difficult for the Ukrainians to keep pace with a fully militarized Russian economy, which is going to be producing a lot of drones, gifts they're going to be getting from Iran and other places in very large. So they're going to need an equalizer to deal with this. Can electronic warfare be an equalizer? What can we do with electronic warfare in the UAS and small UAS? Can we harden the Ukrainian munitions? Could we jam more of the Russian munitions? What could be done to improve the survival chances for the Ukrainian patriots who are fighting right now?

00:36:50    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. Electronic warfare can assist in any operation that is connecting a unmanned system, as long as that unmanned system is receiving command.

00:36:57    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
connecting a unmanned system, as long as that unmanned system is receiving command.

00:37:04    BRIAN HANCOCK
But human on the loop is also okay, right? So a first person view drone, it's manned by an operator technically.

00:37:12    MICHAEL GUNMANSON
And it's receiving, like it is transmitting and receiving back and forth to and from that drone. And in that scenario, electronic warfare is just finding how far away that attack antenna needs to be, and then what power level, and then how to disrupt the receiver from that antenna. Those are just very basic ideas and concepts, and those are only a part of it. There's a lot more that can go into how you would program. a command either to the receiver to either take over the system or to keep it off course so it doesn't make its final target. Again, what I appreciate about spectrum operations and EW is that it's locked in physics. And so, in my opinion, we can enhance it, we can choose when we want to use it, and we can absolutely outsmart other humans on how they're choosing to use it as well.

00:38:13    BRIAN HANCOCK
That's really important. I know we aren't going to solve that in the time that we have available here. But the fact that you say, hey, there is something that can be done there to help level the playing field through spectrum, through electronic warfare, is encouraging. And I hope, you know, the powers that be explore those opportunities to their fullest, both to help in the current conflicts and to protect NATO and other countries moving forward. Well, Chief, any last thoughts you want to share with the audience? Thank you very much. I've had a lot of fun. Awesome. Well said. Hey, thank you. Really appreciate you coming into the studio and I wish you success and all your future endeavors.

00:38:51    Close
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