“Adversary actions, commercial development, and regulatory constraints impede U.S. forces’ freedom of action in the EMS. Ensuring such freedom of action will require new ways of thinking about access, sharing, and maneuver in the EMS. Our adversaries have recognized DoD’s reliance on EMS-dependent capabilities and are seeking to exploit this vulnerability. They seek to restrict U.S. spectrum access through international forums while they organize, train, and equip their forces for EMS advantage. The Department must also account for the EMS requirements of coalition and commercial partners. These competing spectrum needs result in an increasingly congested, contested, and constrained electromagnetic operational environment (EMOE). Combined, these factors require DoD to reexamine how it gains and maintains control of the EMS.”
2020 Department of Defense EMS Superiority Strategy Strategic Goals
- Goal 1: Develop Superior EMS Capabilities
- Goal 2: Evolve to an Agile, Fully Integrated EMS Infrastructure
- Goal 3: Pursue Total Force EMS Readiness
- Goal 4: Secure Enduring Partnerships for EMS Advantage
- Goal 5: Establish Effective EMS Governance
“The purpose of the 2020 Department of Defense EMS Superiority Strategy is to align DoD EMS activities with the objectives of the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS), the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), and national economic and technology policy goals. This Strategy embraces the enterprise approach required to ensure EMS superiority by integrating efforts to enhance near-term and long-term EMS capabilities, activities, and operations. The Strategy informs the Department’s domestic EMS access policies and reinforces the need to develop cooperative frameworks with other EMS stakeholders in order to advance shared national policy goals. The traditional functions of Electromagnetic Spectrum Management (EMSM) and Electromagnetic Warfare (EW)—integrated as Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO)—are addressed within the document’s strategic goals. This 2020 Strategy builds upon the successes of and supersedes both the DoD’s 2013 EMS Strategy and 2017 EW Strategy. ”
“The Modern Electromagnetic Operational Environment The EMS, as the range of all types of electromagnetic radiation, is a fundamental component of the natural environment, and the EMOE is a space in which military functions are performed. The EMOE is a maneuver space, a battlespace, a place where competition and warfare, as well as commerce and other nonmilitary activities, are conducted. The EMS is not a separate domain of military operations because the EMS is inseparable from the domains established in joint doctrine. In modern warfare, EMS superiority is a leading indicator and fundamental component of achieving superiority in air, land, sea, space, or cyberspace. As U.S. forces are organized around domains, the EMS not only provides the critical connective tissue that enables all-domain operations, but represents a natural seam and critical vulnerability across joint force operations. This Strategy aims to mitigate vulnerability by creating the conditions to ensure EMS superiority. As such, operations in the EMS require prioritization, resourcing, and governance as an enterprise.”
“Objective 1.4: Develop Robust Electromagnetic Battle Management (EMBM) Capabilities EMBM is a comprehensive framework for dynamic monitoring, assessing, planning, and directing of operations in the EMS in support of the commander’s concept of operations. EMBM leverages trusted data sources to provide EMS situational awareness and decision support and interfaces with systems and networks (including broadband and software-defined). The Department must develop EMBM capabilities that can monitor, identify, characterize, and adapt to the operational environment, while providing dynamic control of real-time operations in the EMS via machine-machine and human-machine collaboration. It should provide for automated adjustments to operations based on changing EMOE conditions within the joint planning cycle.”
“The Department recognizes its adversaries are also reliant on EMS-dependent capabilities and plans to target their vulnerabilities with advanced electromagnetic attack (EA) capabilities designed to keep the enemy in a defensive posture and offset adversary capacity overmatch. Disruptive capabilities will impose cost and create chaos for our adversaries, in ways they cannot predict, by denying or deceiving their EMS capabilities at the time and place of our choosing. Developing disruptive EW capabilities and attributes requires the most advanced technology the Department can bring to bear and must incorporate autonomous, cognitive, and asymmetric capabilities by harnessing cutting edge technologies such as AI and photonics. Advanced capabilities in directed energy, RF-enabled cyber, and multifunctional EMS systems all networked and operating at machine speed are required to provide future commanders with scalable options to achieve EMS superiority and military overmatch.”
Read the report at https://media.defense.gov/2020/Oct/29/2002525927/-1/-1/0/ELECTROMAGNETIC_SPECTRUM_SUPERIORITY_STRATEGY.PDF
