“The new eyes which radar has supplied can sometimes be blinded by new scientific developments.”
-Dr. Vannevar Bush
War has always been won through superior weaponry and superior tactics. The development of measures and countermeasures are critical to maintaining this advantage. Development of such measures is a continuous evolution that is common throughout each technology, including electricity, electronics, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Electronic Warfare is determining an adversaries’ intentions and reducing their effectiveness through exploiting radio-frequency activities which give off electromagnetic energy radiation.
Principles of electronic warfare have been around since the creation of electronic communications and have remained fairly constant throughout its history and evolution. As the United States and other nations advanced through the end of the nineteenth century, electronic warfare evolved with each advance to include new technologies and new ways to counter those technologies. Still, the mission for these new technologies has stayed the very same throughout the history of electronic warfare. The new technologies are only created to counter the most recent development in electronic warfare. This evolution is the result of a never-ending cycle of competition with other nations to maintain military superiority.
The first hint of electronic warfare was in the United States Civil War in 1861. Before the telegraph was created by Samuel Morse in 1837, the only way for the United States to keep contact with its navy was to send a ship to relay the message to other ships. Telegraph wires were quickly adopted on land and one trans-Atlantic link was created in 1858. During the Civil War, both the Confederate and Union forces conceived the idea to target these telegraph wires.
Early electronic warriors would cause information to go to the wrong place, create false messages to opposing forces and cut wires, thus denying the enemy accurate and timely information. The Confederate states were more effective in electronic warfare because the Union’s use of electronics was more prevalent, having owned the majority of the telegraph lines in the United States. Although these tactics could not be deployed by the navy, they were used effectively by the military and stood as a precursor to future naval tactics. These tactics effectively deterred the enemy’s communication capabilities and serve as early examples of Electronic Warfare. Technically, the telegraph does not fall under the category of electronic warfare because telegraph lines do not give off electromagnetic radiation. However, it is important to note these early counter-measures and how they signified the beginning of electronic warfare as we understand it today.
The Navy could not use this new technology because of its inherent mobility and needed to wait for a more portable system to surface. After Heinrich Hertz developed the first radio in 1888, electronic communications became more suitable for naval operations. As the standard transmission range increased to 89 miles in 1899 and beyond, the ability to attack this line of communication was discovered. This is the first instance of actual electronic warfare because it consisted of the disruption of electromagnetic radiation. The first time this was employed was not by the United States Navy, or even the Army but in the private sector. In September of 1901, there was a race to be the first newspaper to broadcast the results of the America’s Cup yacht races in the United States. John Pickard who worked for the American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company had the idea to jam radio signals from other companies ensuring that he would be the first one to broadcast the results.
Soon after the shenanigans at the America’s Cup yacht races, the British Navy deliberately used radio jamming in a fleet exercise in the Mediterranean in 1902. The exercise involved two different squadrons: one white and one blue. Blue Squadron was directed to employ radio communications for enemy sightings and maneuver reports whereas White Squadron was supposed to jam Blue Squadron’s radio messages and render them unreadable. Unfortunately for the White Squadron, an officer decided that he wanted to listen to the entirety of Blue Squadron’s message before jamming it. He did not realize the speed at which the jamming takes place. The message was already received by the Blue Squadron by the time he began jamming the signal. This dilemma still exists today: whether to jam the enemies’ signals and deny both you and them information or to intercept the information and allow both yourself and your enemy to use it to gain an advantage.
Wireless technology improved significantly between the beginning of the twentieth century and World War I as the ranges, channel options, reception, size and weight all improved. These improvements allowed for more versatile systems in aircraft and ships. In 1906, the United States Navy was the first to install a direction finder on a ship for testing. A direction finder “triangulated” by using two or more measurements of a transmitter from different locations in order to pinpoint the origin of the transmissions from a third location. Ironically, these improvements allowed for more manipulations of the electromagnetic environment.
By World War I, the United States and many other countries had begun to deploy radar jamming in their Navies. In Britain, a chain of direction finders was developed which would be able to locate ships off of Britain’s eastern coastline. Furthermore, in World War I, radio transmissions were easily susceptible to interception as a result of the lack of understanding how important encryption was. Germany intercepted Russia’s wireless transmissions and created a plan to decimate Samsonov’s army in the battle at Tannenberg in 1914 using the intercepted data. However, by the end of the war, the British and German Navies had developed much more intricate codes and deciphering teams. In one instance, each side tracked the other using radio transmissions and on May 31, 1916 they finally met in battle. During the actual battle, intercepting wireless transmissions proved to be nearly useless because de-encrypting the coded messages proved to be too slow showing how electronic warfare can be effectively countered.
When the United States entered the war, they installed a wireless direction finding system to assist in finding the German U-Boat Fleet in 1917. In order to avoid the Allied electronic countermeasures, the German Navy kept its wireless transmission traffic to a minimum. Still, the Allies continued to use surveillance to track almost every German submarine in the North, North Atlantic, and Mediterranean seas. They could do this by making use of merchant distress calls, sighting signals, and from the minimal transmissions the U-Boats had to make. The Germans also still thought that the technical abilities of the Allies were not advanced enough to break their ciphers and codes so they continued to transmit sensitive information.
Once again, during a period of peace in between two wars, the performance and reliability of the electronic warfare equipment improved and enabled a more diverse use. Furthermore, two new developments in radio technology, radio navigation aids and radar, played a significant role in World War II and created new chances for countermeasures. These new technologies expanded the possibilities and possible effects of electronic warfare.
It was in this period of relative peace that the United States Naval Research Laboratory made an effort to improve communication between ships and aircraft, developing techniques to avoid enemy detection, detect enemy transmissions, and create interference for the enemy. Radar was eventually developed in 1930 due to technological advances in transmitters, receivers, and antenna directionality. The Naval Research Laboratory also created interference detectors which could detect signals up to 50 miles away and could be used to help counter an enemy’s Electronic Warfare capabilities. The United States led the arms race with radar that could detect aircraft one hundred miles away and ships 15 miles away.
These developments in radar prompted experiments to find whether or not its transmission could be denied or defeated. The first airborne jamming test took place in London and involved a continuous wave transmitter. Following this test, anti-jamming systems were attached to the direction finding systems which then evolved into the Chain Home radar system along the eastern coast of the U.K. This idea of anti-jamming was the first examples of the use of electronic counter counter-measures which is now a sub-category of electronic warfare called electronic protection.
Throughout the year of 1940, the Germans and the British conducted a series of back and forth electronic attacks and counterattacks affecting the German ability to bomb Britain during the night with low visibility. The Germans developed an idea to use various radio-technologies to acquire night-bombing capabilities. They could intersect two transmitted radio-waves that followed the correct flight path in order to ensure the German pilots could maintain a continuous course. The German’s even used the British’s own Chain Home defense as reference points during this evolution. The UK would continually modify their systems and employ electronic warfare tactics to jam the German beams.
In order to counter the Germany’s Freya early warning systems and electronic attacks, the British developed the Mandrel airborne radar noise jammer. In 1944, a new counter-measure against radar came into play: chaff. Chaff is a packet of metal foil which breaks apart in the air into many different strips of metal which all act as false positives to a radar beam. This means that the enemy’s radar is flooded with multiple confirmations of an airplane when, in fact there is only one. This helped aircraft to evade enemy anti-aircraft measures by denying any ability to target the actual aircraft. After the end of World War II, development of United States electronic warfare ceased until we realized the Soviet threat. The cold war heavily increased the importance of electronic warfare and created an environment which stimulated intense development.
The most significant advances in electronic warfare that carry it to the modern day mostly occurred after the Second World War. However, if not for the use of radar and electromagnetic radiation in the first half of the twentieth century, the significant advances in electronic warfare could never have happened. Electronic warfare would continue to be developed during the wars America fought attempting to stop the spread of communism and would begin to play a larger part in the overall scheme of the wars.
In the Korean War, the United States deployed B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber aircraft. In an effort of try and minimized the effects of the Superfortresses, the North Koreans installed early-warning radars and radar-controlled anti-aircraft-artillery. Even though countermeasures existed to stop the North Koreans from detecting the bombers, the United States Navy and Air Force were not allowed to use chaff or jam enemy radars because the United States did not want to reveal its advanced abilities in electronic warfare to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the cover of night was not enough to hide the Superfortresses and this rule had to come to an end. For the United States, losing a bomber and potentially giving technology Soviet Union was much worse than showing the electronic warfare abilities it had developed.
Competition between the Soviet Union and the United States pushed the development of electronic warfare because of its role as a deterrent. In the late 1950’s the United States developed the Quail Radar decoy missile. This was another instance of a decoy. However, instead of just sending back false responses to the origin of the radar like chaff did, the Quail Radar decoy missile would deploy from a B-52 and give the appearance of a small aircraft on radar. The Quail Radar decoy missile could also use jamming transmitters to make its appearance equal to that of a bomber on radar.
The United States continued to deploy more complicated systems into aerial combat during the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, the United States equipped F-100F aircraft with the first Radar Homing and Warning systems which detected electromagnetic emissions, located the origin of the emissions, and warned the crew if the aircraft was being tracked. The United States also deployed tactical jamming pods and incorporated electronic warfare self-protection apparatuses in bombers. In this war, the United States used its entire electronic warfare arsenal to reduce the effectiveness of the North Vietnamese air defense system. The casualty rate significantly decreased as a result of these new techniques.
Between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, the United States developed a variety of new weaponry that aided in the success of the Gulf War. The strategy to win the Gulf War was to reduce the Iraqi ground forces through large-scale air attacks and then to attack them with ground and air forces in tandem. In order to gain air superiority many of these new systems in combat for the first time. Among these new systems were the BQM-74 drones, HARM and ALARM missiles, and a new type of chaff. The BQM-74 drones can have the same radar signature as a large airplane. The HARM and ALARM missiles can track radar emissions and follow them to the source. The F-117A was another contributing factor to the success of the air campaign because of its relatively low infrared and radar signature which made them nearly undetectable by the enemy radars. The loss rate for Coalition air forces was very low because the coalition used data they gathered on the Iraqi air defense systems and used well-developed electronic warfare systems to exploit and destroy the Iraqi defenses.
Clearly, electronic warfare has held an increasingly important part of warfare as this technology advances. As radars and electromagnetic field capabilities improve, the possibilities to counteract them increase. As warfare develops into the future, gathering data and denying and manipulating the enemy’s data will play a larger role in the United States Navy in order to maintain dominance at sea. This trend began in the Civil war and will continue into the foreseeable future. Going forward, the United States Navy is centering its electronic warfare attack plan on the Growler. In a speech in 2008, the Honorable Donald Winter stated that “The full extent of the Growler’s extraordinary capabilities cannot be disclosed, but we can say that this next generation aircraft is in a class by itself, combining airborne electronic attack with the newest technologies.” Electronic warfare will most likely play the most important role it ever has in warfare and the United States Navy will continue to be on the cutting edge of this technology and maintain the advantage it gained over the last century.
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