US is still falling behind on electronic warfare

 

  The US is still falling behind on electronic warfare, special operators warn. “The gap between where the United States should be and where we are, in my judgment, continues to expand—not everywhere, but in far too many places,” said Mike Nagata, a retired Army lieutenant general who led special operations in the Middle East and is now a senior vice president for CACI International.

Nagata is hardly the first to sound the alarm. In 2022, the National Defense Strategy Commission said that the United States is “losing its advantages in electronic warfare, hindering the nation’s ability to conduct military operations against capable adversaries.”

The problem has been vividly demonstrated in Ukraine, where U.S.-supplied precision weapons have been reduced nearly to dumb bombs by Russian EW. If the Pentagon is to regain its advantage, Nagata said, it needs to get more creative in its use of radio technologies, particularly space-based communications.