From the Mojave to the Donbas:

Army issues broad appeal to industry for electromagnetic spectrum solutions - Breaking Defense

ELECTRONIC WARFARE & SPECTRUM OPERATIONS 

The Army’s EMSO Overhaul and the Training Failures It Must Fix

The Army’s February 2026 Characteristics of Need document for electromagnetic spectrum operations is not an abstract acquisition reform. It is a direct response to documented training failures at NTC Fort Irwin — failures that Ukraine has proven will be fatal at operational scale.

SIGNAL Staff Report

WASHINGTON, D.C. • February 25, 2026

On February 25, 2026, the Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors released a broad Request for Information anchored in a Characteristics of Need document that describes, in plain institutional language, what the service cannot yet do in the electromagnetic spectrum. Responses are due March 13. But to read the document as a procurement notice would be to miss its deeper significance: it is, point by point, a formal acknowledgment of the shortcomings that have been exposed — rotation after rotation, year after year — at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California.

This article places the Army’s EMSO acquisition initiative in direct dialogue with those documented NTC findings, examining how each major element of the CoN maps onto specific failures observed when brigade combat teams face the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment’s Opposing Force in the Mojave Desert. The connection is not incidental. The OPFOR’s consistent success against rotating units has generated the operational evidence base that now drives Army investment priorities, shapes the March 2025 EW Strategy, and has elevated electromagnetic warfare to a stated core competency of the Army Chief of Staff.

That same evidence base has been corroborated and sharpened by three-plus years of intensive combat in Ukraine, where Russian electronic warfare systems and tactics have demonstrated that the vulnerabilities exposed at Fort Irwin are not training artifacts — they are operationally lethal.

THE NTC DIAGNOSTIC: WHAT FORT IRWIN KEEPS REVEALING

Before examining the CoN in detail, it is useful to catalog the recurring failures the OPFOR’s Capt. Jake Thomas, Col. Kevin Black, and NTC rotation observers have documented publicly. They constitute a diagnostic portrait of a force unprepared for peer electromagnetic competition:

NTC FINDING 1 — Digital Dependency Collapse: Units over-reliant on high-bandwidth networks lose coherent command when jammed off primary comms — exactly what the OPFOR engineers.

NTC FINDING 2 — Cognitive Paralysis Without COP: When the common operating picture disappears, decision cycles slow fatally. Subordinate units commit piecemeal, enabling OPFOR defeat in detail.

NTC FINDING 3 — PACE Plan Inadequacy: Contingency and emergency communication tiers are undertrained and underequipped — “hopeful placeholders,” in one analyst’s phrase, not genuine fallback capabilities.

NTC FINDING 4 — Doctrinal-Cultural Gap: Combat arms officers don’t understand EMS vulnerabilities; signals soldiers don’t understand the battle plan. Neither can bridge the gap under contact.

NTC FINDING 5 — First-Jam-at-Fort-Irwin Problem: Training constraints mean the NTC rotation is often the first time soldiers experience jamming — while being graded, under time pressure, against a seasoned OPFOR.

NTC FINDING 6 — AI Disinformation Vulnerability: OPFOR uses generative AI to spoof commander voice orders and flood battle space with deepfake disinformation, exploiting trust in digital command channels.

NTC FINDING 7 — Drone RF Signature Exposure: Operators’ own control frequencies are intercepted by OPFOR, harvesting video feeds and GPS coordinates for precision targeting — mirroring Russian tactics in Ukraine.

NTC FINDING 8 — Fragmented, Non-Cohesive EW Systems: EW capabilities spread across warfighting functions with no common data architecture — preventing integrated employment and AI-enabled analysis.

NTC FINDING 9 — Expertise Too Thin and Too Senior: Institutional EW knowledge concentrated in a small number of specialists; impossible to replicate across the broader force at the required depth.

NTC FINDING 10 — Procurement Incapacity: After decades of Cold War divestiture, the Army fielded its first program-of-record ground jammer only in recent years — a single manpack system for an entire global force.

  

THE CON’S CENTRAL ADMISSION AND NTC FINDINGS 8 AND 10

The CoN’s opening problem statement — that the Army “lacks the ability to sense, locate, attack, and protect in and through the EMS across competition and geographic continuums” — maps directly onto Findings 8 and 10. Three decades of post-Cold War divestiture left the service with a fragmented portfolio of EW capabilities distributed across warfighting functions without coherent architecture or unified command. The result, documented at Fort Irwin and confirmed in Ukraine, is an inability to fight as an integrated electromagnetic entity.

The CoN goes further, acknowledging that “EMSO capabilities are spread across different warfighting functions and not fully designed as cohesive technologies that are modular, scalable, and adaptable enough to mitigate modern threats.” For NTC rotation observers, this language will be familiar. It describes exactly the condition that allows the OPFOR to exploit frequency bands the Blue Force’s EW systems cannot jointly manage or defend — because no single element can see or control the full picture.

Joseph Welch, the Program Acquisition Executive for C2/Counter C2, has connected this fragmentation explicitly to procurement philosophy. Speaking at the Army Technical Exchange Meeting prior to the RFI’s release, he described a “product centric inventory” approach — evaluating what high-maturity commercial technologies exist and building toward a capability portfolio rather than procuring individual systems to predetermined specifications. This represents a direct institutional response to Finding 10: if the old procurement model produced one program-of-record jammer after twenty years of effort, a fundamentally different model is required.

 

“The first time a soldier is exposed to being jammed should not be when they’re being graded in their final exercise, or worse yet, in a real-world situation.”
— Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, Commander, Army Cyber Center of Excellence

 

THE AI/ML BLOCKAGE AND NTC FINDINGS 1, 2, AND 8

The CoN’s most precise structural diagnosis is its explanation of why fragmentation matters operationally: “This prevents the Army from truly leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for quick decision making to exploit opportunities across the competition continuum.” This statement directly addresses Findings 1, 2, and 8 in combination.

At Fort Irwin, the sequence of failure is predictable and repeatable. The OPFOR jams the Blue Force’s primary network. The common operating picture degrades or disappears. Decision cycles slow as commanders wait for connectivity to restore or attempt to reconstruct the tactical picture via voice. Units act on incomplete information, commit piecemeal, and are defeated in detail. The OPFOR does not need to destroy the visiting unit’s communications entirely — slowing the Blue Force’s decision cycle relative to its own is sufficient.

The AI solution the CoN envisions operates at the machine-speed layer beneath human decision cycles. Col. Scott Shaffer, PM EW&C, expressed this precisely: “Unlocking the potential for spectrum operations at machine speed will be key to winning the EMS fight.” An AI-enabled EMSO architecture can, in principle, detect jamming, characterize the threat, assess its electromagnetic impact on friendly systems, identify countermeasures, and execute — all faster than a human operator can reach for a radio handset. But this architecture requires exactly the coherent, modular, software-defined “Common Services” baseline the CoN specifies in its fourth functional category. Without a common software layer sharing data across EW, signals intelligence, and communications systems, there is no substrate for AI to operate on.

Russia has already fielded this capability in limited form. The RB-109A Bylina system, documented by CSIS in 2024, employs AI-driven algorithms to autonomously coordinate jamming across multiple frequency bands without manual operator input. DARPA’s PROWESS program — developing processors that reconfigure themselves within 50 nanoseconds — represents the U.S. aspiration to match this. The gap between aspiration and fielded capability is precisely the space the CoN is trying to close.

MACHINE SPEED, PACE PLANS, AND NTC FINDINGS 2 AND 3

NTC Finding 3 — the inadequacy of PACE plan training and contingency/emergency tier capabilities — surfaces a subtler dimension of the CoN’s AI/machine-speed imperative. The PACE framework (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) was designed for a world where communications degradation is an exceptional condition requiring deliberate human action to manage. Ukraine has demonstrated that in a peer EW environment, degradation is the baseline condition — not the exception.

In the Donbas, Russian forces adapted their jamming techniques so rapidly — compressing the countermeasure lag from more than a month in early 2023 to as little as two or three days by late 2024 — that Ukrainian units could not rely on any given primary system remaining viable for the duration of a single operation. The PACE framework, as implemented in most Army units, requires human recognition of degradation, human decision to transition, and human execution of the fallback — a process that consumes minutes or tens of minutes in a training environment and considerably longer under combat stress.

A machine-speed EMSO architecture changes this. An AI-enabled spectrum management system, such as the Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS, awarded to 3dB Labs in 2025) combined with the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT-X), can detect degradation in milliseconds, assess which PACE tier remains viable, and autonomously route traffic to that tier while alerting commanders — reducing the cognitive burden on the operator from the decision itself to the verification of a machine recommendation. The S2AS’s primary function — providing real-time visualization of a unit’s own electromagnetic signature and interference environment — is in essence a machine-speed answer to the PACE problem: it tells you which of your communication paths are currently viable before you need them.

 

“Until you’ve been jammed, you don’t know that you’re being jammed. We have to let commanders know what they look like in their own backyard.”
— Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, Army Cyber Center of Excellence, 2024

 

THE TRAINING DEFICIT AND NTC FINDINGS 4, 5, AND 9

NTC Finding 5 — the “first-jam-at-Fort-Irwin problem” — is structural and regulatory, not merely doctrinal. Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton was direct about it: “We are exposing our forces to the EMS at the training center. That’s not good enough.” The Army owns large portions of the electromagnetic spectrum at Fort Irwin for training purposes, but the same capability does not exist at home-station installations, where activating jammers requires FAA coordination and creates interference risks for commercial aviation and telecommunications. The Joint Staff manual on EW training identifies only White Sands Missile Range and the Nevada Test and Training Range as sites where cellular and GPS jamming exercises occur with any regularity.

The Army Special Warfare Center and School has formally requested expanded spectrum testing ranges to address this. The Transforming-in-Contact initiative’s injection of the MEMSS system into units as a prototype capability is an attempt to create recurring exposure at home station before units reach Fort Irwin. But the regulatory environment has not changed, and the gap persists.

The CoN’s emphasis on AI and edge computing is relevant here in a counterintuitive way. A sufficiently autonomous EMSO system reduces the demand on individual operator knowledge — the system characterizes the threat and proposes countermeasures rather than requiring the soldier to do so from memory. This partially addresses Finding 9 (expertise too thin and too senior) by distributing embedded capability rather than requiring distributed expertise. It does not eliminate the need for trained EW specialists, but it lowers the floor on what a non-specialist commander needs to know to function in a jammed environment.

Finding 4’s doctrinal-cultural gap — the disconnect between combat arms officers and EW specialists — requires a different fix. The Army’s Cyber School partnership with the Maneuver Center of Excellence to embed jamming exposure in infantry and armor professional military education is the right approach. The EW Board of Directors, led at the three-star level under the G-3/5/7, ensures that this cultural change has senior institutional backing. But as Capt. Thomas at the NTC acknowledged, bridging the gap between technical EW knowledge and tactical understanding is “a steep learning curve that can boggle my mind even now” — suggesting the solution is years in the making rather than immediately achievable.

THE DRONE RF VULNERABILITY AND NTC FINDING 7

NTC Finding 7 — that drone operators’ RF control frequencies can be intercepted to harvest video feeds and geolocate operators — appears at first glance to be outside the CoN’s EMSO scope. It is not. The CoN’s “Protect” function category explicitly includes emissions control and obfuscation as requirements. The MEMSS program’s classified “radio frequency technical effects” and the CSR (Covert Spectrum Reconnaissance) program’s low-probability-of-detection/low-probability-of-attribution non-kinetic effects are both aimed at the underlying problem: reducing the Army’s exploitable electromagnetic signature.

In Ukraine, Russia’s exploitation of drone RF signatures has been particularly consistent. Russian forces tune to the control frequencies of Ukrainian UAS — including commercial platforms like DJI Mavic variants — harvest the video downlink for intelligence, and in many cases use the RF emission to vector artillery or loitering munitions onto the operator’s position. NTC OPFOR has replicated this technique at Fort Irwin, and inexperienced operators have repeatedly been “striked” by what they assumed was an undetectable platform.

The fiber-optic FPV drone — which renders jamming entirely irrelevant — adds a further dimension to the protect function. A wired drone cannot be jammed or geolocated through its control link because there is no RF emission to intercept. Russia is producing approximately 50,000 fiber-optic FPVs monthly as of early 2026. The CoN’s requirement for protect capabilities that include obfuscation and non-kinetic effects must account for threats that cannot be countered by any technique within the electromagnetic spectrum — a boundary condition that the “Common Services” architecture will need to explicitly accommodate.

THE AI DISINFORMATION PROBLEM AND NTC FINDING 6

NTC Finding 6 — the OPFOR’s use of generative AI to spoof commander voice orders, fabricate operational orders, and flood the training environment with deepfake disinformation — is the finding least directly addressed by the EMSO CoN. The CoN’s four functional categories (Attack, Support, Protect, Common Services) operate on the physical and software layers of the electromagnetic spectrum. AI-generated voice spoofing operates on the cognitive and trust layers — it does not jam a frequency, it corrupts the information carried on that frequency.

Yet the connection to EMSO is real and growing. The most effective use of AI voice spoofing in the NTC environment exploits exactly the conditions that EMS degradation creates. When units are jammed off primary digital networks and forced onto voice radio contingency tiers, authentication protocols degrade and the cognitive load on commanders increases. A commander receiving a suspicious order on a congested voice net — while simultaneously managing a jamming event, a drone contact, and degraded situational awareness — is maximally vulnerable to voice spoofing. The attack is enabled by the EMSO failure, not independent of it.

Col. Black’s description of the OPFOR’s AI capability — “anything from AI-generated memes to AI-generated operational orders, AI-generated voice manipulation and spoofing” — describes a threat that Ukraine has documented in operational use by Russian forces, including Leer-3 system operators who have pushed SMS messages and social media content through captured civilian cellular infrastructure to demoralize Ukrainian soldiers and units. The “Protect” function of the CoN, if construed broadly, should encompass electromagnetic protection of the authentication infrastructure that validates command authority — a capability gap the current EWPMT architecture does not close.

THE UKRAINE VALIDATION AND THE PROCUREMENT URGENCY

Fort Irwin’s controlled training environment has been validated — with lethal operational stakes — by the Ukrainian battlefield. Every NTC finding has its Ukrainian counterpart, and in most cases the Ukrainian version is more severe because it occurs against an adversary with decades of EW investment, no safety constraints, and the incentive structure of existential conflict.

The CoN’s statement that “the cat and mouse game of electronic warfare is waged not in weeks or months like the Cold War of yesteryear, but rather days and hours” maps precisely onto NTC Finding 10’s indictment of the acquisition cycle. An Army that took twenty years to field a single program-of-record ground jammer cannot respond to an adversary updating countermeasures every 48 to 72 hours. The agile funding pilot approved in the FY2026 budget — consolidating EW, UAS, and counter-UAS into a single portfolio with flexible reprogramming authority — is the institutional mechanism for compressing that cycle. The CoN’s problem-statement acquisition philosophy is the contracting mechanism. Together, they represent the most significant Army procurement reform since the post-Cold War drawdown.

It is worth noting what Ukraine also revealed about the limits of this approach. RAND Europe’s November 2025 analysis found that nearly all Allied EW equipment produced before 2020 was functionally unusable by the time it reached Ukrainian frontline units — Russian adaptation had rendered it obsolete in transit. Only some equipment from 2021 through 2022 remained viable at delivery. This suggests that even the CoN’s agile acquisition model, if it produces systems in the 2028–2030 timeframe, must be designed from inception for continuous software-driven update — not fielded as finished products but as updateable platforms, closer in philosophy to commercial software development than traditional defense acquisition.

 

“We are definitely seeing, many times over, an over-reliance on technology. The OPFOR doesn’t need to destroy your communications — slowing your decision cycle is enough.”
— Capt. Jake Thomas, Information Warfare Section, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment OPFOR

 

WHAT THE CON DOES NOT ADDRESS: THE HUMAN FIX

The most persistent lesson from Fort Irwin is also the one most resistant to acquisition solutions: the decisive variable in an electromagnetically contested environment is the human leader who recognizes degradation, transitions the unit’s decision-making to a lower-bandwidth mode, and continues to fight coherently while trusting subordinates to act on decentralized orders. The 11th ACR’s OPFOR demonstrates this is achievable — Col. Black’s regiment uses all four PACE tiers simultaneously and does not slow down when one fails, because its junior leaders are trained and trusted.

The CoN addresses the technological preconditions for this behavior — resilient architectures, AI-enabled situational awareness, modular systems that fail gracefully rather than catastrophically. But it cannot mandate the cultural shift that Stanton, Thomas, and Black all describe as the central requirement. That shift requires sustained doctrinal change, professional military education reform, and a willingness at the institutional level to grade commanders on how they perform when the network fails rather than measuring readiness by how rarely the network fails.

The EW Board of Directors, the March 2025 EW Strategy, the Cyber School–Maneuver Center partnership, and the Transforming-in-Contact injection of EMSO capabilities into operational units are all structural moves toward this culture. The NTC OPFOR’s continued success against rotating units — documented through 2025 — suggests that structural moves are necessary but not yet sufficient.

CONCLUSION: THE CON AS INSTITUTIONAL MIRROR

The Army’s February 2026 EMSO Characteristics of Need document is most usefully read not as an acquisition notice but as an institutional mirror. It reflects back, in the formal language of program management and requirements engineering, exactly what the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment’s OPFOR has been demonstrating in the Mojave Desert for years: that the Army’s electromagnetic warfare capability is fragmented, culturally underinvested, organizationally underweighted, and structurally incompatible with the speed at which peer adversaries operate and adapt.

The four CoN solution areas — Attack, Support, Protect, Common Services — map directly onto the NTC’s diagnostic findings. The AI/machine-speed requirement addresses the cognitive paralysis and PACE failure findings. The Common Services baseline addresses the fragmentation finding. The agile funding structure addresses the procurement incapacity finding. The Transforming-in-Contact delivery model addresses, partially, the training deficit finding. What it cannot address in a contract vehicle is the cultural and doctrinal transformation that Capt. Thomas, Maj. Gen. Stanton, and Col. Black all describe as the harder and more important problem.

Industry partners responding to the March 13 RFI should understand that the Army is not looking for the next exquisite, purpose-built electronic warfare system. It is looking for building blocks of a coherent architecture that can be fielded rapidly, updated continuously, and operated by units whose EW proficiency will, for the foreseeable future, fall well short of what Fort Irwin keeps exposing as necessary. The best responses will be not only technically resilient but cognitively accessible — systems that help a jammed, degraded, cognitively overloaded commander fight effectively, rather than systems that require a highly trained specialist to employ. That, precisely, is what the OPFOR keeps proving the visiting force lacks.

 

 

 

SOURCES AND CITATIONS

NTC / OPFOR Training Sources

[1] Freedberg, Sydney J. Jr. "‘California Jammin’: Wargames Show Army's Electronic Weakness — and a Human Fix." Breaking Defense, 2025. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/california-jammin-wargames-show-armys-electronic-weakness-and-a-human-fix/

[2] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Trying to Expose Entire Force to Electromagnetic Warfare During Training." DefenseScoop, August 17, 2023. https://defensescoop.com/2023/08/17/army-trying-to-expose-entire-force-to-electromagnetic-warfare-during-training/

[3] Mizokami, Kyle. "Preparing for Electronic Warfare Is the Army’s Top Cyber Priority in 2024." Defense One, March 22, 2024. https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2024/03/preparing-electronic-warfare-armys-top-cyber-priority-2024/395177/

[4] Stanton, Maj. Gen. Paul (quoted). "Army Expanding Electronic Warfare Training for Every Soldier." AFCEA Signal, August 2023. https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/cyber-edge/army-expanding-electronic-warfare-training-every-soldier

[5] Tucker, Patrick. "Special Operators Seek Larger Ranges for Electronic Warfare and Drone Development and Training." Defense One, December 18, 2025. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/12/special-operators-seek-expanded-electronic-drone-warfare-test-sites-us/410248/

[6] Gambone, Lt. Col. Michael and Carey, Abigail. "TRADOC Hosts 27th Annual Worldwide OPFOR Conference." U.S. Army, March 22, 2024. https://www.army.mil/article/274746/tradoc_hosts_27th_annual_worldwide_opfor_conference

[7] QinetiQ. "Rethinking PACE for a More Agile, Threat-Driven World." QinetiQ Blog, 2025. https://www.qinetiq.com/en/blogs/rethinking-pace-for-a-more-agile-threat-driven-world

EMSO CoN / Army Acquisition Sources

[8] Pomerleau, Mark. "Army Issues Broad Appeal to Industry for Electromagnetic Spectrum Solutions." Breaking Defense, February 25, 2026. https://breakingdefense.com/2026/02/army-issues-broad-appeal-to-industry-for-electromagnetic-spectrum-solutions/

[9] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army’s New Budget Proposal Invests in Electromagnetic Force Protection Capabilities." DefenseScoop, July 1, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/07/01/armys-2026-budget-request-electronic-warfare-force-protection-capabilities/

[10] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Seeks More Flexible Funding on Electronic Warfare Capabilities, Programs." DefenseScoop, October 17, 2024. https://defensescoop.com/2024/10/17/army-seeks-flexible-funding-electronic-warfare-capabilities-programs/

[11] Lawrence, Drew F. "What Does Flexible Funding for Electronic Warfare Mean for the Army?" DefenseScoop, April 18, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/04/18/army-electronic-warfare-flexible-funding/

[12] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Evaluates Several Evolving Electronic Warfare Concepts at Project Convergence." DefenseScoop, April 15, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/04/15/army-project-convergence-electronic-warfare-concepts/

[13] Lawrence, Drew F. "Electronic Warfare Receiving More Senior Level Attention Within the Army." DefenseScoop, August 21, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/08/21/electronic-warfare-army-senior-level-attention/

[14] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Wants ‘Self-Organized’ Industry Teams for Next-Gen C2 Effort." DefenseScoop, March 31, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/03/31/army-next-gen-c2-self-organized-industry-teams/

[15] Lawrence, Drew F. "One Electronic Warfare Payload to Rule Them All?" DefenseScoop, August 22, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/08/21/army-electronic-warfare-modular-mission-payload-vision/

[16] U.S. Army PEO IEW&S. "U.S. Army Electromagnetic Warfare Capabilities Update." July 7, 2025. https://peoiews.army.mil/2025/07/07/us-army-electromagnetic-warfare-capabilities-update/

[17] Strobel, Warren P. "House NDAA Provision Would Require Army to Create Electronic Warfare Center of Excellence." DefenseScoop, May 13, 2024. https://defensescoop.com/2024/05/13/house-ndaa-provision-would-require-army-to-create-electronic-warfare-center-of-excellence/

[18] "Here Are the Army’s New Planned EW, Signals Programs." Breaking Defense, December 2023. https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/here-are-the-armys-new-planned-ew-signals-programs/

Ukraine Battlefield Evidence

[19] TRADOC G-2 OE Enterprise. "Ukrainian Unmanned Aerial System Tactics." https://oe.tradoc.army.mil/product/ukrainian-unmanned-aerial-system-tactics/

[20] "Russia’s Changes in the Conduct of War Based on Lessons from Ukraine." Military Review, September–October 2025. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/September-October-2025/Lessons-from-Ukraine/

[21] CLAWS. "Russia-Ukraine War: Lessons from an Electronic Warfare (EW) Perspective." May 31, 2025. https://claws.co.in/russia-ukraine-war-lessons-from-an-electronic-warfare-ew-perspective/

[22] Defense.info. "Russian Learning from Ukrainian Drone Warfare: A Strategic Adaptation Analysis." June 24, 2025. https://defense.info/re-shaping-defense-security/2025/06/russian-learning-from-ukrainian-drone-warfare-a-strategic-adaptation-analysis/

[23] "How Ukraine’s Drone War Is Forcing the U.S. Army to Rewrite Its Battle Doctrine." Military.com, October 19, 2025. https://www.military.com/feature/2025/10/19/how-ukraines-drone-war-forcing-us-army-rewrite-its-battle-doctrine.html

[24] "Adapting the Combat Training Centers for the Drone Battlefield." Small Wars Journal, January 8, 2026. https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/08/adapting-the-combat-training-centers-for-the-drone-battlefield/

[25] RAND Europe. NATO EW Coalition and Ukraine EW assessment, November 2025 (cited in multiple sources).

AI, Disinformation, and Deepfakes

[26] Doolittle, Claudia. "ROTC Students Are Helping the Military Defend Against AI Deepfakes." Military Times, December 31, 2025. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2025/12/31/rotc-students-are-helping-the-military-defend-against-ai-deepfakes/

[27] Vossler, Joseph, et al. "Artificial Intelligence as a Force Multiplier in U.S. Military Information Campaigns." CSIAC, October 28, 2024. https://csiac.dtic.mil/articles/artificial-intelligence-as-a-force-multiplier-in-u-s-military-information-campaigns/

[28] Brawner, Keith, Ph.D. "Preparing for the Cyber Battlespace." Army AL&T Magazine, August 25, 2025. https://www.army.mil/article/287582/preparing_for_the_cyber_battlespace

Strategic Context

[29] Clark, Bryan et al. "The Invisible Battlefield: A Technology Strategy for US Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority." Hudson Institute. https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/the-invisible-battlefield-a-technology-strategy-for-us-electromagnetic-spectrum-superiority

[30] "Joint Electronic Warfare, Cyber and Spectrum Operations Need Work to Face Contested Environments." AFCEA Signal Magazine. https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/defense-operations/joint-electronic-warfare-cyber-and-spectrum-operations-need-work

[31] U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command. "Army Software & Innovation Center Enables Army Continuous Transformation." Army.mil, January 20, 2026. https://www.army.mil/article/289983/army_software_innovation_center_enables_army_continuous_transformation

[32] Carpenter, Brig. Gen. Steve (quoted). "Army’s Training Center in Europe Modernizing and Optimizing Training for Global Deterrence." Army.mil, April 2, 2025. https://www.army.mil/article/284256/armys_training_center_in_europe_modernizing_and_optimizing_training_for_global_deterrence

[33] Joseph D. Welch Biography. U.S. Army, May 2024. https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2024/05/06/13983eea/joseph-welch-bio-1.pdf

[34] Capaccio, Anthony, and Taylor, Col. Shane. "Army Network Plan Will Offset Contested Comms with Multi-Path Transport-Agnostic Capabilities." Breaking Defense, December 2022. https://breakingdefense.com/2022/12/army-network-plan-will-offset-contested-comms-with-multi-path-transport-agnostic-capabilities/

[35] Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Expects to Mature Electromagnetic Spectrum Decoy and Obfuscation Systems in FY ’25." DefenseScoop, March 22, 2024. https://defensescoop.com/2024/03/22/army-electromagnetic-spectrum-decoy-obfuscation-systems-2025/

 

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