Tuesday, February 24, 2026

NTC Wargames Expose Army's EMS Vulnerabilities


'California jammin': Wargames show Army’s electronic weakness — and a human fix - Breaking Defense

Ukraine Battlefield Confirms the Stakes

 Cyber Edge / Electronic Warfare

BLUF

Rotational training at the National Training Center (NTC), Fort Irwin, California, consistently reveals that Army brigade combat teams remain dangerously over-reliant on high-bandwidth digital networks in contested electromagnetic environments. While no jammer can fully silence every communications layer, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment's Opposing Force (OPFOR) regularly achieves decisive tactical effects by degrading decision cycles and inducing piecemeal commitment of combat power. Those training failures are no longer hypothetical — the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has validated them in blood. Russian electromagnetic warfare systems have neutralized Western GPS-guided munitions, blinded drones, severed command networks, and driven an evolutionary arms race in unmanned systems that now tests the ingenuity of every NATO military. The U.S. Army's March 2025 Electromagnetic Warfare Strategy, the fielding of the Terrestrial Layer System Manpack, and new cross-branch EW education initiatives represent meaningful corrective steps — but senior leaders and independent analysts alike warn that cultural and doctrinal adaptation must outpace hardware investment if the force is to survive large-scale combat operations in a fully contested electromagnetic spectrum.

The Problem Revealed at Fort Irwin

Every year roughly eight to ten Army brigade combat teams rotate through the sprawling Mojave Desert training installation at Fort Irwin to face the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment — the Army's dedicated OPFOR — in high-fidelity simulated combat. The Regiment fights with real radio-frequency jamming, a widening inventory of unmanned systems, and, now, artificial intelligence-generated disinformation. The results are sobering.

"We are definitely seeing, many times over, an over-reliance on technology," said Capt. Jake Thomas, who heads the information warfare section of the OPFOR staff. Thomas, who began his career as an infantryman before spending seven years with the Regiment, has accumulated expertise that would be extraordinarily difficult to replicate across the broader force.

The OPFOR fields a wide array of electronic warfare assets, including backpack-portable jammers and replicated high-power Russian-derived systems. Yet OPFOR officers acknowledge that complete communications denial remains elusive. A new tactical satellite (TACSAT) upgrade being rolled out for battalion headquarters and higher is particularly hard to jam, and even lower-echelon units with less sophisticated technology can shift to a backup system when their primary communications network is jammed — using the Army's four-tier PACE plan of Primary, Alternative, Contingency, and Emergency pathways.

The real vulnerability, however, is not technical. It is cognitive. When units are forced off their primary networks onto contingency and emergency modes, they lose the rich common operating picture — the shared digital map with real-time friendly and enemy positions — and are reduced to static-filled voice calls or low-bandwidth text relay. Decision cycles slow and subordinate units make uncoordinated maneuvers that allow the OPFOR to pick them off one at a time. As former Centaur Squadron commander Capt. Ethan Christensen told Breaking Defense, success for the OPFOR is measured not by destroying the visiting unit outright but by forcing them to commit combat power piecemeal.

The AI Dimension: Disinformation as a Tactical Weapon

Beyond jamming, the OPFOR has introduced generative AI to the training environment in ways that foreshadow emerging peer threats. The Regiment uses generative AI to flood the training area with disinformation, including deepfake voices trained from publicly available video of speeches and ceremonies to impersonate visiting commanders giving false orders. Col. Kevin Black, commanding officer of the 11th ACR, confirmed the capability: "Anything from AI-generated memes to AI-generated operational orders, AI-generated voice manipulation and spoofing."

This development tracks with the broader threat environment. Syracuse University's Synthetic Media Lab, working with Army ROTC cadets, is building detection tools specifically designed to help the military distinguish genuine communications from AI-generated counterfeits. The Army's own assessments have flagged that the malicious use of AI for battlefield disinformation is expected to grow significantly over the coming decade, and open-source analyses document that known deepfake video volumes grew roughly 550 percent between 2019 and 2024, with some projections reaching up to 8 million such videos circulating globally by 2025.

The NTC OPFOR's exploitation of drone radio-frequency feeds adds a further dimension. Inexperienced drone operators often fail to realize that video feeds from their platforms can be intercepted; OPFOR operators tune to visiting units' drone control frequencies, harvest the feed — along with the GPS coordinates of the operator's ground station — and queue a simulated precision strike. This technique mirrors documented Russian tactics in Ukraine, where commercial-grade UAS have been systematically exploited for signals intelligence collection as well as kinetic targeting.

Ukraine: The World's Premier Electronic Warfare Laboratory

The training failures visible at Fort Irwin are not theoretical projections. Three years of high-intensity conflict in Ukraine have produced the most extensive real-world electromagnetic warfare data since the Cold War, and the operational record confirms every pathology observed at the NTC — with lethal consequences.

Russian Electromagnetic Order of Battle

Unlike the West, post-Soviet Russia did not pivot away from EW in the 1990s and 2000s. It has developed and continued to develop some of the most advanced EW capabilities in the world, deploying electromagnetic warfare not merely as a support capability but as a core warfighting tool integrated into its doctrine and pre-attack shaping operations.

Russia entered the Ukraine conflict with a well-structured, layered electromagnetic order of battle. Russian forces deployed sophisticated EW systems including the Krasukha-4 for radar jamming, the Leer-3 for disrupting cellular networks, and the Murmansk-BN for strategic high-frequency communications disruption. Each Russian army maneuver brigade also includes dedicated EW companies equipped with smaller tactical systems like the R-330Zh Zhitel for localized jamming within roughly 50 kilometers. The Krasukha-4, a broadband multifunctional jammer, is designed to suppress airborne radar systems across the X- and Ku-bands — specifically targeting platforms such as the E-8 JSTARS and E-3 AWACS that Western militaries depend upon to manage battlespace awareness. Russia's intent is to create a layered system of effects, each targeting a specific vulnerability in NATO's information-centric way of warfare, with the overall goal of degrading situational awareness and precision while preserving its own forces' ability to maneuver.

Critically, Russia's approach emphasizes organic EW capability at every echelon. Russian battalions independently operate systems like the Borisoglebsk-2 and Leer-3, which jam communications and GPS navigation, spoof drone signals, and expose the location of emitters. EW is used to shape the battlefield before major attacks, not merely to react to enemy use of the spectrum. Even commercial solutions play a role: commercial jammers purchased online, some as cheap as $20, have been deployed alongside military-grade systems, multiplying the density of the electromagnetic threat across the front.

GPS-Guided Munitions: A Cautionary Tale

The most strategically significant operational lesson from Ukraine concerns the vulnerability of GPS-guided precision munitions to sustained jamming. Many U.S.-made satellite-guided munitions in Ukraine failed to withstand Russian jamming technology, prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted. The most documented case involves the M982 Excalibur 155mm precision artillery shell. Excalibur rounds initially achieved a roughly 70 percent efficiency rate when first employed in Ukraine. However, after approximately six weeks, the rate declined to only 6 percent as Russian forces adapted their EW systems. In the worst-case scenarios described in Ukrainian assessments, the cost-per-successful-strike increased from roughly $300,000 to $1.9 million per round. Kyiv eventually stopped using the system entirely and the United States suspended further deliveries.

The problem extended well beyond a single munition. Russian jamming also affected other GPS-aided munitions, including air-launched JDAMs and HIMARS rockets. Russia's layered jamming and spoofing has been sufficient in some cases to degrade the encrypted M-code signals from the GPS constellation, overwhelming them with higher-power jamming emissions.

The American response has been to build countermeasures directly into the weapons being affected. The Air Force awarded a contract to Scientific Applications and Research Associates (SARA) for a home-on-GPS-jam seeker kit for the JDAM-ER — in effect engineering the weapon to home in on the jammer that is trying to defeat it. HIMARS has been equipped with additional navigation capability. The UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile proved more resilient due to its integrated terrain-matching navigation system, which functions without GPS.

Michael Monteleone, director of the Army's Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross-Functional Team, called Ukraine "a huge learning experience for us," noting that the global community's technology — weapons, command-and-control systems, and communications devices — was being used in real time and providing direct feedback on performance against Russian EW.

Communications and the Starlink Proving Ground

The conflict has also served as an unprecedented real-world experiment in resilient communications architecture, with commercial satellite broadband playing a role no military planner had scripted. Large-scale jamming by Russian forces compelled Ukrainian operators to develop alternative navigation methods including inertial navigation and line-of-sight communications, though these alternatives presented their own vulnerabilities to intercept and further jamming. Ukrainian forces rapidly developed defenses and countermeasures including satellite communications, relay stations, and mesh networks to maintain reliable command and control capabilities.

Starlink became the backbone of Ukrainian battlefield communications in ways that reshaped operational concepts on both sides. Both sides relied very heavily on Starlink terminals for battlefield communications, and more recently Russian forces began installing unregistered Starlink terminals on drones to provide beyond-line-of-sight connectivity and resistance to standard jamming techniques — a development that itself illustrates the degree to which commercial SATCOM has supplanted military communications in this conflict.

Russia's response to Ukrainian Starlink dependency has escalated into a dedicated counterspace EW campaign. Ukrainian military units began experiencing Starlink outages as early as May 2024, which Ukrainian officials attributed to Russia testing different mechanisms with its electronic warfare systems. Two Russian systems are of particular concern: the Tobol, originally designed to protect Russian satellites but repurposed to disrupt GPS and satellite communications, and the newer Kalinka, known informally as the "Starlink Killer," designed specifically to detect and disrupt signals to and from Starlink satellites. Leaked U.S. military documents indicated Russia had deployed at least three Tobol installations specifically to target Starlink signals over Eastern Ukraine.

The implications of satellite communications dependency were dramatically reinforced in early 2026. When SpaceX introduced a whitelist system restricting Starlink access to registered Ukrainian terminals in order to deny Russian forces use of illicitly obtained terminals, Russian forces experienced major command-and-control disruptions along the line of contact. Pro-Russian channels described serious breakdowns in unit communications, with at least one incident of Russian forces shelling their own troops on the Zaporizhzhia front reportedly linked to Starlink jamming of their own communications. The episode illustrated, with unmistakable clarity, the danger of over-dependence on any single communications pathway — even one as resilient as Starlink.

Ukraine's successful countermeasures against Russian jamming relied on exactly the kind of communication diversity the Army's PACE framework recommends: frequency-hopping radios, encrypted communication, terrestrial fiber-optic networks, and commercial satellite communication integrated as redundant pathways outside military communications infrastructure.

The UAV EW Arms Race: Autonomy as the Answer to Jamming

Nowhere has the electromagnetic contest been more visible — or more consequential — than in the evolution of unmanned aerial systems. Ukraine has fundamentally become a global testing ground for drone warfare in contested electromagnetic environments, and the pace of adaptation on both sides is unprecedented.

From 2023 onward, FPV drones became the new standard for Ukrainian forces — comparable to miniature anti-tank missiles, produced at tens of thousands each month and integrated into assault brigades with dedicated UAV companies. In some Ukrainian units, up to 60 percent of assets deployed in assaults now consist of drones, and the battlefield has become highly transparent to a depth of 10 to 20 kilometers. Ukraine produced over 2 million drones in 2024 and by early 2025 was producing at least 200,000 FPV drones per month, with capacity projected to reach 4 million or more annually.

Yet that capability is built on a foundation of radio-frequency control links that are inherently jammable. By 2024, Russian forces had achieved approximately 85 to 90 percent interception rates against Ukrainian Shahed-type drones, primarily through sophisticated layered electronic warfare defenses. Russia's Pole-21 system provides GNSS jamming power across a range of up to 25 or more kilometers. The electromagnetic contest drove both sides to a technological solution that bypasses radio-frequency communications entirely.

Starting in early 2024, Russia deployed hard-wired FPV drones fitted with spools of optical fiber. Like a twisted variation on a child's kite, the lethal UAVs can venture 20 or more kilometers from their operator, the hair-thin fiber floating behind them, providing an unjammable connection. "Right now, there is no protection against fiber-optic drones," said Vadym Burukin, cofounder of the Ukrainian drone startup Huless. "The Russians scaled this solution pretty fast, and now they are saturating the battle front with these drones." "The main advantage is their immunity to electronic warfare and jamming, while also providing excellent video quality," noted Samuel Bendett, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. "Both sides are now racing to develop fiber-optic drone tactics and countermeasures, testing new ideas and concepts daily."

As of summer 2025, fiber-optic FPV drones were being deployed at scale by both Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was producing at least 20,000 such drones per month, while Russia was producing around 50,000. Current versions with longer cable spools can reach operational ranges of up to 40 kilometers. Countermeasures against fiber-optic drones are necessarily physical, since jamming is ineffective against a wired link.

The next step — already under evaluation on the Ukrainian battlefield — is full autonomy. Companies including KrattWorks and Auterion began testing neural-network-driven optical navigation systems in Ukraine in late 2024, allowing drones to continue missions even when all radio and satellite-navigation links are jammed. The system uses visual landmark navigation rather than GPS or RF control, allowing the operator to designate a target area while the drone makes its own terminal guidance decisions. Former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, speaking in April 2025, declared that the Russian-Ukrainian War had "completely changed the nature of warfare" and predicted future conflicts would be decided by countries that focused their resources on drones, electronic warfare, and artificial intelligence.

This arms race dynamic carries a direct institutional warning. At the AOC 2025 conference, analysts noted that out of all EW equipment provided to Ukraine by allies, nearly everything produced during or before 2020 was unusable by the time it reached the front, and only some equipment produced in 2021 and 2022 was usable. Russia's EW techniques had simply evolved too quickly over that period. The gap between procurement timelines and operational adaptation cycles — a gap that has defined U.S. defense acquisition for decades — has become a potentially fatal vulnerability in the electromagnetic domain.

Organizational and Doctrinal Lessons from Ukraine

A critical analytical finding from the Ukraine conflict is that Russia's compartmentalized military organization and lack of trust between units have contributed to its inability to fully leverage its information warfare potential despite significant technological investment. By contrast, organizational structures that can rapidly incorporate emerging EW capabilities into overall military operations — integrating space, commercial satellite, and terrestrial networks fluidly — have proved decisive. Ukraine's survival has depended not on the quality of any single system but on the diversity and resilience of its communications architecture, the speed of its tactical adaptation, and — critically — the initiative of its small-unit leaders operating under degraded conditions.

Russian forces initially required a month or more to counter Ukrainian innovations in early 2023 but had compressed that adaptation cycle to as little as two or three days by 2024 and 2025, indicating improved learning mechanisms and industrial responsiveness. Ukrainian innovation has generally maintained a three-to-six-month development lead over Russian countermeasures, but the closing of that gap represents an accelerating arms race that advantages the side with the greater industrial production capacity.

A November 2025 RAND Europe analysis concluded that the Ukraine conflict has exposed a critical EW blind spot long neglected by Western militaries — that control over the invisible electromagnetic battlespace, where communications are jammed, drones are blinded, and precision weapons are thrown off course, can decide the outcome of a conflict. Russia understood this sooner than NATO, using EW to isolate Ukrainian units, disrupt command networks, and neutralize Western systems. Ukraine has adapted with ingenuity, but has been learning in combat what NATO should have learned in training.

The Doctrinal and Cultural Divide at Home

A structural problem underlies both the NTC training failures and the operational lessons from Ukraine. Combat arms officers — trained as tankers or infantrymen — are frequently unfamiliar with the vulnerabilities of the communications systems they depend on, while signals soldiers may know their systems well but lack understanding of how those systems fit into the broader battle plan. The OPFOR at Fort Irwin has the luxury of years to develop this cross-domain understanding; the rest of the Army does not.

The OPFOR's institutional approach is instructive. Col. Black stresses that his regiment does not rely on its exquisite digital command systems any more than necessary, instead pushing information simultaneously across all PACE tiers so that the loss of any one layer does not slow the fight. The key is trusting subordinates to use their initiative and take action on the spot without waiting for approval from above, detailed digital instructions, or their tech support getting the network back online.

Analysts have identified the structural procurement problem reinforcing this culture. A 2025 QinetiQ analysis of PACE framework vulnerabilities concluded that most defense procurement prioritizes primary systems while treating contingency and emergency communications layers as afterthoughts — a structural flaw that leaves forces catastrophically exposed when primary and alternate systems fail simultaneously. As Army network program managers have acknowledged, the goal is ultimately to give forces so many redundant pathways that PACE itself becomes less necessary — but achieving that in a tactically relevant timeline against a peer adversary's adaptive jamming is a problem that remains unsolved.

The Ukraine data provide specific quantification of what degraded communications cost at the tactical level. When Russian forces lost Starlink access in early 2026, the communication breakdown was almost immediate — and Ukrainian forces exploited the window for some of their fastest territorial gains in two-and-a-half years. The inverse lesson — what happens to U.S. forces when they lose their primary networks and lack the training and cultural preparation to operate below that level — is exactly what the NTC OPFOR demonstrates rotation after rotation.

The Army's Institutional Response

The Army is pursuing a multi-pronged corrective program spanning training, doctrine, hardware, and organizational structure.

Training Reform. Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence, has made EW exposure for every soldier a priority, partnering the Cyber School with the Maneuver Center of Excellence to expose infantry and armor students to jamming effects and electromagnetic geolocation while they are in their basic branch courses. The intent is to ensure that the first time a soldier is jammed is not during a graded NTC rotation or, worse, in combat. Stanton acknowledged that home-station EW training faces regulatory complexity, because activating jammers on Army installations requires coordination with the FAA and other federal agencies to avoid interference with commercial aviation and telecommunications. The Army Special Warfare Center and School has formally requested that federal regulators expand electromagnetic spectrum testing ranges in the United States, noting that the Joint Staff manual on EW training lists only two sites — White Sands Missile Range and the Nevada Test and Training Range — where cellular and GPS jamming exercises regularly occur.

The Army is also pursuing the Spectrum Blitz exercise series in Europe. Exercise Spectrum Blitz 25, conducted at Hohenfels Training Area, Germany, in April 2025, focused on training Electronic Warfare Teams at the platoon level as part of the Army's Transforming in Contact initiative. In January and February 2025, elements of the 11th Cyber Battalion participated in NTC Rotation 25-03, conducting electromagnetic reconnaissance, RF-enabled offensive cyber operations, and special-purpose electromagnetic attacks in support of III Armor Corps and 1st Infantry Division.

Hardware Fielding. In March 2025, the Army published a comprehensive EW Strategy designed to institutionalize enduring electromagnetic warfare capabilities across the force in support of Joint operations. The strategy is complemented by the Terrestrial Layer System Manpack — the first program-of-record dismounted electronic attack system in decades — which is on track for full fielding to all brigade combat teams by fiscal year 2028. The Army has simultaneously abandoned the dedicated EW vehicle concept in favor of a modular adapter kit that mounts the Manpack to existing platforms, and a broader Modular Mission Payload architecture that can load EW capabilities onto virtually any platform — moving away from single-purpose systems toward a mission-configurable, software-defined approach.

The Army has also requested $9.3 million in fiscal year 2025 research and development funds for the Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS), a commercial off-the-shelf solution providing real-time visualization of a unit's own electromagnetic signature, allowing commanders to understand and manage their electronic footprint before an adversary exploits it. The related MAGPIE system, tested at Project Convergence, can replicate Army RF signatures from company to division level to confuse and deceive enemy signals collectors. The decoy-and-obfuscation concept directly mirrors Ukrainian field-expedient techniques used to confuse Russian ELINT collection.

Organizational Change. The Army's Electromagnetic Warfare Strategy is nested within the Secretary of Defense's directives and the Army Transformation Initiative. Parallel to the strategy, the service stood up an EW Board of Directors — a forum led by the three-star general heading the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (G-3/5/7) — to provide senior-level oversight and ensure that field lessons reach Pentagon decision-makers in a tactically relevant timeframe. A provision in the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act also directs the Army to establish an Electronic Warfare Center of Excellence within Training and Doctrine Command, reversing the 2017 decision to subordinate EW to the cyber branch and giving the discipline its own institutional home.

Space-Layer Resilience. The Space Force is pressing ahead with anti-jam satellite architecture to backstop Army communications from above. The Protected Tactical SATCOM program seeks to provide a resilient architecture through dispersed multi-orbit constellations, on-board encrypted signal processing, and active beam-forming designed to degrade gracefully under electronic attack rather than failing catastrophically. The system implements military-grade cyber protection and autonomous reconstitution to preserve critical communications in contested, degraded, and operationally limited environments.

NATO and Allied Responses

The United States is not alone in grappling with this problem, and there are emerging multilateral responses worth tracking. In April 2025, NATO and Ukraine established a new Electronic Warfare Coalition — under the leadership of Germany and Sweden — to formalize the exchange of EW equipment, training, and doctrine among thirteen current signatories, reflecting growing allied recognition that this is a domain requiring collective action. The RAND Europe analysis called for NATO to make systematic integration of the electromagnetic spectrum dimension into exercises and wargames mandatory — specifically requiring troops to train to failure in degraded communications and GPS-denied environments, not just in ideal conditions.

Air Force Special Operations Command is drawing its own lessons from the Ukraine experience. AFSOC officials have acknowledged that for the past two decades the command's aircraft operated in largely benign electromagnetic combat environments against insurgent groups possessing no EW capabilities. Ukraine has made clear that future adversaries will force SOF airpower to fight in environments that are heavily degraded in terms of jamming and electronic attack, requiring a fundamental review of how the command views training, acquisitions, and platform upgrades.

The Human Fix

Technology, however, cannot solve a human problem. The consistent lesson from Fort Irwin — reinforced by the operational record in Ukraine — is that the decisive variable is not the jammer or the counter-jammer. It is the troop commander who recognizes that communications have been degraded, makes the call to shift down the PACE hierarchy without being told, and continues to fight coherently with reduced situational awareness while trusting subordinates to act on decentralized orders.

Ukraine's most resilient units demonstrated precisely this quality. They treated Starlink, SATCOM, frequency-hopping radios, fiber-optic cables, and mesh networks not as a hierarchy from which one selected the best available option but as simultaneous, parallel pathways — each active and maintained — to be shifted among without hesitation as conditions required. They built their tactical culture around the assumption that any one pathway would fail, and they were right.

Col. Black's regiment does not slow down when one layer fails because its junior leaders are drilled and trusted to exercise independent judgment. "If we get jammed, if we lose our technical capabilities, our leaders can still execute," he said. The Army's challenge — and the central finding from every NTC rotation examined, confirmed now by three years of high-intensity conflict on the European landmass — is scaling that culture across several hundred thousand soldiers before the next large-scale combat operation begins.

Sidebar: From the Battlefield to Fort Irwin: How Ukraine Intelligence Is Reshaping NTC Training

The war in Ukraine has delivered something defense planners had not expected to possess for decades, if ever: sustained, high-fidelity operational intelligence on how Russian electronic warfare systems actually perform in combat, not just in doctrine or on test ranges. That intelligence is flowing — through multiple channels, at varying classification levels — into the Army's training enterprise, including the NTC at Fort Irwin. But the pipeline from battlefield observation to replicated OPFOR capability is neither fast nor complete, and Army training officials have been publicly candid about both the progress and the gaps.


The Intelligence Windfall: Hardware in Hand

The single most consequential intelligence event of the conflict occurred in late March 2022, just one month into the invasion. Ukrainian troops near the town of Makariv on the outskirts of Kyiv found what turned out to be the command post module of a Krasukha-4 — one of Russia's most capable mobile EW systems, designed to jam airborne surveillance radars, low-Earth orbit satellites, and radar-guided munitions. Russian troops appear to have hastily camouflaged the containerized module with tree branches before abandoning it, making no attempt to destroy it. The War Zone

The captured system was reportedly first moved to the U.S. Air Force base at Ramstein, Germany, before being transferred to the United States for detailed analysis. The Krasukha-4 command module was largely undamaged and otherwise functional. Army Recognition The significance was immediate and recognized at the highest levels. With the Krasukha-4 in American hands, any attempt by Russia to rebuild its electronic warfare program would have to start from the assumption that secret innovations in the captured system were now known to U.S. engineers. Public Integrity

The Krasukha-4, it should be understood, is not a tactical communications jammer. It is a broadband multifunctional jamming system capable of disrupting low-Earth orbit spy satellites, ground-based radars, airborne surveillance radars including AWACS and JSTARS, and radar-guided munitions at ranges between 150 and 300 kilometers. The Aviationist The loss to Russia was strategic: the system is normally deployed with Russia's Independent EW Brigades, which provide operational-level electronic attack against ground-based and airborne radars, and NATO analysts noted that should the container end up in NATO hands, it could yield information on how the overall Krasukha system works — intelligence vital to rendering both Krasukha variants null and void in any future conflict. Armada International

The Krasukha capture was not an isolated event. Ukraine has since fielded its own intelligence-gathering and exploitation capabilities, using reconnaissance drones to locate and attack Russian EW assets. In November 2023, Ukrainian forces destroyed a second Krasukha-4 in the Zaporizhia region using JDAM-guided bombs after reconnaissance drones located the system concealed in a forested area. Each such action generates intelligence about how Russia deploys, conceals, and employs its EW systems operationally — data of direct relevance to NTC training scenario design.

TRADOC's OPFOR Modernization: Directly Driven by Ukraine

The institutional mechanism for translating battlefield intelligence into training has a name and a documented process. The TRADOC G-2 — the intelligence arm of Training and Doctrine Command — runs the Army's OPFOR program through its Training and Doctrine Command Command (T2COM) organization, and it has been explicit about Ukraine's role in reshaping training.

At the 27th Annual Worldwide Army OPFOR Conference, held in early 2024, working groups engaged in extensive discussion about OPFOR replication gaps based on emerging trends in current conflicts such as Ukraine and Israel. The result was a set of ten prioritized recommendations within the live, virtual, and constructive training domains. Of particular interest was the need for improved OPFOR unmanned aircraft systems and electronic warfare capabilities to better reflect tactics being used by Russia. "UAS in combat have increased in ability with the adaptive use of commercial hobbyist innovations," said Darryl Perry, an analyst in TRADOC G-2's OPFOR Modernization Branch. "Racing drones that are flying at over 80 mph change the defensive equation. There are major efforts to counter the systems that are responsible for jamming and develop extensive protection systems, all under the umbrella of EW." Army

The TRADOC G-2 OPFOR program, overseen by T2COM, provides what it describes as "a realistic training alternative to real-world threats for Army units," representing a blend of regular, irregular, conventional, and unconventional forces with applicable doctrine and equipment. Critically, the program has historical precedent for exactly this kind of rapid adaptation. FMSO's predecessor organization — the Soviet Army Studies Office, founded in 1986 — worked with senior Army leadership and the National Training Center at a critical time of change to help the United States more effectively train for a potential war with the Soviet Union, directly informing OPFOR doctrine and NTC scenario design. Army That institutional pipeline is now being re-activated with urgency, drawing on Ukraine battlefield data in much the same way SASO drew on Soviet exercises and doctrine in the Cold War.

The TRADOC G-2 also publishes an extensive open-source product line specifically designed to feed training design, including the Red Diamond newsletter (unclassified threat tactics for training units), the OE Watch (translated foreign military press), and the Worldwide Equipment Guide — all of which have been extensively updated since February 2022 to incorporate Russian tactics observed in Ukraine. The T2COM OE Enterprise has published detailed analyses including "Ukrainian Unmanned Aerial System Tactics," "Ukraine's Uncrewed Air and Ground Systems Teaming Marks a Watershed Moment," and "How Russia Fights in Large-Scale Combat Operations" — all available to OPFOR planners designing NTC rotations.

The Army's Foreign Military Studies Office: Translating Russian Doctrine

The Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth operates as the Army's primary open-source research center for foreign military doctrine and capability. Its September-October 2025 issue of Military Review included a detailed analysis of Russian adaptations in Ukraine, including illustrated depictions of Russian counter-UAV tactics and vehicle-mounted jamming systems. The issue included translated figures from actual Russian Ministry of Defense guidelines and handbooks — including the Russian General Staff's handbook on FPV drones used in the special military operation and MoD guidelines on protecting armored personnel carriers from FPV drone attacks — providing U.S. Army training designers with direct insight into how Russian units are being trained to fight in the very electromagnetic environment the NTC is trying to replicate. Army

A separate Army report produced by the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, covering Russian battlefield adaptation from February 2022 through June 2024, represents one of the most comprehensive assessments of how Russia is actually fighting — and how it has adapted in real time. The report covers Russian use of EW to shape the battlefield before major attacks, drone integration at every echelon, and the adaptation from centralized to decentralized electronic warfare employment at the company and platoon level. Task & Purpose

What NTC Is Actually Replicating

At the NTC itself, the integration of Ukraine-derived intelligence is visible in specific capability additions. The National Training Center replicates threat UAS systems using platforms including the TSM 800, capable of swarming up to 150 drones from a single control station, as well as commercial systems such as the Parrot Anafi and DJI Mavic for ISR and simulated munitions drops — directly mirroring Ukrainian and Russian FPV drone employment at tactical level. Small Wars Journal

The OPFOR's existing EW capabilities at NTC are genuine: real radio-frequency jammers operating across relevant frequency bands, creating authentic signal degradation rather than simulated effects. The addition of AI-generated deepfakes and drone feed exploitation — detailed in NTC reporting — reflects specific Ukrainian battlefield observations about Russian electronic disinformation and ELINT targeting. Col. Kevin Black's confirmation that the OPFOR employs "AI-generated voice manipulation and spoofing" directly mirrors the Russian AI-assisted spectrum analysis and deception techniques documented in Ukraine.

The Army is also pursuing changes to European training that reflect the same lessons. At the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, senior leaders from 7th Army Training Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, and NATO met in March 2025 for a Modernization and Optimization Forum specifically focused on implementing Ukraine and Gaza lessons. The opening session discussion centered on improving training with drones and communications networks in a contested electromagnetic environment, with Brig. Gen. Steve Carpenter explicitly directing attendees to "implement lessons learned from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza" and transform training accordingly. www.army.mil

In Europe, every Army unit rotating through now receives company-level training on drones, including live-fire exercises. One brigade commander noted his unit employed more drones during a January 2025 rotation in Germany "than have ever been brought to a combat training center before," fielding 144 experimental drones across the formation during the exercise. Soldiers also trained on how to counter enemy drones using new jamming systems. Military.com

The Acknowledged Gaps: Replication Is Not Complete

Despite this progress, Army training officials have been candid that OPFOR replication of Russian EW capability is not yet complete or fully current.

The fundamental challenge is speed. Analysis presented at the AOC 2025 conference noted that out of all EW equipment provided to Ukraine by allies, nearly everything produced during or before 2020 was unusable by the time it reached the front, because Russia's EW techniques had evolved too quickly. Only some equipment from 2021 and 2022 was still usable. European Security & Defence If that is the adaptation rate faced by equipment in active use against a live adversary, the challenge of keeping NTC OPFOR EW capabilities current against a peacetime training rotation schedule is significant.

There is also a classification problem. Much of the most tactically specific intelligence from Ukraine — detailed frequency usage, jamming waveform characteristics, system integration techniques — is classified and may not flow readily into unclassified training scenarios that visiting units can absorb and discuss openly. The Foreign Military Studies Office and TRADOC G-2 specifically focus on open-source research precisely because that is what can be broadly shared, but the most sensitive technical details of Russian EW systems remain within classified channels.

The TRADOC OPFOR conference's ten prioritized recommendations, if approved, were targeted at achieving improved replication "by 2027" — acknowledging a multi-year gap between the identification of training deficiencies and their remedy in the live training environment. Home-station replication is even further behind: the Army Special Warfare Center's formal request for expanded electromagnetic spectrum testing ranges explicitly acknowledges that only two sites in the United States currently permit regular GPS and cellular jamming exercises, leaving most units with no realistic home-station EW training at all.

The Broader Strategic Picture

The Cold War precedent is instructive. The Soviet Army Studies Office's close collaboration with NTC leadership in the 1980s produced an OPFOR that was genuinely feared by visiting units precisely because it replicated Soviet doctrine with authenticity. Soviet officers visited Fort Irwin; U.S. officers visited the Soviet Union. The result was an OPFOR that knew how the Red Army thought, not just what systems it fielded.

That depth of understanding takes years to build, and it requires more than captured hardware and translated field manuals. It requires the institutional investment in human expertise — linguists, foreign area officers, and technical intelligence analysts — who can translate raw Ukraine battlefield data into OPFOR tactics, techniques, and procedures that expose the authentic vulnerabilities visiting units will face in large-scale combat operations against Russia or a Russia-equipped adversary.

The Army is moving in that direction with visible urgency. The TRADOC G-2 OPFOR Modernization Branch is explicitly tracking Ukraine and Gaza trends. The Foreign Military Studies Office is publishing translated Russian doctrine in near-real time. The Krasukha-4 and other captured Russian systems are in American hands. The NTC's OPFOR has genuine jamming capability and is expanding its drone inventory. But the gap between what Russia has demonstrated operationally in Ukraine and what the NTC can currently replicate remains real — and closing it faster than Russia can adapt its own tactics is the central institutional challenge facing the Army's training enterprise.

Selected Additional Sources

 

Verified Sources and Formal Citations

  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 to See Culmination of New Forces, Guides and Capabilities for Electronic Warfare This Year." DefenseScoop, May 15, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/05/15/army-electronic-warfare-new-forces-guides-capabilities/

  3. 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/

  4. Lawrence, Drew F. "Army Working to Get Electronic Warfare Gear to Units Faster." DefenseScoop, August 20, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/08/20/army-electronic-warfare-working-get-gear-units-faster/

  5. 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/

  6. 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/

  7. 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/

  8. 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/

  9. "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/

  10. "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/

  11. "Army Expanding Electronic Warfare Training for Every Soldier." AFCEA Signal, 2023. https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/cyber-edge/army-expanding-electronic-warfare-training-every-soldier

  12. U.S. Army Program Executive Office 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/

  13. Weisgerber, Marcus. "In a $3 Billion Bet, Space Force Envisions Tactical Anti-Jam SATCOM Keeping Enemy EW at Bay." Breaking Defense, March 2023. https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/in-a-3-billion-bet-space-force-envisions-tactical-anti-jam-satcom-keeping-enemy-ew-at-bay/

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

  15. Taylor, Col. Shane (quoted). "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/

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

  17. Gray, Austin, et al. (CSIS Senior Expert Interviews). "Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience." Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 2, 2025. https://www.csis.org/analysis/lessons-ukraine-conflict-modern-warfare-age-autonomy-information-and-resilience

  18. Monteleone, Michael (quoted). "Electronic Warfare in Ukraine Has Lessons for US Weapons and Navigation." C4ISRNET, May 6, 2024. https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2024/05/06/electronic-warfare-in-ukraine-has-lessons-for-us-weapons-navigation/

  19. Le Gargasson, Clara and Black, James. "Electromagnetic Warfare: NATO's Blind Spot Could Decide the Next Conflict." RAND Europe, November 24, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/11/electromagnetic-warfare-natos-blind-spot-could-decide.html

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

  21. Hambling, David. "Ukraine's Autonomous Killer Drones Defeat Electronic Warfare." IEEE Spectrum, June 10, 2025. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-killer-drones

  22. "'Brutality over Precision' — What the Army Is Learning from Russia in Ukraine." Task & Purpose, July 28, 2025. https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/army-russia-ukraine-lessons-learned/

  23. "The New Arms Race: Global Drone Dominance and America's Tactical Wake-Up Call." Small Wars Journal, December 16, 2025. https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/16/the-new-arms-race/

  24. "Drone Superpower: Ukrainian Wartime Innovation Offers Lessons for NATO." Atlantic Council, May 13, 2025. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/drone-superpower-ukrainian-wartime-innovation-offers-lessons-for-nato/

  25. "Drone Warfare in Ukraine: The Interplay of High- and Low-Tech Solutions." Ukraine Arms Monitor, November 26, 2025. https://ukrainesarmsmonitor.substack.com/p/drone-warfare-in-ukraine-the-interplay

  26. "A New and More Deadly Drone on Russia's Battlefields." Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), April 9, 2025. https://cepa.org/article/a-new-and-more-deadly-drone-on-russias-battlefields/

  27. "Beyond the Drone Line: Lessons from the Drone War in Ukraine." European Security & Defence, June/November 2025. https://euro-sd.com/2025/06/articles/44741/beyond-the-drone-line-lessons-from-the-drone-war-in-ukraine/

  28. "The Impact of Drones on the Battlefield: Lessons of the Russia-Ukraine War from a French Perspective." Hudson Institute, 2025. https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/impact-drones-battlefield-lessons-russian-ukraine-war-french-perspective-tsiporah-fried

  29. Bradshaw, Andrew. "Blunting Excalibur's Edge." European Security & Defence, July 2024. https://euro-sd.com/2024/07/articles/39533/blunting-excaliburs-edge/

  30. Gibbons-Neff, Thomas and Troianovski, Anton. "Russian Jamming of U.S. Weapons in Ukraine Forces Pentagon to Adjust." The Washington Post, May 24, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/24/russia-jamming-us-weapons-ukraine/

  31. "JDAM-ER Winged Bombs With Seekers That Home In On GPS Jammers Headed to Ukraine." The War Zone, May 2024. https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine/

  32. "Analysis: Off Target — Are Kyiv's GPS-Aided Weapons Susceptible to Kremlin EW Jamming?" Kyiv Post, May 29, 2024. https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/33448

  33. "The Fall and Rise of Russian Electronic Warfare." IEEE Spectrum, 2022. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-fall-and-rise-of-russian-electronic-warfare

  34. "Russia's Electronic Warfare Capabilities." Global Defence Technology, March 2022. https://defence.nridigital.com/global_defence_technology_mar22/russia_electronic_warfare

  35. "Russia, China Target SpaceX's Starlink in Escalating Space Electronic Warfare." SpaceNews, April 3, 2025. https://spacenews.com/russia-china-target-spacexs-starlink-in-escalating-space-electronic-warfare/

  36. "Russian Forces in Ukraine Scramble to Overcome Musk's Starlink Restrictions." The War Zone, February 2026. https://www.twz.com/news-features/russian-forces-in-ukraine-scramble-to-overcome-musks-starlink-restrictions/

  37. "Extending the Battlespace to Space." Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 26, 2025. https://www.csis.org/analysis/chapter-8-extending-battlespace-space

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

  39. "Electronic Warfare Lessons from Ukraine Informing Air Force Special Operations Future." The War Zone (via Yahoo News), May 5, 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/electronic-warfare-lessons-ukraine-informing-231157739.html

  40. "Of Fiber-Optics and FPVs — 6 Questions With a Ukrainian Drone Trainer." Defense News, November 7, 2025. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/11/07/of-fiber-optics-and-fpvs-6-questions-with-a-ukrainian-drone-trainer/

  41. "Electronic Warfare: How Fiber-Optic FPV Drones Are Redefining the Ukrainian Battlefield." Army Recognition, 2025. https://www.armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/conflicts-in-the-world/russia-ukraine-war-2022/electronic-warfare-how-fiber-optic-fpv-drones-are-redefining-the-ukrainian-battlefield

  42. "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/

  43. CISA. "Leveraging the PACE Plan into the Emergency Communications Ecosystem." October 2024. https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/2024_NCSWICPTE_Leveraging_PACE_Plan_Emergency_Comms_Ecosystems.pdf

  44. 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

  45. Space Systems Command. "SSC Accelerating Protected Tactical SATCOM Capability." 2025. https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/Newsroom/Article-Display/Article/4234599/ssc-accelerating-protected-tactical-satcom-capability

This article was prepared for AFCEA Signal on the basis of open-source official releases, defense trade reporting, peer-reviewed and think tank analysis, and congressional testimony. Classification level: Unclassified. Stephen L. Pendergast is a Senior Life Member of IEEE and Senior Engineer Scientist with over 20 years of expertise in radar systems engineering and defense electronics.

 

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