A Clear and Prescient Danger: Validation and Vision for Marine Electronic Warfare

Abstract

To preserve its expeditionary culture, the Marine Corps must embrace Electronic Warfare (EW) institutionally while maintaining a comprehensive EW expertise that organically completes D3A (Decide/Detect/Deliver/Assess), yet leverages nonorganic resources to manipulate the transfer of information, influence perceptions, and affect an adversary's ability to make and act on decisions. The Marine Corps will blend the science of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) into its philosophy of maneuver warfare through distributed operations (DO). The technical and tactical focus of DO fails to capture the philosophical implications of the Corps' commitment to irregular warfare where victory at the moral level presents unique demands on a military. Additionally, the global explosion of the commercial IT market will have significant consequences for future Marine operations by expanding the potential audience for Information Operations and by providing future adversaries access to offensive and defensive information capabilities that will challenge America's historical information superiority. Unless the Marine Corps embraces a mind-set that seeks to aggressively manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, the MAGTF will lose its self-sufficient freedom-of-action due to a dependency on outside services and organizations for information dominance. The Corps requires organic ground-, air-, and space-based systems capable of conducting EA, ES, and EP. It should focus on conducting tactical EA by cultivating a broad expertise, investing in tactical EW systems, and leveraging the vast array of nonorganic capabilities that will represent the majority of the Corps' EW effort. Marines must embrace EW institutionally such that the use of nonkinetic fires becomes as intuitive as the employment of kinetic fires. This mind-set will have the tangible effect of allowing Marines to dominate the EM spectrum to preserve the operational freedom-of-action that is demanded for forcible entry and DO.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA506986

Entities

People

  • Kirk D. Nothelfer

Organizations

  • Marine Corps University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Defense
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Defense Systems
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Employment
  • Information Operations
  • Information Systems
  • Military Operations
  • Military Science
  • Multiple Access
  • Operations Security
  • Psychological Operations
  • Psychology
  • Tactical Training
  • United States
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Space