US Army to field key EW programme by 2026

An August 2023 US Army briefing slide displaying how S2AS and MEMSS will integrate into the larger EW manoeuvre strategy. (US Army Futures Command)

A critical electronic warfare (EW) programme, designed to improve situational awareness for combat units within the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), could be headed to the field as early as 2026.

Led by Product Manager Electronic Warfare Integration (PdM-EWI), the army's Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS) programme has been tagged for rapid prototyping beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2025.

Designed to work in conjunction with the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT), S2AS is to be the army's “dedicated [EMS] situational awareness system … to provide the [combat] commanders with real-time [EMS operations] situational awareness”, according to a service fact sheet.

The S2AS could also help determine whether signal degradation could be the result of army systems creating interference across the EMS, the fact sheet noted.

The programme “is going to help us see ourselves, manage our [EMS] footprint, and understand when we are being jammed”, according to Program Executive Officer Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S) Brigadier General Ed Barker.

In terms of fast-tracking S2AS prototyping, “we have seen the technology out there, and we firmly believe we will be able to move out really quickly on that”, Brig Gen Barker said during a December briefing at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

To that end, army officials conducted a test and evaluation event in mid-December for S2AS, where three mature prototype systems were being run on service networks to ensure successful integration into current command-and-control (C2) platforms.