Free Republic

Electronic and computer attack—the futuristic segment of the Pentagon’s arsenal—will benefit from the proposed 2011 military spending plan, but identifying all the key pieces is difficult without close scrutiny. Electronic attack (EA) includes invading networks and releasing beams of energy against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). These blasts of energy are sometimes generated by U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowlers and Air Force EC-130 Compass Call aircraft to prematurely detonate or disable bombs. In addition, an EA-6B Prowler—and its EA-18G Growler successor— can drop a “cone of ­silence” on emitters within a given tactical area to prevent enemy communications. Computer invasion and network...

Attack, not defense, will reshape electronic warfare. A magazine filled with electron pulses, information scrambling data streams and invasive algorithms may arm the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ). By 2018, variants of the U.S. Navy’s NGJ likely will be carried by a half-dozen manned and unmanned aircraft—perhaps more. The service’s EP-X signals and communications intelligence aircraft—still without a final design or completed requirements—will be replacing the long-serving EP-3E. “EP-X is going to be the eyes and ears that find the signals” that NGJ will jam and manipulate, says Christopher Carlson, director of U.S. business development for ITT’s integrated EW systems. “Precisely identifying...

Many of the tools for airborne electronic warfare and attack are aging and lack flexibility. At the same time, new off-the-shelf technologies used by irregular and conventional foes—ranging from low-power command-and-control communications to advanced, long-range anti-aircraft missiles—are increasingly sophisticated, making it more expensive and time-consuming to find, analyze and counter them. Developers are in a quandary about which technologies to pursue first, a problem compounded by a lack of agreement among the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Army about how to address common problems. Faced with this swiftly changing environment, the Navy is searching for solutions within the framework of...

Articles indexed to sept62007 (in order of time indexed.) Israeli official: Russia behind tension with Syria ^   Posted by knighthawk On News/Activism ^ 08/30/2007 2:14:47 PM PDT · 9 replies · 322+ views al Bawaba ^ | August 30 2007   Russia uses Syrian port to demonstrate its power in the Med  ^   Posted by sukhoi-30mki On News/Activism ^ 09/01/2007 7:34:04 AM PDT · 12 replies · 379+ views The Jerusalem Post ^ | Aug 31, 2007 | ALEX KOGAN   Syrian army says it fired on IAF craft violating its space ^   Posted by Nextrush On News/Activism ^ 09/06/2007 4:57:51 AM...