Experts: Moden Cyber and EW Go Hand in Hand
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The future combination of cyber warfare and electronic warfare (EW): Lesson learned from an incident involving a U.S. drone brought down by the Russians above Crimea.
Cyber is the battlefield of the future, perhaps even the present. The name of the game where cyber is concerned is combining wired, internet-based attacks with wireless attacks, in addition to combining cyberspace and electronic warfare.
According to a recent report an American intelligence gathering drone flying over Crimea was hacked by Russian military forces. HLS News Wire mentioned that while in the past attackers and defenders focused of wired, internet-based networks, now the focus is on wireless cyber-attacks using radio frequencies and the electromagnetic spectrum; for example: Bringing down a UAV flying over a battlefield.
According to U.S. News the U.S. Navy established a special cyber warfare center as early as 2008, while U.S. Army studies acknowledged the fact that there’s no longer any difference between internet-based attacks and EW threats – there’s even the threat of activating explosives by using radio and wireless signals.
iHLS – Israel Homeland Security
Giorgio Bertoli, senior communications and electronics R&D engineer for the U.S. Army, explained that the current trend is combining cyber and electronic warfare. Traditionally, the U.S. Army designed specialized devices that were used for specific missions: “In the past radio was radio, EW was EW. That’s no longer the case. Today you have to develop software and hardware that can handle wired and wireless attacks. Sytems have to be multi-purpose.”
Recently the U.S. Army published a field manual covering the establishment of new tactical units, comprised of personnel trained in all aspects of cyber warfare and EW. These units will be trained to cooperate with special UAVs dedicated to cyber warfare operations against enemy forces, all that in combination with defensive and offensive electronic warfare.
