Thought Leadership: Electronic warfare Q&A with BAE Systems

 Q&A with BAE Systems’ Craig Nieman

Craig Nieman is a Director in BAE Systems' Electronic Combat Solutions business (ECS). Before joining BAE Systems, he served for 25 years in the U.S. Air Force.

What does BAE Systems do in EW?

Craig: BAE Systems has 60 years of experience providing EW capability to the warfighter. Our systems have been flown on over 120 platforms and operate on 80 percent of U.S. military fixed-wing aircraft, over 95 percent of U.S. Army rotary-wing aircraft, and on platforms for many of our U.S. allies and partners.

BAE Systems is a global leader in the digital transformation of EW for aircraft self-protection solutions. For example, we provide the AN/ASQ-239 EW suite – an advanced, fully integrated system that gives the F-35 platform 360-degree situational awareness and an end-to-end RF survivability system. Additionally, we are fielding the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability Solution, or EPAWSS, on F-15E and F-15EX aircraft, providing the platform with a fully integrated radar warning, geolocation, situational awareness, and self-protection solution to detect and defeat surface and airborne threats in highly contested, dense signal environments.

Can you talk more about EPAWSS?

Craig: EPAWSS is a fully integrated, digital game changer for the electromagnetic spectrum. EPAWSS has broken many barriers and is delivering results that in many cases far exceed its original design requirements. We’ve received feedback from senior leaders in the operational user community that back up these remarks, as they have stated that EPAWSS is changing the calculus for the F-15 versus an Adversaries’ Integrated Air Defense (IAD).

EPAWSS was designed to degrade enemy IAD systems and allow our protected platforms to penetrate previously denied areas of the battlespace so they can hold critical targets at risk, an achievement that until recently was only available to stealth platforms. When folks think about stealth, they typically think about the use of special RF-denying materials and shapes to achieve the desired effects for degrading adversary radars and allowing the platforms to penetrate the target area. EPAWSS provides yet another means to achieve those same effects. By using RF digital stealth, it also degrades the radars’ abilities to target the F-15.

You served in the Air Force for 25 years and have spent the last three years working for industry, what changes have you seen in EW market over that time?

Craig: Decades ago, flying in an F-15, I witnessed first-hand the minimal amount of help that came from having an analog radar warning receiver and a federated, mainly dormant, integrated countermeasures suite when coming up against the threats of the day. With today’s advanced EW system, like EPAWSS, the difference between 30 years ago and today is night and day. What we can now do is “magical.” The platform and its aircrew are being protected in ways that they may not fully understand and in many ways is transparent to them. It’s a good problem to have, EPAWSS is working hard in the background so they can focus more on completing their mission objectives.

What is next in EW?

Craig: Competing in the electromagnetic spectrum is only going to get more difficult and so our systems must continuously be better, year after year. BAE Systems must, and we will continue to, advance the field. The adversary is never stagnant, and neither are we. At its heart, EPAWSS and systems like it, are computers, increasingly defined and refined by the firmware and software paired with them. They demand greater and greater processing power and faster speeds to handle the expanding use of the electromagnetic environment.

Digitization of systems like EPAWSS also brings needed agility. So, even as systems like EPAWSS are being fielded, we are already introducing the next level of enhancements to that system via software and firmware and in some cases hardware additions. Plus, we’ve already introduced the next iteration of EPAWSS, (v)2 to incorporate the newest advancements in processing and microelectronics capabilities, helping both versions of EPAWSS stay relevant and capable for the decades to come. 

We will expand bandwidth to stay ahead of where the adversary is going next in the spectrum and introduce non-deterministic logic or cognitive EW to allow an EW systems’ capability to expand beyond the known threat and technique library.