Raytheon is helping develop new concepts for the future of war that involves non-kinetic capabilities. The company was awarded a contract to provide a tool to help commanders envision the effectiveness of non-kinetic tools such as cyber and electronic warfare.
Awarded by the Missile Defense Agency, Raytheon's Coordinated Cyber/Electronic Warfare Integrated Fires program, or CCEWIF, is designed to help develop concepts of operations as opposed to an active, real-time planning tool, Todd Probert, vice president of Mission Support and Modernization at Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, told C4ISRNET.
Unlike other tools to help commanders visualize these non-physical environments, Probert said CCEWIF is designed to help instill confidence in the deployment of these emerging technologies and to develop concepts of operations going forward.
"This really is a first of its kind tool that brings together automation, analytics and cyber capabilities," Probert said. "This unique program will give our military an edge in today’s digital battlespace when seconds count and they need options and answers fast."
When the airplane emerged, the military had to figure out how to morph it into the fight, and there was a learning curve, Probert said, analogizing today’s emerging capabilities to the advent of the airplane.
Today’s nature of war — under the guise of the third offset strategy and multi-domain battle — is rapidly shifting from yesterday’s wars of kinetic on kinetic or missile on missile from MDA’s perspective to one of kinetic and non-kinetic tools, Probert said.
It's easy to understand the deployment and probability of success of a kinetic weapon such as a missile, Probert offered. It is more abstract to think of electronic warfare or a cyber weapon, as these newer capabilities don’t have the same track record as "tried and true" methods such as a Patriot missile, he added.
In helping to establish trusted concepts of operations, CCEWIF provides a mathematical algorithm to help the war fighter to go through many scenarios under the framework of kinetic engagements to envision non-kinetic engagements.
CCEWUF will game "what if" scenarios to help bring out actionable concepts of operations to make sure they are effective for what military leaders are trying to achieve, Probert said, adding that at the end of the day this is all to build concepts of operations in that new capability.
By taking in data from the real world, such as actual kinetic tests, the tool will provide results in the form of probability of kill based upon thousands of iterations and scenarios to envision what the sweet spot is by merging these domains, Probert said.
When the military starts working actual deployments, there will be science and math behind these capabilities by merging the simulations into a current framework to forecast if they had these tools at their disposal and morph them into current constructs, he said.
MDA could not be reached for comment regarding the contract award.
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.
