Before going to the training center, electronic warfare soldiers first spent time monitoring the 1st Brigade’s command posts and then briefed commanders on what their electronic signature looked like, said Col. Jim Armstrong, the brigade’s commander.
“Every time the battalion [tactical operations center] or the brigade [tactical operations center] went out for training, our [electronic warfare] platoon went out there and mapped them in the spectrum,” he said,
speaking at the Fort Moore Maneuver Conference earlier in September.
The electronic warfare platoon was also given commercially available direction-finding equipment to locate enemy positions, and they trained with the unit’s reconnaissance squadron, Armstrong added.
The desert environment of NTC gave the unit no room to hide—if the soldiers who play the enemy saw a cellphone signal, there’d be little doubt it belonged to someone in the 3rd Infantry Division.
So Armstrong brought in fake devices that he hoped would deceive any watchful observers. “Instead of hiding in the clutter, we knew we would have to bring our own clutter to hide in,” he said.
As part of this effort, the unit used the knowledge they’d gained from monitoring the brigade’s command post to set up a decoy command post, complete with tents and their actual satellite trailer. The unit was able to stock the site with its own gear because the soldiers were running their real command post over new Starlink satellite terminals that offer better speeds.
The soldiers then keyed the fake command post’s communications network to emit transmissions as though it was a real command post. The unit also placed cell phones and WiFi pucks in the fake post.
The trick worked: the soldiers who play the enemy jammed the fake command post and also hit the fake site with simulated indirect fire, exposing their own position, Armstrong said.
breakingdefense.com
