JED - March 2015 - (Page 12)

message f rom the pre side nt EMERGENCY PROCEDURES Association of Old Crows 1000 North Payne Street, Suite 200 Alexandria, VA 22314-1652 Phone: (703) 549-1600 Fax: (703) 549-2589 PRESIDENT Ken Israel VICE PRESIDENT Dave Hime SECRETARY Vickie Greenier TREASURER Joe Koesters PAST PRESIDENT Wayne Shaw T The Journal of Electronic Defense | March 2015 12 his month's article is written for our Service Chiefs. We have an emergency. I was recently reviewing my old EB-66 USAF Flight Crew Check List and came across the checked bordered Emergency Pages. And it reminded me of where we are with our current electronic warfare community. During the 1960s, we Air Force Navigators graduated from the 9 months of Basic Navigator Training and then went through a very technical and demanding 6-month electronic warfare course to become a certified Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO). We spent a lot of time in our T1 and T3 Simulators to apply our skills to our mission requirements. Then we went to our FTU to become mission qualified in our assigned aircraft. For me, it was the EB-66 (similar to the Navy's EA-3). I honed my skills while flying as an EWO in both the EB-66C and the EB-66B/E at Shaw AFB, Takhli in Thailand and then on to Spangdahlem in Germany. Today, not only does the Air Force EWO not receive this same level of deep instruction for his/her profession, but the EWO designation has turned into a generic and "one-size-fits-all" navigator-related skill set called the Combat Systems Operator (CSO). To make it even worse, there are not enough cockpits available for an Air Force EWO to hone his or her core rated skills. Today, the entire curriculum for the future Air Force EWO boils down to just 6 weeks of intense training at Pensacola and not the 6 months that was considered a minimum 25 years ago, or even the dedicated 3-month specialized training regimen from 10 years ago. While I am describing the Air Force's approach in the example above, I fear that the Navy and Marine Corps are struggling with the same "quality and quantity" issues. The bottom line is that we are losing the core expertise of our operational EW professional community at a time when there is a growing demand for that very expertise. The near-term retirement of the EA-6B and half the EC-130H fleet are clear examples of cost tradeoffs for future promises of modernized standoff jamming capabilities - the "capability vs. capacity" issue we hear so much about. It is time to recognize that as the Electromagnetic Domain is becoming increasingly competitive, congested and contested, we need EWOs and cyber warriors who understand this maneuver space and appreciate that the world of EW is migrating to digital- and software-driven systems. In order to ensure that we have the expertise needed to fight and win in the Electromagnetic Domain, our leaders must change the culture (and policy) of how we career-manage our EWO/CSO specialists. In very specialized areas, like electronic warfare, you can't develop the required skillset overnight; it takes time, especially when you need many years of EW experience to develop an EW professional who can support combat staffs and combat operational centers. Today, we are doing an extremely poor job of this. Respectfully, I submit we have a self-imposed emergency. - Maj Gen Ken Israel, USAF (Ret.) AT-LARGE DIRECTORS Powder Carlson Todd Caruso Vickie Greenier Craig Harm Brian Hinkley Amanda Kammier Mark Schallheim Muddy Watters Paul Westcott APPOINTED DIRECTORS Robert Elder Anthony Lisuzzo REGIONAL DIRECTORS Southern: Lisa Fruge-Cirilli Central: Joe Koesters Northeastern: Nino Amoroso Mountain-Western: Sam Roberts Mid-Atlantic: Douglas Lamb Pacific: Joe Hulsey International I: Robert Andrews International II: Jeff Walsh IO: Al Bynum AOC STAFF Mike Dolim Executive Director dolim@crows.org Shelley Frost Director, Logistics frost@crows.org Glorianne O'Neilin Director, Member Services oneilin@crows.org Brock Sheets Director, Marketing sheets@crows.org John Clifford Director, Global Programs clifford@crows.org Stew Taylor Exhibits Manager taylor@crows.org Bridget Whyde Marketing/Communications Assistant whyde@crows.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JED - March 2015

The View From Here
Conferences Calendar
Courses Calendar
From the President
The Monitor
World Report
Charting the Future for DIRCM
How Far Can We Take GaN Technology?
Book Reviews
EW 101
AOC News
2015 AOC Industry Member Guide
Index of Advertisers
JED Quick Look

JED - March 2015