A Shift Away From Rigid Requirements
The U.S. Army is moving toward a fundamentally different model for how it develops and acquires electronic warfare capabilities, according to officials who spoke at a recent defense conference. Rather than publishing detailed technical specifications and soliciting bids for predetermined systems, the Army wants industry to understand the operational problem and propose whatever solution best addresses it — including unconventional approaches that traditional requirements documents would never have elicited.
The shift reflects lessons learned from years of watching electronic warfare acquisition lag behind the pace at which adversaries are developing and deploying jamming, spoofing, and spectrum manipulation systems. In a domain defined by the speed of adaptation, a procurement process that locks in specifications years before a system reaches the field has proven structurally inadequate.
What Electronic Warfare Encompasses
Electronic warfare is the contested use of the electromagnetic spectrum — the space occupied by radio waves, radar, GPS signals, communications links, and everything else that modern militaries depend on to function. EW operations include jamming enemy communications, spoofing GPS to mislead enemy navigation systems, detecting and locating adversary emitters, and protecting friendly systems from the same attacks.
In Ukraine, electronic warfare has emerged as one of the most consequential and actively contested domains of the conflict. Both sides have deployed sophisticated EW systems that have disrupted drone operations, degraded satellite communications, and forced rapid adaptation in tactics and equipment. The lessons are being studied closely by every major military.
The U.S. Army's existing EW portfolio includes both ground-based and airborne systems, but critics within the military and in Congress have pointed to capability gaps — areas where adversaries, particularly Russia and China, have deployed systems that the Army cannot currently counter or match effectively.
The New Approach
Under the new framework, the Army is organizing EW acquisition around operational problems rather than technical solutions. Instead of saying we need a jammer that operates in these frequency bands at this power level from this platform, the Army is presenting industry with problems like we need to deny adversary use of this spectrum in this operational environment and asking companies to propose their own answers.
This problem-centric model has precedents in other defense acquisition reforms, including DARPA's traditional approach to technology development. DARPA has long been known for presenting hard problems to industry and academia and accepting radical solutions that specification-based procurement would never have produced. The Army's adaptation of this model to an operational acquisition context is newer and carries more risk, but officials argue that the alternative — continuing to buy yesterday's solutions through a slow process — carries greater risk in a domain where the threat is evolving continuously.
Programmatic Implications
The new approach could have significant consequences for existing EW programs. If industry can demonstrate better solutions to the Army's problems through the new framework, programs that are currently in development or recently fielded may face competition they were not designed to encounter. Officials indicated that the flexible approach could lead to programmatic changes — a diplomatic phrase that often means the cancellation or restructuring of existing contracts in favor of superior alternatives.
For defense companies with established EW portfolios, the new framework presents both opportunity and threat. Companies with strong software-defined radio capabilities and adaptive waveform generation are well-positioned to compete in a problem-centric environment. Legacy hardware manufacturers whose systems are optimized for fixed specifications may find their advantage eroded.
The Spectrum Contestation Challenge
The Army's EW reform comes as military planners grapple with the reality that modern conflict will involve continuous, intensive contestation of the electromagnetic spectrum from the first hours of any major engagement. Adversary EW capabilities have improved dramatically over the past decade, and any operational plan that assumes reliable access to GPS, radio communications, or satellite links is considered dangerously optimistic by current doctrine.
Building EW systems that are adaptive — that can sense the electromagnetic environment, identify threats, and adjust their own emissions accordingly — requires a different kind of engineering than building systems optimized for fixed requirements. The Army's new acquisition approach is designed to create conditions where the defense industry can bring those capabilities to market faster than the current system allows. Officials emphasized that the shift is not a rejection of technical rigor but a recognition that EW acquisition must become as adaptive as the systems it is trying to develop.
This article is based on reporting by Breaking Defense. Read the original article.
