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WHITE PAPER Achieving Full-Spectrum Dominance mrcy.com 2 mrcy.com 2 SPECTRUM DOMINANCE REQUIRES EFFECTIVE TESTING AND TRAINING Full-spectrum dominance, also known as full-spectrum superiority, is a military entity's achievement of control over the physical battlespace, including the electromagnetic spectrum. The ability to capture, detect, validate, differentiate between, and tamper with the signals of friendly and adversarial radars is a core mission requirement. However, modern electronic warfare (EW) is a game of cat and mouse that extends across the mission and the radar development process. The availability of microelectronics and rapid technology advancements has made it increasingly difficult to keep pace with or stay ahead of adversaries and peers when it comes to EW. It has also created a constant need to deliver advanced or competing capabilities, adding complexity to an already difficult development process and significantly increasing the need for readily available, fast, effective and, efficient radar testing and pilot training solutions. The need for improved combat pilot EW training EW systems perform several crucial and protective roles during a pilot 's mission: they warn the pilot about inbound threats such as interceptors, detect adversarial radars that might be trying to locate the aircraft, and deceive enemies by returning altered but otherwise legitimate radio frequency (RF) signals. However, it is becoming more difficult to train pilots on the use of EW systems because the electromagnetic spectrum is becoming increasingly contested with signals and new advanced technology. This increase in the amount and complexity of signal noise makes differentiating between systems a much more complex affair and significantly reduces a pilot 's margin of error. Further complicating matters, data regarding how new advanced radar systems perform against enemy platforms can be filtered, proprietary, or classified at extremely high levels. This can leave pilots trying to piece together the limited information they are given with their real-world experiences in the air. Security restrictions on radar data also mean that when pilots do receive EW training feedback, it might include information on what EW strategies worked but not necessarily context on why they worked. Difficulties and risks involved with developing and testing new radars Radars must be thoroughly tested by analysts and engineers in a variety of environments. This includes running multiple flight tests to ensure the radar performs as expected during flight. However, this traditional mode of testing can cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour and still fail to fully replicate the complexities of realistic and rapidly evolving environments. Multiple flight tests may be required to flush out technical issues if a radar fails in flight, and field testing can add security risks because locations are generally not private. Current radar developers have shortfalls in the capabilities necessary to test complex fifth-generation aircraft sensors and fusion algorithms optimized for air-to-ground in a lab without flying, and running flight tests can be cumbersome. For example, radar analysts testing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode may point the radar antenna out the aircraft window at whatever object is available or use a fiber-optic delay line. Pointing the antenna out the window produces a very low fidelity SAR image. The fiber-optic delay test produces an image of a line, allowing the radar analyst to evaluate impulse response width in range only, not in azimuth. Current methods to validate radar systems and to train pilots for combat in contested electromagnetic environments come with significant challenges. Digital radio frequency memory, or DRFM, and DRFM-based radar environment simulators and radar target generators are efficient and cost-effective solutions to these obstacles and can help us improve both the way we evaluate radars and the way pilots train. " It is the policy of the United States to use radiofrequency spectrum (spectrum) as efficiently and effectively as possible to help meet our economic, national security, science, safety, and other Federal mission goals now and in the future." — Presidential Memorandum on Developing a Sustainable Spectrum Strategy for America's Future, October 25, 2018

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