Military Microwave DIGEST

DIGESTMilitary Microwave

VOLUME 17 SEPTEMBER 2017

IN THIS ISSUETesting Holds the Key to Advancing EW

Spies in the Sky: You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide

THE NEW EW TEST PARADIGM

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DIGESTMilitary Microwave

A SUPPLEMENT TO MPD

DIGESTMilitary Microwave SEPTEMBER

Testing Holds the Key to Advancing EW“Only the dead have seen the end of war”

— George Santayana

It may not be his most famous state-ment, but it’s certainly as timeless as “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and they certainly work well together. Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, who died in 1952 at the age of 88, had the uncommon ability to tie the past to the present. His words are eerily prescient today, as the mili-tary challenges facing the US today are greater in type and number and more geographically distributed than at any time in the nation’s history.

A decade ago, the country was far saf-er (although it didn’t seem so), as Rus-sia mostly concentrated on threats at its borders, China had yet to make good on its promise to militarize islands within its “Nine Dashed Line”, Al Qaeda was the primary non-state threat in the Mid-dle East, and North Korea was pursuing its longstanding routine of “threaten to build nukes and wait for aid”.

As the U.S. was fighting far less technologically-advanced adversaries, the need to advance the state of the art in electronic warfare seemed like it could wait. Those days are over, leaving the Department of Defense to ramp up EW technologies (as well as ISR, radar, and other RF-centric assets) as

fast as possible. Consequently, EW is being transformed through the most broad-based technological programs since the Cold War, and is linked with cyber to ensure that the U.S. maintains the long-held “spectrum dominance” it is in jeopardy of losing.

Achieving these goals will be a for-midable task and require advances in both analog, digital, and microwave

technology, as well as an “open” ap-proach to design, which is taking hold at all levels of DoD. Complex new threats are appearing faster and AESA radars are quickly adding them to their steadily growing portfolio of spectral acrobat-ics. Against this backdrop, EW design-ers find themselves having to pick new threats apart, create ways to counter them, and deploy them rapidly.

continued on page 6

EW is being transformed

through the most broad-

based technological

programs since the Cold

War, and is linked with

cyber to ensure that

the U.S. maintains the

long-held “spectrum

dominance” it is in

jeopardy of losing.

Military Microwave DIGESTSEPTEMBER 2017

IN THIS ISSUE3

Testing Holds the Key to Advancing EW

8

Spies in the Sky: You Can Run, But You Cannot HideBy BARRY MANZ, Editor

14

The New EW Test ParadigmBy JIM TABER, VP Marketing & Sales, Giga-tronics

8

3

14

The Importance of the Test Regime

The stringent testing to which all new EW systems must be subjected has always been in direct conflict with getting them quickly to the warfighter. There are sev-eral steps in the process that increase in complexity and cost as a project evolves from con-cept through design and development, ultimately emerging as a thoroughly wrung-out system. As this process moves along, the electromagnetic environ-ments that the system is forced to survive become more like those it will ex-perience in service.

Until relatively recent-ly, realistic environments that include a wide variety of signals as well as noise and other conditions have been achievable only at the latest stage, typically on open-air test range. These test systems are extraordinarily complex and expensive and include real, rather than simulated, threats, over a broad range of frequencies. The candidate EW system is installed in an aircraft that is, or at least similar to, the one in which it will be de-ployed. The aircraft runs the gauntlet at the range, where it is irradiated from the ground.

As there are few such ranges, many sys-tems to test, and hourly costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour, the goal is obviously to present the most fully de-veloped EW system possible in the hope that it will pass the final test the first time around. The next opportunity may be months or perhaps a year away.

To at least partially solve this problem,

test equipment manufacturers are devel-oping systems that simulate and emu-late complex threat scenarios during the verification and validation phases of their development. That is, on the bench using commercial test equipment that is acces-sible and comparatively low in cost.

Simulation and emulation both char-acterize system behavior, but they do so in different ways, as simulation relies on software while emulation includes both hardware, software, and firmware to create a representative electromagnetic environ-

ment. Emulation exposes the system to threats at RF rather than baseband, which far more effectively replicates an actual op-erational environment that includes Dop-pler, spreading loss, and other environmen-tal effects while the asset moves through a

three-dimensional battlespace. Realistic threat emulation tools are needed early in the development phases to help identify and fix critical design issues, though they don’t usually need to be performed on the complete set of threats or include all the validated emitter definitions. This test en-

vironment is described by Giga-tronics in this issue.

The result of this ap-proach is that the system is exposed to greater and greater levels of “hostili-ty” as it proceeds through development, emerging far more likely to survive succeeding levels of test, which are far more ex-pensive. These tools are not designed to replace the massive systems found in anechoic cham-bers and test ranges but rather to complement them using commercial test equipment and soft-ware that is far smaller and less expensive.

Although testing is only one piece of the puzzle faced by DoD as its leaps forward with EW system devel-opment, it is an extremely important one. It can save time and money, but more im-portant it can get new technology to the warfighter faster than if traditional test pro-cedures are employed. So, it’s likely that the new approach will become a fixture of EW test in the future. ■


Testing Holds the Key to Advancing EWcontinued from page 3

Barry Manz is president of the editorial-based technical media rela-tions company Manz Communications, Inc., and can be reached at [email protected].

George Santayana later in life

The goal is to pass the

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invasion of Iraq, his point was that just because no one had yet found Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction didn’t mean there weren’t any. Some thought it was a “brilliant distillation of quite a complex matter”, others scratched their heads, and journalists, phi-losophers, and sociologists had a field day. Errol Morris even pro-duced an Oscar-winning documentary about Rumsfeld called The Unknown Known. But the statement (actually used years before by others) perfectly describes the mission and indeed even the exis-tence of reconnaissance satellites, one of the defense community’s most cherished and closely-held assets.

As they do exist, spy satellites are certainly “known”, but hardly anyone knows where they are, what they do, how they do it, or what they achieve, so they aren’t “known unknowns” but true un-known unknowns. That’s just the way the intelligence community wants to keep it, and even in today’s leaky environment, they’re remarkably good at it.

Press reports about military satellites are typically couched in terms such as “may be”, “thought to be”, “appears to be”, and “it is believed that”. What little is available comes from leaked docu-ments, of which there are few, or from a small band of dedicated people who spend career-level amounts of time trying to find out about them. Some have done a remarkable job, generating troves of information dating back nearly 60 years about hundreds of mili-tary launches and the satellites placed in orbit. However, disinfor-mation being an essential tool in the intelligence community, even what little is disclosed may be suspect, which is evidence of the crucial role these satellites play in the spy world.

This secrecy is nothing new, as it was more or less formally en-shrined in spy-world doctrine with the launch of Project SCORE (Figure 1) on December 18, 1958, the first satellite that could re-ceive signals, store them on tape, and retransmit them to receiv-ers on the ground. SCORE was built by a team of engineers at

the U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, NJ, and was so secret that only 88 people knew it existed.

hen Donald Rumsfeld referred to “unknowns that we don’t know that we don’t know”

in a 2002 press conference preceding the

By BARRY MANZ , Editor

W

SPIES IN THE SKY: You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide

continued on page 10

A movie poster for the 1958 film “Spy in the Sky!” (starring Steve Brodie) that was inspired by the Russian launch of Sputnik. (Source: IMDb)


Just before launch, 53 of them were told the project was canceled, to forget about it, and to deny it ever existed. Even the launch crew thought the Atlas 10B rocket placing the satellite into space was only on a test mission and had no payload. The 57 words uplinked to the spacecraft and sent back to Earth were spoken by President Dwight

Eisenhower, but as late as a press conference the previous evening Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) Deputy Director Admiral John Clark denied the audio was from Eisenhower. The media quickly found out the truth and everyone else heard the “broadcast” on the radio anyway.

Satellites have a unique place in intel-ligence gathering as they can look down on the Earth from above, generating in-creasingly high-resolution still images and video and intercepting all types of RF and microwave signals from the ground and other satellites. They’re supported by massive infrastructure and thousands of government employees and contractors at the National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Na-tional Reconnaissance Office (NRO),

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and other “unknown” agencies.

The NGA is an excellent example. Its 2.3 million ft2. headquarters is in Fort Belvoir, VA (Figure 2) is the third largest govern-ment building in the Washington metro area after the Pentagon and Ronald Rea-

gan Building. The agency’s roughly 15,000 employees and contractors collect, ana-lyze, and distribute geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) on a massive scale. In addition to data gathered by government space-craft, the agency is expanding its resource base through the Commercial Initiative to Buy Operationally Responsive GEOINT (CIBORG) program, which in March pur-chased its first high-definition 3D imagery from mapping company Vricon.

Since then it has added another 10 ven-dors with another 20 in the queue. Two of the NGA’s more notable (and verified) ac-complishments are coordinating with the NSA to track terrorists, and creating a precise replica of the Abbottabad, Pakistan, com-pound where Osama bin Laden was hiding,

as well as how many people lived there, their gender, and even how tall they were.

Leveraging the Private SectorAs the need for reconnaissance satel-

lites consistently outpaces the funding and resources to build them, about 80% of all U.S. government satellite communications traffic including that of military agencies is conducted using commercial satellite sys-tems. This is increasingly the case for im-

Spies in the Sky: You Can Run, But You Cannot Hidecontinued from page 8


FIGURE 1 – Project SCORE mounted on an Atlas-B rocket shortly before launch from Cape Canaveral. SCORE arguably began the intelligence world’s practice of satellite secrecy. (Source: U.S. Air Force.)

FIGURE 2 – The headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the third largest federal building in the Washington area. (Source: Cryptome Archive.)

FIGURE 3 – The Milstar satellite constellation built by Northrop Grumman was the first to communicate with each other at millimeter wavelengths without control from the ground. (Source: U. S. Air Force.)

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The New EW Test ParadigmTESTING EW SUBSYSTEMS and

systems has always been a long, technically-challenging, and ex-

pensive process. It is performed in several stages of increasing severity until the can-didate product can withstand the hostile threat environments to which it will be subjected in the field. It’s become even more challenging for several reasons, the most daunting being the increasing de-ployment of advanced AESA radars by China and Russia, the latter’s demonstra-tion of highly-advanced EW capabilities, and nearly two decades of U.S. compla-cency in significantly advancing its EW state of the art.

As a result, the Department of De-fense has recently lit a fire under the de-fense industry to expedite the develop-ment of EW technologies so they can be deployed soon rather than the typical 5 to 8 years or more. As testing is a major contributor to this process, the defense industry and government are working to create a EW test paradigm that improves the way EW system testing has always been conducted.

It focuses on exposing candidate de-signs to more realistic threat environ-ments earlier when it is far less expensive and easier and faster to make changes. The goal is to make new EW systems much likelier to pass the final and most exhausting (and expensive) tests on open-air ranges. To achieve this, the first testing and evaluation is performed using COTS simulation software and emulation hardware that subjects the system to the greatest amount and types of signal con-tent including threats, friendly or benign emitters, and impediments such as noise,

interference, and propagation effects. This is followed, as has long been the case, by testing in Installed System Test Facilities (ISTFs) and finally on open-air ranges.

The difference between this new test paradigm and its predecessor is shown in Figures 1a and 1b.

Although benchtop, COTS-based test systems cannot yet duplicate the comprehensive testing afforded in ISTFs where the system is installed in the plat-

form on which it will be deployed, they are nevertheless capable of determin-ing system effectiveness to a significant greater and at an earlier stage in design.

They can also discover problems quickly by creating a target-rich environment representative in both the number and quality of threats the system will experi-ence in the battlespace.

Giga-tronics has developed such a benchtop test platform called TEmS (Real-

EMPHASIS IS ON USE OFMODELING AND SIMULATION

PRIOR TO FLIGHT TEST

TIME

MODELINGAND

SIMULATIONSYSTEM

INTEGRATIONLABORATORIES HARDWARE-

IN-THE-LOOPTEST FACILITIES

INSTALLEDSYSTEM

TESTFACILITIES

OPENAIR RANGES

MEASUREMENT FACILITIES

OPEN ENVIRONMENTTESTS ARE THE MOST COSTLY

MODELINGAND

SIMULATION

MEASUREMENTFACILITIES

SYSTEMINTEGRATION

LABORATORIES

HARDWARE-IN-THE-LOOP

FACILITIES

INSTALLEDSYSTEM

TESTFACILITIES

OPENAIR RANGES

FIGURE 1 – The cost of EW testing increases in cost as it moves from the benchtop to the open-air range (a). If more representative modeling, simulation, and emulation are conducted on the benchtop (b) less time is spent at latter stages, reducing cost and increasing the likelihood that the candidate system will meet the demanding requirements of open-air range testing.

By JIM TABER , VP Marketing & Sales, Giga-tronics

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The EW Test Paradigmcontinued from page 14


Time Threat Emulation System) that is modular with its RF and control hardware housed in an AXIe chassis (Figure 2) so it can be reconfigured for more complex testing during final system validation. The system emulates multiple, simultaneous emitters to create realistic environments that can be injected directly into the sys-tem or radiated into it over the air. Up to 31 platforms (30 emitters and 1 system under test) are supported along with direction finding and angle of arrival (AoA) testing via automatic multi-channel software control of amplitude and phase. The system also supports time-of-arrival (ToA) of all RF signals.

The hardware is complemented by TEmS software that combines emitter characteristics with plat-form kinematics-- the movement of all types of emitters in relation to each other in the battlespace. Kinematic representation presents the user with a real-time representation of the platforms, emitters, and the system under test involved in a scenario (Figure 3). Users can evaluate these scenarios to determine how well the simulated engage-ment meets mission parameters including dropped pulses or pulses that fall below the EW receiver’s detection threshold. The TEmS user interface dynamically displays how each platform moves through the bat-tlespace and the orientation and relative positions of each platform and emitter at all times.

TEmS is the only test system that na-tively performs phase-coherent upcon-version of multi-channel emitters and provides a real-time interface to control frequency, phase, and amplitude at the RF carrier. It uses Giga-tronics agile wide-band upconverters for signal synthesis and real-time control of RF parameters. Signal generation with high-resolution control is performed by the Advanced Signal Gen-erator (ASGM18A), which is an AXIe module synthesizer based on a 100-MHz reference that has outputs allowing other modules in the system to be coherently

synchronized. It provides high-resolution tuning of generated signals, with 0.5-dB amplitude resolution, 1-Hz frequency resolution, and 0.1-deg. phase resolution.

Real-time control of the ASGM18A’s frequency, phase, and amplitude is ac-complished through a parallel BCD inter-face that allows them to be changed in less

than 1 μs from 100 MHz to 18 GHz. This supports synthesis of multiple emitters on a single RF channel that

operate at different RF center fre-quencies. Each ASGM18A can translate an IF waveform cen-tered at 1200 MHz to anywhere between 100 MHz and 18 GHz and the IF can have an intra-pulse instantaneous bandwidth up to 1 GHz for output frequencies above 4 GHz.

The digital control interface provides significant benefits for threat emulation. For example,

sub-microsecond switching speed allows multiple agile emitters to be created from a single generator (if they do not overlap in time),as switching is phase-coherent. Other effects can be created at the carrier frequency such as Doppler, jitter, and fre-quency drift, and when combined with a Giga-tronics phase-coherent downcon-verter, the two frequency-converter mod-ules form a hardware-in-the-loop substi-tute for a closed-loop agile threat emulator. The digital interface also provides precise control of phase at RF for emulation of angle-of-arrival wave fronts with 0.1 deg. of control across any number of channels and 90 dB of amplitude control.

Testing of EW systems is changing dramatically owing to the requirement for insertion of new technology faster and at less cost, and one of the most important of these changes is the exposure of new designs to “realistic” threat environment far earlier in the development process. In only the last few years, this has produced test systems that achieve realism previous-ly only attainable at later test stages, and test systems such as TEmS will further in-crease their abilities so that few surprises will occur on the open-air range. ■

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FIGURE 2 – The TEmS system configured for four channels with the display showing a battlefield scenario produced by the TeMS software running on a PC.

FIGURE 3 – The TEmS battlespace is simulated using a 500 km x 500 km, flat earth environment. Pulse descriptor words from every emitter are calculated in real-time for 10 ns timing resolution as the platforms move through battlespace.

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aging resources as well. In addition to the NGA’s recent mission to use more imaging and mapping resources from the private sector, DoD acquired rights to use data pro-duced by the Ikonos spacecraft operated by Satellite Imaging Corp., and has contracts with DigitalGlobe, which also provides images for Google Maps, Apple Maps, and

many other customers.DigitalGlobe’s Worldview-4 spacecraft

built by Lockheed Martin has panchromatic resolution of 12 in. using the GeoEye Imag-ing System-2 built by Exelis (now part of Harris Corp.) that contributes 640,000 km2 to the company’s library every day. There is considerable controversy about using com-

mercial assets for military systems, but as they are technologically advanced and de-fense budgets are finite, they are the only viable alternative to rapidly expand defense imaging capabilities in space.

As analog, digital, and optical technolo-gies have increased in performance, they have enabled information to be delivered not just to large earth stations but mobile and soldier-carried tactical systems small enough to fit in a backpack, as well as hand-held terminals. Using GPS-derived position data, advanced communications, and space and airborne sensors, soldiers have mas-sively increased their situational awareness. The spacecraft also make possible global distribution of information, including voice, data, and various types of imagery.

One of the most important of the many defense satellite communication programs, Milstar satellites (Figure 3) were the first to operate independently, without the need for relay stations and distribution networks, as they rely on onboard signal processing and the ability to communicate from sat-ellite to satellite. One of the key goals of Milstar was to function in the presence of jamming or nuclear attack, while provid-ing global connectivity using earth termi-nals, some of which are very small. Each of the five spacecraft provides voice and data communications at 75 b/s to 2,400 b/s and 4.8 Kb/s to 1.544 Mb/s. Earth-to-ground communication is accomplished at S-band while satellite-to-satellite-communication takes place at 60 GHz where signals are ex-tremely difficult to detect or jam.

Although Milstar satellites were designed for a 10-year service life, Milstar-1 is still functioning after more than 20 years. How-ever, the Air Force is replacing Milstar with the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) six-satellite constellation that also uses millimeter-wave frequencies. In addi-tion to voice and data, the AEHF system will transmit real-time video, battlefield maps, and targeting data. AEHF boosts operating bandwidths and channels and provides bet-ter jamming protection than Milstar.




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Spies in the Sky: You Can Run,

But You Cannot Hidecontinued from page 18

AR .................................................................................cover 2

AR Modular ...........................................................................19

Crystek ......................................................................................11

dB Control ..............................................................................22

K&L Microwave .....................................................................9

KRYTAR, Inc. ............................................................................7

MECA ..............................................................................................5

Micro Lambda Wireless .............................................17

Mini-Circuits ............................................................ 12-13

National Instruments ...................................................18

Networks International Corp. ..............cover 3

Skyworks ................................................................................15

Teledyne Microwave Solutions ...........................21

Optical technologies are essential in military spy satellites, ranging from imagers that use a mirror to gather visible light for still images, to infrared and ultraviolet sensors for video cap-ture. However, radar systems also provide im-aging capability, especially in conditions where optical technologies cannot perform well, or at all. Although public information is scarce, it’s generally accepted that the receivers used in spy satellites have some of the best-performing receivers ever developed. They cover frequen-cies from HF through millimeter wavelengths and intercept, record, and downlink radio, tele-phone, and data transmissions.

Of the many reconnaissance satellite pro-grams since Project SCORE, two are prob-ably the most well known: Keyhole (Figure 4) and Lacrosse. They first took photographs and ejected canisters of film retrieved in mid-air as they floated down on parachutes. The Lacrosse satellites used radar imaging that has lower reso-lution than the KH series optical sensors but are nearly impervious to weather and can be used both in daylight and nighttime hours. These sat-ellites serve as key resources for all intelligence agencies, but they’re just two examples of the hundreds that have been built.

Satellite AlternativesAlthough they’re invaluable, spy satellites

are also incredibly expensive and can take many years to build, which is a significant im-


FIGURE 4 – An artist rendering of what a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite may look like along with its various components. (Source: Craig Covault, AmericaSpace, LLC.)


pediment to advancing the deployed state of the art. A variety of alternatives have been proposed over the years including UAVs and very likely others. UAVs have become increasingly important as they are unmanned, much less expensive, can loiter over an area for about 24 hr., and can carry weapons payloads as well. They also oper-

ate at much lower altitudes, which offers benefits for both optical sensors in finding camouflaged targets and providing high resolution, and for RF-and-microwave sen-sors detecting weak signals. However, UAVs require fuel for propulsion, frequent main-tenance, and cover only small areas.

This has spurred interest in high-alti-

tude, “long loiter” airships, either tethered or untethered. They are far less expensive than satellites or UAVs, operate at altitudes up to 60,000 ft., and can potentially remain in place for days or months. One of their major issues concerns electrical power (in the case of untethered platforms) that they must generate their own typically using so-lar panels, and enough of it to run the pro-pulsion system and payloads, and charge a power storage system that keeps everything running when solar energy is not available. Like UAVs, they can image or listen-in over relatively small areas, however.

A leader in this area is Lockheed-Martin, which has a range of “persistent surveillance systems”, one of which is used for border pa-

trol in the southwestern U.S., the only such system used in the country. The company’s High-Altitude Airship (HAA) (Figure 5), is an unmanned, untethered LTA that op-erates autonomously in the stratosphere to provide a geostationary platform for ISR and communications, and can provide cov-erage over an area 600 mi. in diameter.

Spy satellites will always remain part of the “dark” world as like so many other pro-grams, knowing virtually anything about them or even their existence would be of immense benefit to adversaries. They also use some of the most technologically ad-vanced systems of all defense assets, so for the sake of their owners, keeping spy satel-lites unknown unknowns is essential. ■


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FIGURE 5 – Lockheed Martin’s High-Altitude Airship (HAA) cannot take the place of satellites but can complement them. (Source: Lockheed Martin).

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