LTC Brian Hancock interviews CW5 Michael Gudmundson on electronic warfare (EW) and how it shapes current and future conflicts. Gudmundson spent four years at I Corps and then transferred to the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa to plan and advise on EW.
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00:00:07 Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:43 BRIAN HANCOCK
Welcome to the One Civil Affairs Podcast. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hancock, and I will be your host for this session. Today, we're going to explore the amazing world of electromagnetic warfare and its implications for the civilian populace. I have with me in the studio, Chief Warrant Officer 5, Michael Gunmanson, one of the Army's foremost experts on electronic warfare. Welcome to the show, Chief. Thanks. Glad to be here. Hey, I'm glad you're here, too. Now, I understand we have reason to celebrate. You recently moved from Chief Warrant 4 to 5. So tell the audience, what does it feel like to not have to ever worry about a senior rater making comments on your OER again?
00:01:24 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I was so worried about it before that like now I just keep rowing, just I'll keep doing what I do.
00:01:30 BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, explore the freedom. I think the rest of us are always fighting for top blocks and trying to get those rater comments, which seem to be 90 % of promotions. So enjoy the freedom. I was wondering why you are so happy and now I know the truth of the matter. Okay, fantastic. Let me tell the audience a little bit about you. I'm lucky to know you well. Chief Warrant Officer 5 Gunmanson was selected for the very first electronic warfare warrant officer course taught by the U .S. Army in 2009. Following the course, he spent nine years as a brigade combat team electronic warfare technician. He's completed two deployments, first to Iraq and the second to Afghanistan.
00:01:42 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
I know the truth of the matter.
00:02:07 BRIAN HANCOCK
And next, he spent four years at First Corps and then transferred to the United States Army, Europe and Africa, where he has spent the last three years planning and training U .S. Army cyber electromagnetic activities to include electronic warfare. Amazing. I'm really glad you're here. Glad to be here. Okay. Let's give him the standard disclaimer because I know you and I are both opinionated. Reminder to the audience, all remarks made by Chief and I are ours and only ours and do not necessarily represent the views of the U .S. Army or the Department of Defense. All right, Chief, this is a complicated topic and got some pretty smart folks involved in Army and Marine Corps civil affairs, but not all of them spend time working in electronic warfare. So just to set the foundation, I'd like us to define a few terms. that we're going to be using repeatedly through the show. Let's start with that term electromagnetic warfare, EW. What exactly is EW and how does that differ from cyber electromagnetic warfare, SEMA?
00:03:08 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The way I define it is electromagnetic warfare is radio frequency propagation and how the... all of the spectrum -dependent devices that count on radio frequencies. Electronic warfare is the attack and sensing of systems that are dependent on the spectrum. Where cyberspace electromagnetic warfare and SEMA, it includes EW because so many of those systems touch the spectrum. For example... I have an image of a cyberspace person who is always on the keyboard, who is hacking and doing everything on the Internet. And that image, I see that as there is a point in the nodes from the computer. to the Wi -Fi from the Wi -Fi back into a landline, either into fiber or some other system. And then when it gets pulled into a company that's providing that service, it's going to hit airwaves again in another form. And there's just all these different areas where electronic warfare will deal specifically with frequencies and then cyberspace would have to do with the effects on a device.
00:04:22 BRIAN HANCOCK
Thanks for clarifying that. It sounds like... If we have the Internet of Things in our house, we're doubly screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.
00:04:27 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
screwed. And that's where it gets complicated.
00:04:29 BRIAN HANCOCK
Amen. You mentioned spectrum. Spectrum, I think, is very important. I don't think we have specific MOSs dedicated specifically just to spectrum. I may be wrong about that. You can correct me. But in modern living, spectrum is kind of like air, right? It's all around us. It's ubiquitous. And everyone is using it for almost everything. Communication. to information, to understanding. Tell us a little bit about spectrum. What is it and who's responsible for it?
00:05:01 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, spectrum management for the U .S. Army, it's an all -NCO MOS that manages the spectrums. And it is what frequency is your device operating on and how much of a specific frequency does it need to function properly.
00:05:20 BRIAN HANCOCK
And I'm glad to hear that we have the backbone of the Army getting after that with spectrum management. I suspect that that's going to become more and more contested over time, just like airspace, probably carefully metered, especially in these dense countries that we operate in, such as Europe. All right, let's switch gears a moment to your current role here at the United States Army Europe in Africa. Tell the audience a little bit about what you do here.
00:05:46 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
What I do is I help make sure that there are enough electromagnetic and SEMA resources for all of the units in Europe and Africa to conduct their missions and operations and training.
00:05:56 BRIAN HANCOCK
So you're kind of like a facilitator or a broker? Absolutely. Well, at your level of excellence, I'm not surprised. You'd be a force multiplier to help all those other people get it right. Do you do any active SEMA planning or coaching, anything like that?
00:06:10 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. If there's a SEMA question that comes up... I'll give my experience and I'll show where electromagnetic warfare and SEMA will fit into the mission.
00:06:21 BRIAN HANCOCK
Great. I wish you would continue that coaching and advice to the people who make GoWarsim and JCATs and these other devices so that we could get a SEMA layer in there. And we'll talk, obviously, later in the show why that's really important from what we're seeing in Ukraine and elsewhere. But keep doing that influencing you're doing. I think we need more of it. All right, let's talk about authorities, right? This is a pretty big topic for any enabler, and SEMA is no exception. What authorities, if any, exist to conduct electronic warfare in Europe or Africa? And how difficult is it to get authorities if you don't have one that you need?
00:06:56 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
The Department of Defense has a spectrum management doctrine regulations at how -to, and every piece of military equipment is annotated in that process. And so that process shows which piece of equipment we work with in the U .S. Army and how much of it can be shared with each country. To get after the authorities, the step number one is can we use the equipment in the country we're in? And then the step number two is how do we assign the frequencies to it? Because we're sharing the spectrum, which is owned by the host nation. Each host nation owns every frequency. In order to transmit on what we want to transmit, we have to share the parameters of the equipment. And there's a process for that. And we make sure that that process is. So that's how we get to the authorities. How long it takes with the processes that we and relationships we've built. If all of the documentation is in order, we can do it in. It's nice to have 30 days, but we can do it much faster. And then if that documentation isn't in order, I think we can do it in about 180 days.
00:08:10 BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. I imagine that varies quite a bit depending on where you're operating. Germany, where we are right now, is a pretty well -oiled machine when it comes to bureaucracy process and paperwork. Certain other countries, I think, is probably closer to the Wild West. So I imagine that that could vary quite a bit. But that's great explanation. It's really important as you move up. that you have those authorities to conduct on frequencies for whatever period is time, for whatever purpose, whatever condition. And ideally, we want to build those authorities into our operations plan in advance so that they're pre -coordinated and train them in exercises too, especially force -on -force tactical type exercises. I think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors.
00:08:52 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
think one of the interesting things about electronic warfare and the spectrum itself is that we use antennas as our sensors. Your eyeballs are as close as you're going to get to sensing the spectrum. Light is on the electromagnetic spectrum, but most of the devices we use, we can't actually feel the spectrum being used. And so we have to go through another medium, a computer, to identify whether it's on or off.
00:09:20 BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah. I think all those folks in the... Cuban embassy were feeling the spectrum when Russian turned on the microwave emitters. But maybe not normal.
00:09:30 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. That's where you got to say most. But to get those results from what I understand is very high power and very highly specific systems.
00:09:43 BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay, I got it. Many of these folks that we have listening to 1CA podcast are officers and NCOs who have the burden of making things happen. And they have to take senior officers and turn those good ideas into actual executable operations. So they're doing a lot of the sausage mating. So in the intermediate level education that we get on the officer side, one of the things we really don't talk about is the electronic warfare process as to how that moves through boards, bureaus, centers, sales, working groups, all the way to the host nation, the country team, to result in an approved concept of operation that allows us to emit within a host nation. Can you tell those folks who want to incorporate EW into their planning, into their exercises, into their staff products, How do you move an EW CONOP from good idea all the way to firing it?
00:10:49 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Yeah, for the U .S. Army, there are units that have been fielded equipment or there are units that have requested for equipment and have acquired equipment. In order to do specifically an electronic and attack CONOP, you just need to find the equipment and the power level and then also to plan it.
00:11:09 BRIAN HANCOCK
Yeah, but can't you get that at RadioShack? Yeah, you probably could. Right? So there's more to it, right, to get an Army approval to do that.
00:11:15 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
Absolutely. In the scenario where you got something from RadioShack and you made a transmitter, you're going to classify the antenna. You're going to measure how far or how powerful it is and at what frequency it's tuned to. And then you're going to have a LAN to do it on. You're going to have to have a sensor to detect it or a device. that you're going to want to jam or interrupt. And the way we do it is you're going to put all of that data in a CONOP or in a request form with the five W's of how you want to perform your electronic attack mission or how you're going to perform your EW effect.
00:11:55 BRIAN HANCOCK
All right. How does that CONOP track through the process? You know, you and I sit at the computer. We ginned something up, and I think it's the greatest idea ever. I don't know if anybody else will, but what's our next stop with that after we've come up with that good idea and dropped it in the format?
00:12:09 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
We start with the signals section, the G6 at UCRF, and that's where they will look at the spectrum needs and determine if they have enough resources for it, if equipment can be turned on, if there is host nation trends. turning on that type of equipment in the location that we want to do it.
00:12:33 BRIAN HANCOCK
Okay. And, you know, like if it's a training area on foreign soil, we might have some type of standing arrangement which would grease the skids, so to speak.
00:12:42 MICHAEL GUNMANSON
And a lot of times in the planning conferences, if there's an event happening, a lot of people would love to have EW into their event.
00:12:47 BRIAN HANCOCK
lot of people
00:12:50 BRIAN HANCOCK
I really think so. You know, we keep looking at all of the CTC rotations, including JRMC. The senior leaders from Forcecom are talking and they say, every time we try and do any type of jamming, the movement goes to hell because nobody knows how to do that. They've forgotten how to operate without all of these bandwidths and all the devices that depend on it. And that doesn't seem to have gotten any better in the last 10 years or so. So I think at every level from tactical on up