CS-T-E
Electronic Warfare and its Role in the Network-Centric Environment
Mr. Kasch ORGANIZER: Jack Burbank
The transformation to a network-centric fighting force is predicated on achieving and maintaining dominance in the Information Space. This places an increased demand for effective Information Assurance (IA) and offensive Information Operations (IO). An important aspect of offensive IO is Electronic Warfare (EW) techniques (i.e. jamming). Conventional jamming methods have historically attempted to exploit characteristics of the lower layers of the protocol stack (e.g. waveform) to induce a particular average link bit error rate. This approach attempts to 'take the legs out from under a network.' One limitation of this approach is that it gives a clear signal to network administrators that an operation is being conducted against their network. Additionally, this may not be the most effective approach from a required jammer power perspective. Rather, there is significant performance that can be achieved by a more intelligent jammer that attempts to attack higher-layer protocols. This approach attempts to 'attack the weak link of the communications chain.' An attractive potential benefit of this approach is the ability to disrupt higher layer protocols while leaving the underlying link technology intact, leading to confusion on the part of network administrators. This session seeks papers on the following topics: Novel EW techniques and approaches; Methods for detection, classification, and characterization of targets; Performance reports of operational EW systems; Real-time EW attack planning; Adaptive EW approaches; IO Battle Damage Assessment (BDA); and EW methods against diverse target sets.
Jack Burbank received his Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1998 from North Carolina State University and supervises the wireless networking section at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. His recent work is in the areas of wireless network electronic attack, sensor networking, and mobile ad-hoc networking. He is a professor of networking and telecommunications in the Johns Hopkins University Part Time Engineering Program, and a member of the IEEE and the ASEE.
Mr. Kasch received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology in 2000 and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University in 2003. His interests include various aspects of wireless networking, including MANET, IEEE 802 technology, and cellular. He participates actively in both the IEEE 802 standards organization and the Internet Engineering Task Force.