The danger today isn’t always loud – it’s often buried in the noise. Detecting spectral camouflage is a technical and doctrinal challenge.
Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) used to conjure images of brute-force jamming and obvious emissions. That picture is out of date. Modern adversaries hide effects in plain sight using Low-Probability-of-Intercept (LPI) signals such as rapid frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum techniques and emissions masked within commercial congestion.
As the radio environment becomes more congested and contested, the real problem is no longer simply “who’s transmitting?” but “what matters in that transmission?” – a needle-in-a-haystack problem with lethal consequences.
Ukraine’s experience shows the cost of failure: swarms of low–cost platforms can overload defenders, forcing expensive interceptors to be wasted on decoys because sensors and analysts cannot reliably discriminate high–value emitters. In other words, the tactical advantage now flows to the actor who can both camouflage and fuse.
Defeat comes not from a lack of sensors but from poor signal discrimination and slow decision cycles.
The mitigation is two-fold.
- First, invest in advanced sensing and processing that differentiate real threats from background clutter. Technologies such as Adaptive Digital Beamforming (ADBF) and Super Resolution Direction Finding (SRDF) dramatically improve detection and geolocation in congested Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) conditions. Tactical wideband sensors – for example EM-Vis Perceive – and person-borne systems like EM-Vis Resolve provide the distributed sensing backbone needed to pick apart complex signal environments.
- Second, fuse those sensors into an intuitive EMS visualisation and C2 layer (EM-Vis Review) that reduces cognitive load and accelerates decision advantage.
Finally, we must couple technology with training. Operators need exposure to deceptive signal sets and realistic workflows that prioritise discrimination over noise suppression – and that cannot rely on live operations alone.
Simulation and rehearsal environments play a critical role here. Tools such as EM-Vis Rehearse allow teams to train against realistic Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) scenarios without live sensor hardware, helping commanders rehearse missions, refine tactics and accelerate learning in a safe, repeatable way.
Without this combined investment in sensing, visualisation and rehearsal, the UK risks being outplayed by subtlety rather than force. The future of Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) will be won by those who can see what others cannot – even when it is intentionally hiding in plain sight.
