El Ej\u00e9rcito pondr\u00e1 a prueba una nueva idea para incorporar a los codificadores y desarrolladores de software en la vanguardia t\u00e1ctica para desarrollar y programar aplicaciones de guerra electr\u00f3nica y sistemas de radiofrecuencia. El objetivo ser\u00e1 utilizar equipos org\u00e1nicos de brigada y explotar objetivos dif\u00edciles, capturando se\u00f1ales de inter\u00e9s, aplicando ingenier\u00eda inversa y produciendo una respuesta en menos tiempo.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 The Army will pilot a new idea to place coders and software developers at the tactical edge to reprogram electronic warfare and radio frequency systems.<\/p>\n
The pilot, dubbed Starblazor, will try to identify gaps in Army capabilities and provide information for its doctrine and policies.<\/p>\n
Mainly, Starblazor will help the Army learn what is needed to train the cyber and electronic warfare operators with existing equipment and what these personnel will need for a future fight, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Eric Colon, CEMA technician at Army Cyber Command, told C4ISRNET.<\/p>\n
The Starblazor effort will take place this summer during the larger Defender Pacific, a division-sized war game for joint multidomain operations in support of Indo-Pacific Command, which will also test new technologies and concepts.<\/p>\n
Recently, the Army created a new military occupational specialty within its cyber branch\u00a0dedicated to software development<\/a>. Those specialists sit alongside operators and build tools on the spot to keep up with the dynamic environment of cyberspace.<\/p>\n Now, as the Army is gearing up to field a raft of electronic warfare equipment \u2014 including combined cyber and signals intelligence \u2014 it needs to be able to rapidly reprogram the systems to exploit new signals it may find over the course of a conflict.<\/p>\n If the Army finds itself in a conflict with a top nation-state, it will likely come across signals it hasn\u2019t seen before. This presents problems for the force because it won\u2019t know how to exploit or defeat those signals until it categorizes them. In the Cold War, this could take years, but now with software-defined systems, new signals can be deployed, detected and tweaked in weeks.<\/p>\n Starblazor is aimed toward the Army\u2019s new\u00a0915th Cyber Warfare Battalion<\/a>, which consists of 12 expeditionary cyber teams to augment brigades with additional cyber and electronic warfare capabilities, which the Army is\u00a0still experimenting with equipment and staffing<\/a>.<\/p>\n One intent of the group is to be able to go anywhere, utilize brigade-organic equipment and exploit hard targets by capturing a signal of interest, reverse engineering it and delivering an effect in months rather than years.<\/p>\n Starblazor efforts during Defender Pacific will only look at the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large platform, first organic brigade electronic attack asset mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone. The Army, however, in its most recent budget request\u00a0zeroed out procurement funding for the system<\/a>\u00a0leaving its deployment to units in jeopardy, despite\u00a0continued research and development funding<\/a>\u00a0dedicated to it.<\/p>\n Starblazor will help determine what new code developers need and provide information for capability development for large acquisition programs while they\u2019re still in the research and development phase.<\/p>\n Army coders can help inform the development cycle of these platforms much earlier in the process, officials said. However, they said that significant software changes in a week or two would likely be unrealistic, but some tweaks could be made in that timeframe, which is significantly faster than the traditional acquisition cycle.<\/p>\n