The Rat dialed in for his first Army Blogger’s Roundtable call today, to get the scuttlebutt on the Army’s new electronic warfare career path., Col. Laurie Buckhout, chief of the Electronic Warfare Division, Army Operations, Readiness and Mobilization, talked about the the new Electronic Warfare (EW) 29 Military Occupation Speciality for officers, warrant officers and enlisted.

EW is a key element of the networked battlefield. It’s also an immediate asset in dealing with cyber threats that ride the electromagnetic spectrum — cell phones, wireless networks, satellite data links and other mobile networking technologies that are vulnerable to interception, jamming, or disruption. “We are seeing comms electronic attacks,” said Buckhout. “We’re seeing directed energy capabilities. We’re seeing laser capabilities. We can shoot down incoming munitions with lasers. We have something called active denial systems that puts out a directed energy pulse that is harmless but not something you want to get in front of. And it keeps people out of a certain area. It’s an area denial system. We have a whole lot of capabilities out there that use the electromagnetic
spectrum, not just the communications spectrum in ways that are very beneficial to the U.S. Army.”

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