Electromagnetic Warfare

In today’s world, finding RF expertise is becoming increasingly challenging. As many young scientists and engineers gravitate toward software, machine learning, AI, or data science in general, the supply of strong RF engineering and analogue circuit design skills is becoming increasingly scarce. At the same time, however, more systems rely on RF – whether for sensing or communications – and the electromagnetic environment is becoming more complex, requiring ongoing RF systems expertise and innovation.

Plextek combines decades of RF experience with a strong understanding of military needs, providing a unique combination of much-needed engineering skills and customer insight.

With extensive engineering experience, coupled with technical and domain knowledge, Plextek provides customers with a proven, reliable partner ready to solve some of the most challenging RF and EW problems.

The ever-changing scope and diversification of the EW threat continue to grow. Major conflicts involving multiple disparate state actors and affiliated subgroups have propelled the use of adversarial EW techniques. Rapid innovation – focused on low-cost, modified, non-military-grade technologies deployed at pace and volume – is enabling forces to make environments contested electromagnetically over wide areas. Operating within these contested environments, these forces demonstrate technological superiority and operational resilience, deterring adversaries and forcing them to invest heavily to match and counter capabilities. This creates a competitive asymmetry in which peer and near-peer adversaries find it difficult to overcome the EW threat.

Whether it’s a commercial airline whose navigation systems are affected by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jamming near conflict zones, the battlefield soldier deprived of a critical communication link, or a missile defence radar operator unable to engage incoming ballistic missiles, a wide range of entities are threatened by offensive EW.

Plextek’s decades of RF expertise maps to this complex EW reality. We have developed solutions to problems involving some of the most complex weapons on the battlefield as well as developed novel methods of responding to niche EW problems. We have supplied RF equipment to lead integrators and conducted basic and applied research to demonstrate uses of low-SWaP/cost, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) radars in new situations. We specialise in understanding the customer’s unique RF needs then tailoring a solution to broaden their capabilities.

Plextek’s ability to develop solutions to even the most complex RF problems and our deep understanding of the related signal processing and algorithmic requirements of a variety of sensors enable us to ensure our customers offer the most competitive capabilities on the market.

This tool enables users to optimise deployment of RF systems during mission planning, particularly when operating in unfamiliar terrain or complex urban environments. Along with determining how to maximise jammer strength in selected areas, the toolset allows uses to minimise it in protected areas, thus quantifiably reducing fratricide. It also highlights the often counter-intuitive ways certain structures or natural objects can alter the propagation of electromagnetic waves. This tool helps users rapidly emplace emitters to maximise the effect without allocating too much time to the process.

The hallmark advantage of this toolset is that it estimates the jammer’s signal strength across large swathes of land, orders of magnitude faster than other methods. It can do this across any terrain or urban space and can characterise signals ranging in frequency from hundreds of MHz to tens of GHz. It operates on Windows and Linux platforms and is well-documented to enable any EW novice to use the tool confidently. Finally, the toolset can ingest a wide variety of maps and terrain images