Army requesting funding to initiate new theater signals intelligence program
Summary
The Army is requesting $6.6 million in research-and-development funds for a new theater-level signals intelligence system, according to recently released budget documents. Some of those technologies offer the ability to detect, identify, locate, collect, process and report advanced adversarial signals of interest for indications and warnings, support to electronic order of battle development for U.S. and allied maneuver units, and SIGINT support to electromagnetic warfare and cyber operations, per the budget documents. With the shift to what the Pentagon refers to as great power competition with China and Russia, the U.S. military must be prepared to fight larger and more sophisticated forces across longer distances. As a result, the Army is placing greater importance on capabilities and procedures at higher echelons such as division, corps and theater instead of brigade, which was the primary fighting unit during the post-9/11 counterinsurgency wars. The service’s justification books didn’t provide any additional funding projections for the initiative across the five-year planning period known as the future years defense program.