NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. \u2014 In the time it takes to watch Christopher Nolan\u2019s dawn-of-the-nuclear-age opus \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d one U.S. Air Force official wants to be able to siphon threat information from the battlefield, retool electronic warfare systems with it and see the digital updates in action on the front lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While 180 minutes may seem like a long time to sit in a theater, processing huge amounts of data and updating fighting systems in so short a period is a challenging target for Col. Josh Koslov<\/a>, the commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey have some wicked threats out there, and it takes us a little bit, working with our engineers, working with intel, to really crack the code,\u201d Koslov said Sept. 13, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Air, Space and Cyber Conference at National Harbor in Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing develops waveforms and updates jamming, spoofing and spying kits aboard aircraft such as the F-35. It\u2019s an outgrowth of an electromagnetic spectrum superiority study conducted by the Department of Defense as it seeks to rejuvenate the military\u2019s electronic warfare capabilities. At just 2 years old, the wing\u2019s legacy thus far is short. But its potential reach is long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur goal, our moonshot, is three hours,\u201d Koslov said. \u201cIf you think about trying to get data to fighters, to bombers<\/a>, to weapons, to countermeasures, to all the things that we do, that\u2019s a good number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe way we used to do it was, kind of, an industrial production-based model,\u201d he said. \u201cWe updated B-52s and F-15s on this quarterly process, and that\u2019s how it worked, until we went to a conflict. During the Cold War, there wasn\u2019t a ton of conflicts where we were using those systems. So we got by with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t