Armada Analysis - Podcasts

Kyiv faces the prospect that the United States may end her military support for Ukraine following a suspension in March. How could the international community fill any gaps left by Uncle Sam?On 4th March the administration of US President Donald Trump announced an abrupt suspension of all military aid to Ukraine. A few days earlier on 28th February, the world witnessed an unbelievable spectacle in the Oval Office. Ukraine’s President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy was on the receiving end of a bizarre temper tantrum from Mr. Trump and his vice president JD Vance. Fortunately, the suspension was soon lifted, but Mr. Trump’s actions provoked some serious questions.Ukraine has benefitted from supplies of US Electronic Warfare (EW) kit and expertise. Ukraine’s allies must be able to step up to quickly fill any void, in terms of EW assistance, left by Uncle Sam’s isolationism. At the same time, European allies must continue enhancing their defences against Mr. Putin’s regime. How can US EW capabilities be substituted for Ukraine? What are Ukraine’s electromagnetic needs as the war continues? These questions, and more, are the focus of this episode of Armada’s Radioflash! podcast with Oleksandr ‘Sashko’ Matviienko, a defence journalist and analyst from the publication CounteroffensivePro.

China’s advancement in sensing technology is moving at pace. A new report examines in detail where the country might be catching up with the United States.On 20th January, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) DeepSeek artificial intelligence chatbot was released, based on the DeepSeek-R1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) model. The Hangzhou DeepSeek AI company, which developed the model, has claimed its chatbot outperforms US rivals like OpenAI. It also claimed that DeepSeek’s large language model cost $5.6 million to train. This is notably less than that spent on comparable US offerings.Whatever the long-term effect of DeepSeek, the news thrust Chinese technological innovation into sharp relief. Advances such as these could have major strategic ramifications for accepted US technological pre-eminence. Not least of which in the sensing domain, which a report entitled China’s Remote Sensing, published in December 2024 by OTH Intelligence, discusses in detail.In this Radioflash! episode we talk to one of the report’s authors Tate Nurkin, a previous Radioflash! guest, about Chinese advances in sensing technologies across the board: How will the Chinese government and armed forces collect, process, store and use all this sensor data? What will be the impact of the dual use sensing technology being developed by the PRC? What effect is corruption having on China’s ability to secure the sensing capabilities the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs? Likewise, what impact will the PLA’s recent reorganisation of the Strategic Support Force into the Information Support Force have on PLA sensing capabilities writ large? All these topics, and more, come under discussion in this latest episode.

The defence and security electromagnetic agenda for the new US Congress and Executive is considerable, but what are the priorities? The new US Congress, and the administration of President Donald Trump, will have a heavy workload regarding the importance of the electromagnetic spectrum to America’s strength, security and prosperity. EW spending priorities will need be balanced with other defence and security needs. No matter how big any budgetary increases may be, economies must be made. There simply will not be enough available cash to fund every requirement. Meanwhile, the need to educate lawmakers on EW’s strengths and limitations will continue. Furthermore, the US Department of Defence bureaucracy must evolve to accommodate the need to innovate and deploy EW capabilities at pace. As our Radioflash! guest Ken Miller, director of advocacy and outreach for the Association of Old Crows’ international EW organisation explains, the next five years look busy.

As the modern battlefield is increasingly digitalised, the role of data in decision-making and situational awareness is vital. How can you make sure it gets through? The role of data in the modern world has undoubtedly increased. The ability to generate data has become much more simple and, as roles for the generated datapoints are created, data has become increasingly important to workflows, objectives, and missions.The modern battlefield, however, is changing. After more than two decades focussed on counter-insurgency and asymmetric warfare, dealing with peer and near-peer threats has once again become a concern. In the intervening period, the capabilities of competitive peers have increased - and in some areas surpassed those of Western nations.So, how do you ensure the security of your communications channels when faced with a capable adversary?“Planning your communications protocols and fallbacks is a major part of any deployment. Having a system that can deliver automated communications switching, as well as message prioritisation, means that battlespace operators can worry less about having to manage their networks and know that any disruption will be readily resolved,” Christoph Pauls, Business Product Manager at Systematic Defence said.“Systematic’s SitaWare Tactical Communication and SitaWare Headquarters Communication protocols help to automate your communications processes so that they can deal with a variety of challenges. This means that you can focus more on the operations and less on the architecture of your communication and digital battlespace setup,” Pauls added.https://www.armadainternational.com/2025/02/armada-international-podcast-3-delivering-data-to-those-who-need-it/

You have heard of hard kill, you have heard of soft kill, but what about SMART Kill? Drawing on his operational experience in the Royal Navy, and time in industry, Alasdair Gilchrist, our guest on episode 16 of Radioflash! says we need to start thinking about how to engage threats without stovepipes. Mr. Gilchrist, who has recently embarked on a new career as a consultant, has developed the SMART (Sensors and Measures Against Realistic Threats) Kill concept of operations. This takes the effects-based approach to prosecuting threats a step forward. He argues that traditional thinking about hard kill and soft kill approaches are becoming obsolete. The plethora of emerging threats militaries are facing, the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) menace being a good example, is forcing this rethink. Within the SMART Kill concept, sensing stresses the importance of threat comprehension. Are we understanding the real, and not the perceived, threat? This is particularly relevant on future battlefields where misinformation and disinformation risks clouding our threat sensing and comprehension. When engaging a threat, are we using our effects judiciously and responsibly? Should we be sending kinetics aloft to counter UAVs, when jamming may kill such threats just as effectively? The danger posed by swarms of UAVs aptly underscores this point. Can the SMART Kill approach allow us to use technologies which may not be exquisite, but which may perform the mission just as well, but at a fraction of the cost?

The US and her allies are embracing the Multi-Domain Operations philosophy with the Joint All Domain Command and Control System is at the heart of this endeavour. Multi-Domain Operations, or MDO, focus on improving the pace and quality of decision-making at the expense of one’s adversary. The goal is to navigate the famed OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop at a faster clip than your enemy. Get MDO right and you will always be proactive while your opponent is forced to be reactive. JADC2 The Joint All Domain Command and Control architecture, or JADC2, is the US Department of Defence’s networking and computing project that will enable MDO. JADC2 will see the inter- and intra-force connection of all personnel, weapons, sensors, platforms, subsystems and capabilities at all levels of war. The undertaking is ambitious. Reports say that since 2022 the Pentagon has spent up to $2.6 billion on JADC2. A further $9 billion could be spent on the initiative before the end of the decade. In episode 15 of Armada’s Radioflash! podcast we talk to Leslie Hulser, executive vice president, corporate strategy of Persistent Systems. We examine the status of JADC2, what this overarching effort has achieved to date, potential problems and shortcomings, and the work that still needs to be performed.

Estonia is experiencing the challenges of Russian hybrid warfare first hand and is most likely in the direct path of any future military action by Moscow to reconstitute the former USSR. Estonia is on the frontline of efforts by the Russian government to destabilise the governments, economies and societies of the Baltic nations. Like her other Baltic neighbours, the invasion and occupation of Estonia will be key to any future attempts by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin to rebuild the former Soviet Union. So-called ‘sub-threshold’ actions by Moscow, which aim to amplify destabilisation but are short of outright war, are occurring in the electromagnetic spectrum. Estonia has witnessed recent disruption to civil aviation strongly suspected to have been caused by Russian GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) jamming. GNSS jamming has also caused disruption to everyday life in Estonia. Ride sharing services and food deliveries are two consumer services affected by Russian GNSS attack. At the same time, Estonia has faced regular and significant state-sponsored Russian cyberattacks. Barring a major political change in Russia, there are few signs that Moscow’s hybrid warfare against Estonia will cease any time soon. However, it is not all bad news. Domestic science and technology ingenuity is playing its part. Estonia has world-class innovation focused on nullifying and reducing the severity of nefarious Russian actions in the spectrum. Tallinn’s strategy writ large is not just to prevent Russian invasion but to deter it. In this latest edition of Armada’s Radioflash! podcast we chat about these and other issues with John Longhurst, chief executive officer of Tangent Link and longtime Estonian resident.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are two much-heralded technologies set to revolutionise signals intelligence collection, processing and dissemination. An increasingly congested radio spectrum is set to challenge the limits of human cognition in the search for the signal of interest. In this episode of Radioflash! we catch up with Patrick ‘Krown’ Killingsworth, EpiSci’s  director of autonomy projects. We define the terms Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) and their unique capabilities. ML algorithms are trained on huge amounts of data which makes these algorithms great for processing huge amounts of data, a key requirement in Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). The application of AI and ML in SIGINT is not necessarily about replacing the human but helping the SIGINT operator sort these data. Nonetheless, the continuing introduction of AI and ML into SIGINT analysis prompts concern and enthusiasm in equal measure. Ensuring that enough data are available for training algorithms creates challenges given the paucity of data which the SIGINT cadre may be interested in. We talk about the risks of using synthetic data for training and tackling the risk by anticipating potential problems from the start. AI- and ML-enabled SIGINT systems continue to get smarter, faster and more accurate. The future brings challenges in terms of moving this SIGINT technology from the strategic level to the tactical edge, although edge computing in the tactical domain should help no end in this regard.

The modern electromagnetic battlespace is becoming more distributed, more mobile and more lethal. As neer-peer adversaries continue to develop and deploy advanced electronic warfare capabilities – the ability for the warfighter to communicate and share data to achieve decision dominance in contested environments is mission-critical. Silvus Technologies Jimi Henderson joins Armada’s military communications webpage and monthly newsletter editor Dr. Thomas Withington on this special podcast to explore these dynamic challenges. Learn how Silvus Technologies is responding with new & uniquely integrated MANET radio solutions, manned/unmanned systems teaming and advanced LPI/LPD and Anti-Jamming resiliency capabilities that are empowering the warfighter to achieve Spectrum Dominance at the tactical edge.

The importance of space as a domain of warfare is deepening. Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s, militaries have exploited space for communications, espionage and strategic attack. Despite the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, military demand for space is as strong as ever. The assertiveness of the People’s Republic of China and Russia is making space ever more strategically important. Expanding global military interest in the cosmos is impacting the electromagnetic environment. Actors seek to preserve access to their space-based assets while denying this to their rivals. In this latest episode of the Radioflash! podcast we are joined by Juliana Suess, a research fellow studying space security at the Royal United Services Institute defence and security thinktank in London. We discuss counterpace weapons, both kinetic and electronic, and their long history. The influence of cyberwarfare as a counterspace weapon also falls under our gaze. We examine the changing nature of counterspace warfare and the fact that attacks may no longer only be the preserve of nation states. We tackle the use of space Electronic Warfare (EW) during the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Russian capabilities. Moreover, the influence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) jamming forms part of our discussion. We also talk about the steps that state and non-state actors can take to reduce their risks from space EW.