Computers and artificial intelligence (AI) make many lives more comfortable, but they can also make lives safer through the defense-electronics technology known as cognitive electronic warfare (EW). In many cases, adversaries rely on the ability to recognize threat signals—for example, from an enemy radar—and respond as quickly as possible by some means of electronic countermeasures (ECM), such as sending a false return signal to the transmitting radar.
Cognitive EW systems literally “cut out the middleman” by eliminating the need for human intervention and decision-making. They allow a computer and machine intelligence to decide when a threat signal has been detected and requires a response.
Radar jammers have traditionally transmitted false return signals in response to received signals that matched waveforms in a database. But as radar systems have become more programmable, using techniques similar to software defined radios (SDRs), it has become more difficult to “fool” an adversary’s radar system by sending waveforms meant to represent a particular amplitude, phase, and Doppler shift.