Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report

The Northrop Grumman Corporation tapped Steve Hogan in October to lead its Electronic Attack and Information Operations Business, an area of growing importance to U.S. attack and defense missions.

Electronics systems can help U.S. jet fighters break through radar-jamming systems, for example, or deflect efforts to crack crucial electronic networks. "The first shot fired in a conflict is no longer a bullet. It's an electron," says Hogan. "We saw how the Russians used electronic attacks in Georgia and we see every day how terrorists operate, using store-bought electronics to harm our soldiers and innocent bystanders."

An edited transcript follows.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: Could you please broadly describe why preparing for electronic warfare is critical in protecting the interests of the United States going forward.

Hogan: Electronic warfare has been evolving since the early days of us going in and trying to protect U.S. coalition forces against enemy threats, specifically in the electronic magnetic environment. So it is critical technology that allows our forces to operate in an environment in which the enemy or a deterrence force would like to use our systems against us — not freely allowing us to communicate, to operate, to geo-locate — in other words, identifying targets and then allowing us to understand where they are, and whether they are friendly or not friendly forces.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: What is the breadth of the equipment that falls under the Electronic Warfare Program and what are the different types of systems out there.

Hogan: Here at Northrop Grumman we run the gamut of electronic warfare capability from ground forces that help the army to navigate the battle field to aviation assets in which we place equipment into both Air force and Navy assets that would allow our service forces and coalition partners to operate freely in an environment that potentially could have access denied. So the significance of the assets that Northrop Grumman brings to bear here is an integrated battlefield approach to managing the spectrum.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: And how has this field evolved over the past 20 years let’s say?

Hogan: The field has evolved primarily due to the complexity of the forces that we are fighting. The modern kinds of threats that we face are rapidly evolving and really it’s based upon technology and technology maturation. So back in the 60s fighting Vietnam War era type of electronic technology we clearly had a distinct advantage because we were putting the right resources in the United States into the defense of our weapon systems.

So we had a very strong advantage at that point. As technology evolved in the last 20 years we are trying to rapidly re-tool these electromagnetic spectrum devices to ensure that our capability stays one step ahead of the enemy’s — either cell phones or any kind of technology that they would use against us to change the electromagnetic spectrum.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: And you mentioned the Vietnam era equipment that we had. How far ahead or behind is America’s ability to engage in electronic warfare today.

Hogan: I think today America continues to stay ahead of the threats that are constantly evolving. We are capable of ensuring that our service men and women in the armed forces are protected. And that means allowing them to understand where they are on the battlefield to communicate necessary intervention forces and then allow us to deny our enemies the ability to do the same. So I believe right now we are far enough ahead that we can continue to dominate the battlefield environment from an electromagnetic standpoint.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: And now certainly we may not be preparing for battle, but are there countries that are trying to catch up, and that are catching up? And which countries would these be?

Hogan: Clearly all of the coalition forces, our NATO partners and people that we have alliances with from a protection force, a UN protection force kind of a role, are in a similar situation that we are in. We use our technologies to enable them and they also have developed technologies on their own that are often complementary to the U.S. technologies. So I think that these capabilities and services are closely aligned with our thoughts and our use of each one of those kinds of different technologies.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: What role is Northrop Grumman playing in creating a lead for the U.S. in this particular area?

Hogan: Northrop Grumman has spent the last 40 years leading the electronic attack industry with both airborne and ground-based weapon systems. And the definition of weapon systems is any kind of a device that would allow us to gain an advantage over an opposing threat and dominate that particular part of the spectrum to enable our ability to get the job done versus their [the enemy’s] denial of our ability to utilize our assets in ways that help the force obtain their objectives. I think the key in this is that throughout the history of Northrop Grumman, we have always tried to apply appropriate research dollars and appropriate internal funds to re-tool our capabilities and to constantly evaluate modeling and simulation kinds of techniques, and the threat in the ever-evolving, changing spectrum. There is a lot of activity going on now. If you just look at the commercial products that are available, they take up a lot of the spectrum these days and so Northrop Grumman tries to work with both the commercial and the Department of Defense types of activities to ensure that we know what part of the spectrum that we will continually be able to operate in and what part of the spectrum that we have to be careful that we don’t do any kind of fratricide against a protected area of the spectrum.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: What is your company’s biggest strategic concern within this sector?

Hogan: I think the biggest strategic concern at this point is related to our ability to stay in front of a rapidly evolving threat. With the advent of technology and the rate at which technology is changing, we clearly need to be able to characterize the types of electronics in the environment today and then utilize that in such a way that we can continue to control it. And so I think our biggest challenge is maintaining a technical edge over the commercial marketplace which spends a tremendous amount of money and continues to mature as quickly as the Department of Defense does.

In the old days it was simpler because we were the ones investing in that spectrum area and in the equipment that manages the spectrum. But I believe with the advent of all kinds of technologies, industry has got commercially available products that both friendly and unfriendly forces can use in managing the spectrum, just as the Department of Defense (DoD) uses systems to make sure they manage their end of the spectrum.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: I have heard that the Pentagon’s acquisition workforce culture is still very much geared towards acquiring big weapon systems. How do you make them more receptive to the importance of electronic warfare?

Hogan: The Pentagon’s acquisition force is actually changing the way they buy things. Clearly the new President and the Secretary Gates and all the elected officials, are looking for ways to buy things quicker and they are allowing companies like Northrop Grumman to bring their good ideas to them and test out their products quicker and faster in the field, if you want to call the field test basically a new way of looking at things.

In the traditional sense we used to write requirements and we used to then design the requirements and then field a tested product and I think the environment that exists is changed to the point of if you have products that are available, you can bring those into the environment in which they will be operated, you can test them and then almost as a back-fit, go back and fill in the rest of the items once you are successful in fielding a quick-reaction capability.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: Now another imperative is just that for the analog systems that are out there, aren’t the components no longer being manufactured, isn’t that another imperative to upgrade to more digital based systems as well?

Hogan: That is a definite matter of technology changing the environment in which we need to develop products. Analog systems that are fielded are quickly becoming displaced by the digital technology environment that we would expect that everyone is moving to. So we also need to evolve, to be able to handle digital kinds of technology and I think Northrop Grumman has done a very good job of staying ahead of that wave and ensuring that our systems are, both digital and analog capable, and that we are able to utilize those system to ensure the safety of our troops on the ground.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: What percentage of Northrop Grumman’s revenues currently come from its electronic warfare division? What is your goal — what do you want to hit in five years?

Hogan: It’s a very good question and it is very complicated from a sense of most of the electronic warfare capability resides on what we call a platform. A platform could be airplane. So [using] the traditional approach of Northrop Grumman, we developed a platform called the EA6B. It was the original version of the Electric Intruder and we have now evolved that into the Prowler, which is a four-seat version called the EA6D. And so that has been flying in the theater or flying in the armed services since the early seventies.

The newest weapon system that we are just fielding right now in cooperation with Boeing Corporation is called the E18G, where we have taken some of the electronics from the Prowler and re-hosted them on what we call the Growler and that is being fielded right now. So from the airborne application there is some very long path of carrying electronic equipment and doing the kinds of things that it takes to jam from space.

On the groundside, what we have done is partnered with portions of our Northrop Grumman team and put systems on vehicles that the Rain Corp and the Army operate. They go into countries and are able to defeat any kind of electromagnetic spectrum devices. So when you try to characterize the amount of sales or the amount of investment that we are making as a corporation, Northrop Grumman as a corporation built both those air vehicles. They build the black boxes or the Electronic Warfare Systems and they also build the ground systems.

So as percentage of the total company I don’t know… in our division alone -- called Battle Management and Engagement Systems -- we are a major contributor to it and we probably make up about 25 percent of the total dollars that we are both investing in the future and from a sale standpoint that we are getting as return -on-sales for the company.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: And as you create new systems, what collaboration does your division have with University-based Research Centers to harness the latest theoretical computer science technologies or those that involve physics and quantum physics etc.?

Hogan: The way Northrop Grumman has partnered with either industry or universities is we have alliances where we will take some of our independent research and development dollars and we will work cooperative efforts with any researchers, specifically universities.

What we would like to do is go into their laboratories and see what kind of technologies they are working on, and then mature those technologies so that their applications are capable of being put right into whatever Electronic Warfare System we have. So we may partner with a university on, say, development of new chips, faster processors, and array and antennae kinds of capabilities. And then we will field test those and we will build them and transition those from a university laboratory environment into a Fleet representative or Army field representative kind of capability.

So a lot of the technologies we get we invent here at Northrop Grumman but just as many come from universities and other Industry partners as we try to package this into technologies we can use for the Department and Defense and/or the commercial industry.

Wharton Aerospace & Defense Report: Is there anything I missed or anything you would like to add?

Hogan: No, I thought that was a very good set of questions.