(upbeat ambient music) - Welcome to From the Crows Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or MSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Association of Old Crows. Thanks for listening. In this episode of From the Crows Nest, I share with you a conversation I had with representatives from the 55th Electronic Combat Group, the Compass Call Community, during my visit to Davis Mountain Air Force Base back in January.
Now, as many of you know, the Compass Call is recognized by the Venerable EC-130H aircraft, but the Compass Call is more than just an airframe, it's also a mission. And the US Air Force is in the process of replacing the agency 130 airframe with a more operationally relevant EA-37B airframe, EA standing for electronic attack, which is a variant of the Gulf Stream. This process has been less than smooth at times than it needs to be.
And you know, from an AOC perspective, we support the delivery of additional E-83B aircraft and of course, on a faster timeframe, time scheduled than they currently are. But there is progress being made on that front, and we applaud the Air Force for the work being done.
But really the takeaway from my visit with the Compass Call community was, of course, just how critical the Compass Call mission is today to successful MSO operations and just how amazing this community is at conducting their mission and the pride they take in it. It was really refreshing to be out there, spend the day with them, I greatly appreciate them taking time from their busy schedule, their high demand, a mission, and they're always on the go.
So it was great to spend some time with them, sit down with them and learn a little bit more about where they're at today. Now before I get to that interview, for those who listened to last week's bonus episode on what is going on in Congress these days, you'll know that the president's budget was delivered to Capitol Hill this week. That's kind of the big milestone that everyone in DC is talking about, and probably only people in DC are talking about it.
But the main talking point, of course is that, you know, the president's budget every year, year in and year out is dead on arrival until Congress gets its hands on it. But the fact is, the truth is that much of this budget remains intact through the appropriations process. So it really does give you an idea of where the budget is going throughout the fiscal year. This is especially true with the defense budget.
Congress will play around with some of the major initiatives, but the bulk of the defense budget is gonna remain intact. So the President's budget calls for 849.8 billion for the Department of Defense in FY 2025, and that's about a 4.1% increase over fiscal year 2024. Now there'll be folks in Congress on both sides saying either that needs to be a higher number or a lower number, and those views do not break down along party lines. Those views are represented on both sides of the aisle.
So there'll be some talk about what that final number will be, but that's the starting point is 849.8 billion. There are also several interesting MSO priorities highlighted in the budget, of course, in addition to the EA-18G Growler capability modifications, their support for the next generation jammer to improve electronic attack capabilities.
There's also funding for the F-15 Eagle passive active warning and survivability system, and the integrated defensive electronic countermeasure system for all F-18 aircraft. There is also the direction that the Department of the Air Force must achieve electromagnetic dominance to maintain information advantage so the establishment of Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Center of Excellence.
And then there are also also plans to accelerate EC-37B baseline by transferring resources from the retiring EC-130H Compass Call aircraft to this new EA-37B variant. There are other initiatives that support the CHIPS Act on microelectronics, as well as other critical technologies and hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare, nuclear modernization, so forth.
And then finally, of course, you know, there is, from the C power perspective, there is money in there for the Surface Electronic Improvement Program, but block three, and some additional money for C4ISR systems. So all that to say is there's a lot in the budget, we're still going through getting the numbers for some of these initiatives.
We'll bring all that to you as we get them, either on the show, on from the Crow's Nest, or you can look at, look for articles in the AOCs Weekly ECRO newsletter that comes out on Wednesdays. But again, we'll try to provide this information for you as much as we can, as quickly as we can. All right, so that was a lot.
I greatly appreciate your patience as we go through some of that, but I felt it was really important to kind give you an update that's where we're standing at on the annual defense budget process. So now I would like to take you to my interview with the 55th Electronic Combat Group to discuss today's Compass Call mission. Let's listen in.
I am pleased to be here with a team from the 55th Electronic Combat Group, the Compass Call out here at Davis Monte Air Force Base, and I'm also here with my subject matter expert and senior analyst Matt Thompson. (loud droning) And I'll go around and we'll introduce everybody here. But I'm here with Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Palchick, as well as first Lieutenant Colin Schultz. I first wanna thank you all for opening the doors and welcoming us here for our visit this week.
It's been a great morning with you getting up to speed on the Compass Call and of course, the arrival, in the near here of the EA-37B and the impact that that's gonna have on the mission and the improved capability and all that's going on there. So really appreciate you taking time outta your busy schedule and thank you for joining me here on From the Crows Nest.
So just to begin, for our listeners, we'll go around and if you could just say your name and kind of a little bit of what, how you fit into the leadership structure here at the 55th. - Oh yeah, easy day. So Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Palchick. I'm the 55th Electronic Group Deputy Commander, so working under Colonel Olson, who's the 06 for the group.
and a relative new group member to the family, but basically bring a lot of expertise from my SOCOM background and then some electronic attack background from that, and basic help with the big part of the leadership team of the group. - Yep, so I'm Lieutenant Schultz, I'm just a line flyer here. I've been here for a couple years. I just went through upgrade to be a mission crew commander, so the lead EWO on any particular flight.
So yeah, I'm just flying lines once, twice a week and just trying to get better at my job every day. - To begin, obviously the rest of our conversation is gonna be about transitioning the Compass Call aircraft EC-130 to the EA-37B. And just to get us started, could you tell us a little bit about the current aircraft you have, the EC-130 Compass Call and what kind of capabilities and limitations it brings (loud droning) to your current fight? - Do some high level stuff.
I'll turn up to Lieutenant Schultz, can I be more details so you can fill in the gaps? Great. So big picture, right, so EC-130H very legacy old airplane, a lot of the things airplanes were built during Vietnam, their in heritage gear became active in 1982. From capability perspective started off with basics, just comms jamming where it first started with, over the years incorporated more.
So going against radars, more advanced data links, things in the future, then kind of going into meshing in with the other electronic attack assets, so the growler from the Navy and previously the Prowler when the Marines, the Navy flew that. And then going into the future building into integrating with fifth gen and eventually sixth when NGAG comes online. A big part of the pie when going against the electromagnetic spectrum and then superiority across the entire spectrum.
And so, like I said, we're a big part of the joint fight and sort of the MSO GSO concept. - And you said, you know, the airframe has been around a long time, I think well over 40 years, but it's obviously the mission has been continually upgraded. How challenging has it been to figure out how to meet those mission requirements and you still have the old airframe, it doesn't fly high, it doesn't, you know, whatever.
So how challenging is it to kind of make sure that you can continue to do that mission? - Yeah, so from our partners and let's say Paycom, and across the world, so the age of the airplane, so speed, altitude makes its hard to integrate in the current fight and that kind of leads into the EA-37 when it comes online, higher, faster. And then in terms of the actual mission set, (indistinct) how I transition to you for this, is the better integrations of our new capabilities.
So everything's from kind of hodgepodge together and then the EA-37 will allow us to bring it all together into the weapons system versus sort of add-ons and tech-ons. - For sure, yeah, you know, it's a little before my time talking about Afghanistan and stuff like that, but I think it was really kinda the perfect platform for that and it could be there for a long time, had really good longevity in the air, air-refuelable.
And yeah, just talking about being able to kind of strap on different capabilities. So we had our classic counter con, counter radar, stuff like that, some that was used more than others and the kind of coin stuff that we, that ECG has been doing for the last 20 years or so.
But getting to kind of build on with more of those advanced profiles and pretty much just be a flying, a giant flying transmitter that you can kind of stick a lot of stuff onto and just see how it works, I think really put us in a good spot for the EA-37 to say like, "Hey, it's cool that we have all these things, it would be even better if it worked more seamless.
- Key part of our visit here is to kind of come up to speed with the compass call mission and in anticipation of the EA-37B arriving here sometime spring. And what's great about any new aircraft is the minute that it arrives, everything just flips right over and you're fully, right, you've got that.
So, no, but could you give us a little bit of insight into the plan for the, because this transition plan is gonna be multi-year, a lot of different moving parts, different pieces that you constantly have to fit and refit into it. So could you give us a little bit of information on the plan to transition from the EC-130 to the EA- 37B? - Yeah, so I'll kinda give you an overlighting a timeline. So the sun setting of the EA, sorry, the EC-130 has already started roughly in the past two years.
We're decorating over time where the last two aircraft will sunset the end of FY '26. And at that point I think we're having, I think it's six aircraft at that point when we kind of swap over with the full buy plan to be up to 10 aircraft, eventually fully completing an FY-31. So, like I said, full transition over EC-130 sunsets in FY '26. End of FY '26, at the end of that being FY '27, the new A-37B comes online as the Compass Call. - And the first airframe is delivered here in spring.
Do you have a time for that? - End of March. End of March, Will be first aircraft here at DM to start again, the pilots spun up on a fly a modern G515. - But that is not, for our listeners, that is not the initial operating capability of it. So how long will it take to get to that point as well as then when does the second one come or a third one?
- So the bigger thing in terms of when is in more of an operational aircraft, so some of the bigger things for the timeline really would be the end of FY '25 is when we'll have our a full fielding recommendation for when the aircraft will be technically IOC at that point. - What are some of the key differences? Obviously just the eye test, you can tell like it's dramatically different. So what are some of the key differences that you could share with us in terms of what the new EA-37B can do?
- Yeah. So let's say, I guess we'll share this one too, but from the higher level, higher, faster, more capable, right? So old T-130, can't keep up with the current strike packages. It's a big planning consideration wherever we go in the world, higher, better line of sight, can throw those photons further, affect more systems, and then more capable. And then I'll hand it to you Lieutenant Schultz about better integrated and better future capability. So more men missing out. - Absolutely.
So it definitely, we have very similar capabilities as far as what our jamming capabilities are, but better in a lot of ways, like I said, it's kind of more seamless, especially with the kind of clipping stuff that we can do. But that being said, if you're just looking at not doing coin anymore and looking at the near peer, like you gotta be farther away, you gotta be able to get away faster essentially if we had to. Looking at that, that's kinda the biggest factor.
And just having more power essentially in what we're doing, having kind of our miniaturized components, making us kind of what lighter and that kinda stuff, and being more seamless, having newer radios. I think the maintenance reliability rate, just being, having that 90% ish availability rate is gonna be huge for us. Both getting reps at home as well as, you know, for any kind of conflict in the future. - What is the availability rate now of the current?
I know that's kind of hard maybe with the sundown, but. - Yeah, it's a challenge. - Okay. - I'll put it that way, right. - Okay. - So old airplanes, fewer and fewer and globally speaking the Air Force has gone away from the H model C-130, so it's hard to maintain airplane that the larger DOD doesn't really support anymore. So it's a continual challenge as, and actually I think two people here that tried to fly yesterday found out I tried to fly yesterday too.
All of it didn't happen, it didn't happen. So it can be very challenging. - So I want to go back to lieutenant Schultz, you know, you mentioned a few of the things that the new EA-37B is going to have. What are some of, a couple of the real key capability improvements that you're most excited about seeing in the field or another way, obviously with, you know, security challenges around the world as they are today?
I mean, the minute the EA-37B is fielded, we know it's gonna be in high demand and it's gonna be more equipped to adapt to a real dynamic threat environment. So with this aircraft, you know, can you talk about some, how it'll be a little bit easier maybe to keep pace with the changing threat than the current EC130, you know, open systems architecture, plug and play capability, how does that play into the new variant coming on board? - Absolutely.
So kinda like we were talking about before with the EC, big flying transmitter, a lot of cables, you can kind of plug anything in there as long as it's more or less designed for it, and then we kind of find out if it works based on testing, stuff like that. So having our future aircraft have the kind of open the, can I say Saber? - Yeah, you say Sabre and Sword.
- So we're gonna have the Sabre architecture that's gonna eventually become sword, which is, we can think of it as like an app store, kind of like you said open architecture.
We can have a lot of different players design stuff for us that if all of a sudden country X comes out with this new thing, whereas it might have taken, I don't know what the timeline would be, a lot longer than it would now, they can say like, "Hey, we can create this waveform, we can create this package that we know is going to work with your architecture and then we can see if that waveform works" as opposed to seeing if the technology works and then see if the waveform works.
- Yeah, and I can bring it up to a bigger thing too. So, you know, classically speaking, right, so you and your compadre behind you have have done this game a lot in terms of updating jam wing waveforms and whatever the enemy is creating, so it's a continual cat and mouse game of who can do something better first. And then really speed is what helps, right?
Whoever is able to change with they're doing faster and you hit the nail on the head, right, so open architecture, rapid reprogramming, things aren't tied down to a very unique way of doing business, allows us to adapt to whatever the adversary is doing and then we can create counters they're doing and just try to get ahead of 'em. So like I said, Boid said it very well. So he moves faster, does better.
- Well, and over the last several months, we've had the opportunity to go down to Warner Robins to engage the 350 spectrum warfare airway. We've been really impressed with the steps the Air Force has taken to really improve its capabilities in the EW space. That's got to give you at least a good feeling as the EA-37B arrives. The Air Force understands a lot better today the need for EW than maybe some of the years past.
And how has 350th and some of the other changes that have happened at the Air Force helped this transition? - I'm gonna add some color on this, your statement about 350 is, so you're a 100% right, the Air Force is reinventing itself a little bit (indistinct) world, right? I think we're still recovering from fighting coin for a long time, but we still have a long ways to go. So we're creating a lot of organizations that like 350 Spectrum warfare wing.
Great. But the amount of EW professionals out there is smaller. So my original airframe, AC-130 gunship, EWO doesn't exist on that anymore. B-52 is getting rid of their EWO-2. So we are creating organizations that will foster advances (upbeat abient music) and keeping pace with our pacing threats, but we're still a long ways to go in building the professionals to do that. And to be honest with you, Compass Calls is probably one of the founding areas for that.
Since BT-2 doesn't have an EWO, (indistinct), B1s are going away. So your professional EWOisms really are coming from the RJ and from the Compass Call. (upbeat ambient music) - That gets me into the next question, I wanna talk a little bit about the training challenges.
Could you talk a little bit about how the roles of the air crew changes and how you're addressing some of the training challenges that arise from taking, the personnel from one aircraft into another from in terms of roles and responsibilities and then how are you tackling the training challenge? - Yeah, so that's a kind of an evolving thing between the new EC-1, EA-37, - It's good to know that we both do that. - Yeah. (everyone laughing) What's in the letter, right? A lot of work actually.
- A lot of work under the letter. That's something, a continuing discussion we have about that when baseline three comes online and then baseline four 'cause like you said, perfectly, smaller crew relying on technology. A lot of cool things we're doing to help with that. But actually I think you guys over at the bat's probably a little more than I do of how we're mitigating the smaller crew, which is much smaller and current. - Sure, yeah.
So one of the big things in the EC-130, we have a very analog system for talking to each other, we have set channels where you can only talk to specific crew members, which kind of made the navigator, which is gonna go away into a crucial piece between the flight deck and the mission crew in the back.
So my understanding is we're gonna have all digital intercom for everyone so you can set up specific channels between just the mission crew commander and the pilot for example, if you want need to have that back and forth as opposed to needing to go through different people. So I think we're using technology in that way to kind of increase our resource management and make sure that that's working more efficiently.
- And next, actually I can touch on too, so my extra perspective, so remember I was like came from Gunships, and in that, the front end, back end all fighting together. And so, unless opposed to currently with the EC-130, there's a bit of a wall between the front end and the back end. And then to make better use of the entire crew is integrating everyone together. So they're all fighting the same fight on the same basically fires net if you will.
So like I said, I did a lot of real world fires, but in this, the Compass Call, whether the E-C130, EEA 37 is electronic fires and the solution to really having a smaller crew is better integration with the smaller amount of people you have. And like I said, the new aircraft will help that a lot. I've seen the new ISCS system, it's pretty neat. - Really? Okay. - Yeah, I think it's story out some bugs, but you can call individual stations, create subnets. It's pretty cool.
- I wanna bring in our senior analyst, Matt Thompson for a question on this. - Yeah, so I just wanna go back to something that you kind of were talking about earlier and just kind of, I asked the question a different way. So I think sometimes it's easy to overlook just the benefits of getting in the new car. So when Ken Earl asked earlier like, what are you most excited about?
Like I think we're talking about at that level, new platform, shiny new toy, getting outta something that's probably been flying for a 1000 hours before you were born. Like, what kinda excitement do you have on those kind of things. - Yeah, so that's definitely exciting and I think it kind of goes back to how the Air Force is posturing itself too. It definitely makes me, as someone, new to the Air Force, new to EW, feel like we're valued, we're important, it's something that they care about.
So having that just belief in us that we can get this new platform. I mean, yeah, it is just cool to have, it's gonna be cool to have the newest platform in the Air Force. Like that's not anything I ever thought, and it's honestly so contrary to how this community has been for the last 40 years where we're one of the oldest platforms at this point.
So I think we're used to just like doing our best, getting along with whatever we have to, which I think is gonna be a really good mindset moving forward that we can have that perseverance whilst having an even better maintenance rate. - So when I was first introduced to the Compass Call, it was probably, well, I wanna say late 90s, 2000 timeframe when I was on Capitol Hill, and we used to put together these Compass Call awareness days, which were fantastic events.
You know, we had the people come out to brief. Eventually then we also, we were able to actually get an airframe from Davis Mountain to come out to Andrews, park at Andrews, have tours and talk with the crew. And I always found that that was some of the most interesting times, and since then have always enjoyed engaging the crew and engaging the community. Really appreciate the job that you do.
Could you tell us a little bit about just serving in the community from a human perspective, just from a service member perspective, what it's like to be a part of the Compass Call community, where you're at today and kind of where that's gonna go here as the new 37 model comes in? - Sure, yeah. So we're gonna have a smaller crew. We'll be missing some of our folks that have been around here for a long time, navs, flight engineers, that kind of stuff.
But to me at least it feels kinda like a family just 'cause this is the only place we are, people stick around here for a long time. - And because it's such a specialty, there's quite a few I would imagine that start and end a career right here at Davis Monthan. - Absolutely, yeah, it's not uncommon for people to start here, go do a staff tour and come back here. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of experience and beings that EW is so kind of niche.
Obviously there's other platforms that have like EW pods and stuff like that that'll do, but I understand it's more of like a set it and forget it type of thing. So the fact that we have to be so active in the process kind of makes us feel like more connected I guess in that we're like, listen, we're the kind of the only people that do this, at least on the Air Force side, obviously there's the growlers.
So I think that makes us feel like we need to do a good job and that we're kind of in our own little niche over here. - You come out here, you look at the numbers and you're like, wow, there's 800 plus people as part of the detachment or the group here. Seems like a lot, but obviously your operational tempo is tremendous, you always have new tasks that you have to respond to, not enough people, quite frankly.
So could you tell us a little bit about how, maybe give us some insight just generally speaking in terms of how often are, do you deploy or, and what is a typical, like take us inside the, again, from a service member perspective, not from a technical perspective, but just take us into the back of the EC-130 here to talk about like who's back there and who is a part of your team? - Sure, yeah. So typical deployment for us is just total case by case basis.
Usually it comes totally outta the blue, so and so wants you to do this thing at this place, right. So usually it's a kinda a process of like senior leadership deciding like, "Hey, can we do this?" As far as like the human service member perspective, we have our times that we know we're up for deployment, so, and we can see who's gonna be on our crew.
So it's definitely a small enough community that you know everybody for sure, especially all the flyers, outta that 800, I don't even wanna guess, but like it's a smaller percentage of that for sure. So having that opportunity to fly with pretty much everybody, probably at least once a week, you fly with a few people. So we don't do hard crews here when we train, but when we deploy we do. So. - There's two operational squadrons here, the 41st and the 43rd.
When I was out here the last time, spent the day with the 43rd, spending most of the time here over the 41st. You Lieutenant lieutenant are from the 43rd as I've just realized. So welcome here to the other side here. But could you tell us a little bit about the differences between the operational squadrons, kind of how the duties break down or just kind of how the squadrons are organized here? - Yeah, absolutely.
So flight deck as in pilots, flight engineers, navs, EWOs are all essentially agnostic. You can be, we don't break it apart that way. So we still have set all those crew positions per squadron. But the big breakdown is definitely the AOR focus. So the 41st has more of like the CENTCOM type languages, as well as Russian, and then the 43rd focuses on Indo Paycom and Southcom.
So while the EWOs are agnostic, preach Squadron, we definitely have more of a focus on like, the 43rd members will know more about Endo Paycom systems and then the 41st will know more about Centcom. So when we deploy, it doesn't necessarily work that way other than the linguists, but that's kind of how it's supposed to be broken down if for some reason we had to support two different AORs. - Great.
And just to wrap up, a couple last questions here from just an education and awareness standpoint because from the Gross Nest year we get about five, 6,000 downloads a month, a lot of new listeners each month. What do you want our audience to know about who you are, what you do, and kind of where you're going with obviously with the new variant coming on board?
- So I guess the biggest thing right is that we are the Air force's only manned electronic attack asset, and we fill a crucial role in MSOG/EMSO supporting blue forces and denying red advantages, right. So like in open media, right, B-31 gets a lot of press, F-35 gets a lot of press, but they don't operate on their own. And the Compass Call serves a key role in that larger fight across the DOD, not just in the Air Force.
And so like even the Growler, they are good at things, we're good at other things, and we're a big part of the joint fight and capabilities we develop are ones that are helping out everyone else across the spectrum of warfare. Like I said, we spend a lot of time in coin, got really good at that, and right now we're regenerate our capabilities for that massive force on force, the army would say full boogie warfare is what they would call.
But that's what we're kind of driving for now, to get us all modernized up and one need to fight against people that might outnumber us. And so we can take our technological advantages ahead and win the fight. - And from the Crows Nest podcast obviously is a product of the association of All Crows. So what can the association do to help you in this effort? - So advocacy is huge, right?
I've always said that if you wanna win any argument, you have a lot of friends and if you socialize enough things widely, then things change, right? One loud voice is okay, but if all everyone's yelling at the same message, it's even better. So I think we've hint on it before, training is a important thing, and the Air Force, I would say maybe the entire military forgets about this sometimes is building that infrastructure for good training.
I have an old saying that sometimes you've got toys and sometimes you've got tools, toys are cool, you need capabilities, a few people know how to use. Tools are things that are well trained to when you have the infrastructure to train to it. And that's where we really need help, to be honest with you, and the helping with the advocacy piece.
From the front back, pilots, sometimes they're forgotten about this community, nothing against you guys, but we're trying many efforts through ACC and then half to get us say WST is a weapon system trainer for the front end for the new aircraft so that our pilots are proficient and we can take the aircraft anywhere. And for the back end, we have a semial line, but it needs to keep pace with the aircraft.
We kind of talked earlier about keeping pace with our enemies, but to make sure that we as humans can do that, our training tools have to keep pace. That's something we help with too is showing that just one and done isn't gonna do it, that we gotta be able to keep pace in palm for it appropriately so the money flows and resources come. So that's some of the biggest thing is helping us build our infrastructure for training for the entire aircraft, so we support the DOB.
- Yeah, I would just say for that, just kinda like you were saying, the idea that like, hey, it's funded cool, we're good for EW, like move on, go find the next thing. But you know, as we've mentioned, it's a cat and mouse thing, it's constantly evolving.
So just realizing that it's not gonna be a one and done thing and then, you know, just education as far as what we do because even a lot of people in the Air Force don't really understand what we do or think we can do everything at once or think that we can be in every AOR at every time and maybe someday, with enough aircraft we'd be able to do that. But as currently planned and funded, we're still gonna be a very limited resource as far as where we can be at one time.
- And that's a valid point, so kind of referring back to other similar open source discussions, right? So you see B-21 all over the headlines and the headline is we need more B-21. I would say the same for the EA-37 Bravo. Need more of that to cover both sides of the world if need be, or even just for one fight having more so we can sustain the joint force. - Lieutenant Colonel Palchick and Lieutenant Schultz, I really greatly appreciate you taking time outta your busy schedule joining me.
I'll let you get back to your day and I really appreciate you joining me here, (upbeat ambient music) I'm From the Crows Nest. Thank you very much. That will conclude this episode of From the Crows Nest. I want to thank my guest, Dr. David (indistinct) for joining me. Again, if you're an AOC member, look for an email with information on how to join our next recording of our bonus subscription episode next week.
If you're not an AOC member, you can still access that episode when it is released next Wednesday. Also, please take a moment to review, share, and follow our show. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please let us know how we're doing. That's it for today, thanks for listening.