Electronic warfare (EW) systems must undergo stringent testing before they can be deployed. Few technologies in the defense electronics inventory face greater challenges or play a greater role in ensuring warfighter survivability than EW systems. They must not only detect an adversary’s radar, typically in a dense electromagnetic (EM) signal environment, but also determine how to defeat it and then attempt to provide a solution that cancels or minimizes the threat. Failure can be a matter of life or death.
Test regimes for readying an EW system for the field are exhaustive, ranging from simulation and emulation on the benchtop to higher and higher (and increasingly costly) levels of stress testing to ensure effective operation under a wide range of operating conditions, ultimately resulting in exposure to an enormous array of threats on an open-air test range