Above Average Intelligence

The radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is becoming an increasingly crowded place, with civilian and military communications, and radar, all jostling for available bandwidth globally.

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The radio spectrum spans a wave-band of three hertz to three tera-hertz. This may sound like a lot, but within that section of the electromagnetic spectrum military and civilian radar, amateur radio, civilian telecommunications, military telecommunications; television and radio broadcasting; professional telecommunications, radio control, and medical, scientific and industrial radio frequency users must all coexist. To make matters more complex, both the civilian and military use of the radio spectrum shows no sign of diminishing. As the introduction to this compendium noted; according to the statistica statistics website, the number of smartphone users globally will increase to 2.87 billion by 2020, from 2.32 billion today. Similarly, a report published in February 2016 entitled the Military Radar Market by Platform estimated an increased value of $13 billion in 2020 for that market, compared to $11 billion in 2015. While some of the future radar procurements represent the replacement of legacy systems in the land, sea and air domains, others will be purchases of new systems, thus potentially enlarging the numbers of military radars in service today. Similarly, the Strategy Analytics market research company estimated in April 2015 that the military communications market could be worth up to $35.3 billion by 2024. Ultimately, it seems almost inevitable that such increases will trigger a corresponding increase in the use of the radio spectrum, further crowding it and making the detection of signals of interest within this congested environment ever more important. Such considerations are arguably driving the acquisition of ELINT platforms and systems worldwide.

ASIA-PACIFIC

One area which has witnessed a recent growth in airborne ELINT acquisition is the Asia-Pacific. In November 2016 the