Doug Brittain – Fort Huachuca, AZThe Army's Tactical Electronic Warfare Operations Course (TEWOC) was started at the US Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca in October 2006 when it became apparent to senior Army leadership that we had to address a tactical Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RC-IED) threat that was killing our soldiers and giving the enemy a strategic advantage on the battlefield.
We started with a mission statement: give supported commanders dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum in joint environments anywhere at anytime.
The TEWOC is designed to give battalion-level Electronic Warfare Officers (EWOs) an understanding of:
• EW Theory
• CREW Systems
• Spectrum Interoperability/Compatibility
Although the preponderance of the DOD's EWOs were in the Air Force and the Navy, the Army had some dozen or so Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs) who focused extensively on EW. The first hires for the TEWOC were all 98, 33 and 96 (all are now 35) Career Management Fields (CMFs) with extensive EW experience – the 98s and 33s in particular.
To date, the Army Intelligence Center has trained 1,461 Joint-Service EWOs, 97 percent of whom deployed to OIF/OEF. The TEWOC annual throughput of trained EWOs is more than 600. The course class size maxcap was increased from 30 to 60 in April 2007 in response to Request for Forces (RFFs) 611 and 627 for Iraq and Afghanistan. Our target audience is grades E-5 through O-4 in any MOS, although certain MOSs have a shorter learning curve. Some contractors who are deploying or who will be EW trainers also attend the TEWOC.
TEWOC student training is focused on tactical application of EW theory through extensive hands-on practical exercises and Situational Training Exercise (STX) lanes in the field. Students are introduced to the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) that is especially important for non-Army types. The course's new practical exercise threads its way through every academic block and culminates with our capstone STX lane. The training includes a world-class Cell Phone Technology brief and a Future Threats brief to enable students to anticipate the next RC-IED threat. Current conflict operational impact includes a monthly secure video teleconference with Joint CREW Composite Squadron-One (JCCS-1) in Iraq and with Task Force Paladin in Afghanistan, briefs from Air Force Compass Call and Navy Prowler operators and briefs from all of the unattended aerial system (UAS) project leads on Fort Huachuca. The TEWOC academics are accredited with Cochise College for a total of nine credit hours in Technical Report Writing, Signals Intelligence and Collection Management.
The course's final day STX lane trains students to plan and conduct their own convoy. Bad decisions translate into immediate Training IED (T-IED) detonations. Students must fully understand the friendly and threat environments in order to transit the convoy live fire lane unscathed. By the end of the course, students understand that electronic support (ES) drives electronic attack (EA) (when it is done properly) and have developed some muscle memory on line-of-sight (LOS) and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) issues – the understanding that an EWO must have to help his soldiers conduct their mission and stay out of harm's way.