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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Electronic Warfare Specialists with Delta Company, 39th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team “Strike,” 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), conducted training with the New Electronic Warfare Trainer, aka NEWT, during Operation Lethal Eagle III on Fort Campbell Ky., Aug. 17, 2023.
The NEWT acts as a transmitter and can put out a wide range of signals without direct monitoring by Soldiers. This allows electronic warfare teams to teach Soldiers how to locate enemy signals more efficiently.
“The NEWT was made by EagleWerx, the innovation lab of the 101st,” said Staff Sgt. Jesse Albert, the electronic warfare platoon sergeant of D Co. “It puts out a signal, and it allows electronic warfare teams to target it and direction find it without having to task out other Soldiers and take away from their training.”
The training began with basic field familiarization. Albert held classes on night vision, perimeter security and using concealment in the field. The goal was to get the newer Soldiers to a point where they could accomplish their tasks and training with minimal guidance from leadership.
“We have some new Soldiers without a lot of tactical experience so I’m getting them familiarized with some basic Soldier and basic electronic warfare tasks in the field,” Albert explained. “I’m ensuring that later on, I could just give them the NEWT, even if they're not able to have me at the training, they will be able to handle it all themselves and take it from there.”
The focus of D Co.’s training was direction finding. Albert would first go out to place the NEWT in an undisclosed location, then task teams to find it.
By using a portable receiver to detect the signal from the NEWT, single electronic warfare teams can establish a line of bearing, and multiple teams can work together to find more lines of bearing. Two LOBs are called a cut, and three are a fix. Combining these LOBs help the Soldiers locate the source of the signal. This is used in the Army to locate enemy positions by tracing their radio signals.
“At our level we have three different teams and each team is capable of getting one line of bearing,” Albert said. “If they're targeting the NEWT, I push out the NEWT and we make all three teams push out. All three teams get their LOBs, and they use that to get a good idea where the transmitter is coming from.”
Spc. Naomi Brooks, an electronic warfare specialist with D Co., says that the familiarization has been great to get more hands-on experience with their equipment and ensure the unit is ready for deployment.
“I think that the training I’ve done during OLE III has been very helpful in providing a lot of familiarization in the field,” said Brooks. “I think that the individual training with our electronic warfare systems has been extremely beneficial as well.”
The Soldiers plan to use the NEWT in further training exercises, including multi-unit training exercises in the future.
| Date Taken: | 08.17.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2023 14:04 |
| Story ID: | 451722 |
| Location: | FORT CAMPBELL, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 135 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, D CO, 39th BEB Employs New Training Device, by SPC Jayden Woods, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
