Lieutenant Colonel German Air Force (ret.)
Chair NATO SIGINT & EW Working Group (SEWWG)
Chief Engineer Electronic Warfare for System-of-Systems Concepts and Capabilities at Airbus Defence and Space

Lt. Col. (ret.) Marco Mehling is Chief Engineer Electronic Warfare for System-of-Systems Concepts and Capabilities at Airbus Defence and Space and a retired fighter pilot of the German Air Force. Prior to retirement from the military, he was the Director of Product Development at the Weapon System Support Team Combat Aircraft.

Marco joined the German Air Force in 1996. Having completed military jet training at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, Marco flew the Tornado ECR in the Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) role for 17 years. In 2003, he became an electronic warfare officer, was subsequently involved in the development of new tactics, and became a flight commander and flight operations officer in 2006. After completion of Instructor Pilot and Weapons Instructor training, Marco became the commanding officer of the Operational Test and Evaluation Section of Fighter Bomber Wing 32 in 2010, where he evaluated new equipment under realistic combat conditions.

In September 2017, Marco transitioned to his civilian life in the defence industry, while remaining engaged as a Reserve Officer performing multiple weeks of active service each year. His flight experience includes more than 2300 hours in military jet aircraft.

Marco is an active member of several NATO groups to evolve future electromagnetic warfare interoperability capabilities, such as the implementation of Cooperative Electromagnetic Support Measures Operations (CESMO). He has been a member of the NATO SIGINT and Electromagnetic Warfare Working Group (SEWWG) since 2010 and currently holds the position of Chair Person.

Cooperative Electromagnetic Support Measure Operations (CESMO) Supporting Multi-Domain Electromagnetic Warfare Operations:

Cooperative Electromagnetic Support Measure Operations (CESMO), as defined in STANAG4658 and its associated Allied Engineering Documentation Publication (AEDP) 13, is a NATO System-of-Systems (SoS) solution to enable near real time collaboration of Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) sensors across multiple domains. CESMO allows for rapid coordination, information exchange and data fusion in homogenous and heterogeneous network architectures, to deliver information advantage at the speed of relevance. CESMO is a critical pillar of Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMO) and Command and Control of Electromagnetic Warfare (C2 of EW). Additionally, CESMO offers such advantages as contributions to Time Sensitive Targeting (TST), updates to the Theatre Specific Electromagnetic Order of Battle (TS-EOB), and contributions to the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JISR) enterprise. By increasing Threat Situational Awareness (SA), CESMO enhances the survivability of coalition forces and supports military commanders and staff in gaining and maintaining information and decision advantage against adversaries.
This briefing will introduce CESMO, the concepts and ideas behind it, its current application, its interoperability with other data links, and its future development.

Simon Pfeiffer is Associate Director at Helsing and responsible for software/AI-infrastructure across Helsing’s programmes in the Air Domain.

What it takes: Accelerating the mission cycle with Software and AI

Modern SIGINT and EW systems deliver unprecedented amounts of data. At the same time, evermore complex emitters populate the electromagnetic spectrum. In this environment, modern processing approaches, that leverage state-of-the-art software and data-driven algorithms, can strengthen situational awareness and freedom of action in the spectrum. They accelerate the mission-cycle, onboard as well as off-board in-between missions. To fully lift the potential of software-defined defence and AI, the technological and organisational setup needs to support this acceleration – and ensure, that learnings and data are fed-back into the continuous iteration and development of capabilities.

Head of the business areas Future Electronic Dominance System and Future Combat Aircraft System within IBM

Various manager roles within the armed forces with key steps:

• Integration and Test & Acceptance Engineer for NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance System Management Agency in the NATO Headquarter in Brussels
• Official in Charge for TDL, in particular, the communication system Link 16
• Military Assistant of the Director General German aviation authority
• In-Service Support Manager for the air force of a primary radar

Academic background: M.Sc Electronic Engineering, MBA

Perspectives on connected EW

As the EW threat continues to evolve in all domains and gets more complex, the need for smarter and connected Electronic Warfare (EW) systems gets increasingly urgent. Quick identification and action on all kinds of known and unknown emitters require reliable and trustworthy EW systems, in which operators can set their confidence. True shared SIGINT information are very important for this matter. However, the challenge for Electronic Warfare now is to share data horizontally and with this to create a true shared environment. Cloud and Edge technologies offer the opportunity to enable a true, data centric networking of sensors, analysis centers and field operators. Enhanced with cognitive solutions stemming from most modern ML-Ops-tool, a future EW Cloud can provide complete situational awareness and the necessary superiority to face threats and new technological challenges from sensor level up to decision makers.
The presentation provides an overview of a Cloud-approach on EW highlighting central aspects for the special needs of its complex operational environment to compete with challenges and new threats. It outlines AI in various aspects and underpins the critical need for software defined defense.

• 1990 Joined the German Air Force, Roth
• 1990 – 1991 Officer candidates’ course, Air Force Officer School, Fuerstenfeldbruck
• 1991 – 1995 Study of Computer Science at the University of the Bundeswehr, Munich
• 1995 – 1999 IT-Officer at German Air Force Programming Centre, Erndtebrueck
• 1999 – 2002 Chief Programmer NADGE, NATO Programming Centre, Glons, Belgium
• 2002 – 2005 Staff officer, Tactical Data Link Management, IT-Office Bw, Koblenz
• 2005 – 2007 Staff officer, Network Centric Warfare, CD&E, FMoD IT Division, Bonn
• 2007 – 2008 9th General Staff Course at Spanish Command and General Staff College, Madrid, Spain
• 2008 – 2009 Staff officer, Project Officer German Space Situational Awareness Centre at German Air Force Development Centre, Koeln
• 2009 – 2014 Executive Officer, NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Programme Management Agency, Brunssum, Netherlands
• 2014 – 2016 Commander of German Air Force Systemcentre 25, Erndtebrueck
• 2016 – 2017 Executive Officer Implementation Office Cyber & Information Domain Service, FMoD, Berlin
• 2017 – 2018 Personal Assistant to Chief of Cyber & Information Domain Service HQ, Bonn
• 2018 – 2020 Branch Head IT Concepts&Plans, Cyber & Information Domain Service HQ, Bonn 2020 – 2021 Chief of Staff, German Forces Software Competence Centre, Euskirchen
• 2021 – 2022 Deputy Branch Head CIT I 3 - Cyber/IT Portfoliomanagement, Plans & Architecture, FMoD DG Cyber/IT, Berlin
• 2022 – today Branch Head CIT I 3 - Cyber/IT Portfoliomanagement, Plans & Architecture, FMoD DG Cyber/IT, Berlin

The German Bundeswehr is adapting a new paradigm for IT architectures that will include a modular Software Architecture and a DevSecOps based development process. This modern architecture is necessary to counter ever changing threats in todays conflicts. The German Bundeswehr has worked closely together with German industry to realize this approach.

Topics include:

• German approach to Software Defined Defence
• DevSevOps, an agile development framework for SDDBw
• AI/ML as essential part for speeding up the DevSecOps-Cycle

Senior Business Case Manager - Innovation, PLATH GmbH & Co. KG

Sven Lüttich started his professional career as an electronics technician for devices and systems in the Rail Automation division. After completing his technical business administration degree, he concentrated on sales tasks and specialised in international supply and pricing strategies. At the same time, he successfully completed a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in business development. He has been working as a Business Case Manager at PLATH Systems & Integration since 2019. In this position, he is responsible for innovative topics such as "Cyber Threat Intelligence" and "Joint Intelligence", while also dealing with current technology trends such as artificial intelligence and software-defined intelligence.

In a world of increasingly complex crisis scenarios, reconnaissance requires one thing above all: reliable, scalable applications that generate the right situational picture in every situation. We are working on cross-system solutions that use the central, scalable AI unit, which uses artificial intelligence to improve the performance of the connected systems, reduce the operator's workload and accelerate the OODA loop. Such a system can, for example, include our high-performance, compact COMINT system NEMO, which can be used land-based, naval, airborne or in shelters.

We can't wait to tell you more about it at AOC Europe in Oslo and will show a use case of how the AI unit can lead to improved reconnaissance results in ground-to-air cross-domain operations with a UAV.

Antoine Vignol has been working at INNOSYSTEC GmbH in Salem since 2022. After his military training at the French Army Military Academy of Saint-Cyr and his academic degree (MA) at the University of the Federal Armed Forces, he served in the French armed forces and the French intelligence agencies. Today he works as a pre-sales manager at INNO. Thanks to his extensive domain experience, he acts as a product consultant for our customers in the intelligence and military sectors. From requirements elicitation to customer support and support in project management and implementation of product training: For our customers Antoine Vignol is not only a contact, he´s a sparring partner at eye level.

How to deal with modern challenges of SatCom Monitoring, Analysis and Intelligence Management to maximize Situation Awareness

Due to the increasing use of Ka- and Ku-Band signaling, which lead to severe regional restrictions in signal availability, decentralization and the associated logistical challenges are becoming a focus of the development of modern SatCom monitoring systems.
The next step after data collection is to identify relevant information out of Mass Data in complex operational environments and crisis areas. Therefore, security organizations require best-of-breed technologies enabling them to speed up the Intelligence Cycle, and providing Actionable Intelligence to best support decision-making processes.
This presentation addresses how SatCom Monitoring solutions based on software-defined radio technology can help to deal with modern challenges of SatCom Monitoring and how to get the best possible Situation Awareness from Mass Data Analytics.

CV: Dr. Hendrik Lieske is a Product Manager at Saab Deutschland GmbH for Airborne EW solutions including emerging AI technologies. During his seven years at Saab, he gained extensive experience in the field of EW by holding various positions such as systems engineering for COMINT solutions, algorithm development for non-cooperative radio receivers, and technical project lead for a radar warner receiver simulator. He studied electrical engineering at Dresden University of Technology (TUD) and holds a PhD degree from Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in the field of wireless communication engineering.

AI in SIGINT Domain - From signal identification to operator support & system tasking

State-of-the art acquisition systems for strategic radio reconnaissance have a high level of automation, which essentially reduces the interaction effort for human operators to mission planning and data analysis. This development has been made possible by rapid advances in IT technology in recent decades, for example through multi-core processors, faster analog-to-digital converters, increasing data throughput and price decline in storage capacity.
Recent advances in the field of machine learning open the door to the next evolutionary step. Using an exemplary processing chain for a communication intelligence (COMINT) system, the talk outlines both potential and challenges that the introduction of AI-based methods entail.

Dr. Markus Hosbach is a project manager for evaluation of military AI systems at IABG mbH in Ottobrunn, close to Munich, Germany.

Dr. Hosbach earned his PhD in 2020 from the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich and his M.Sc. in 2014 from the Technical University of Munich. He developed image processing algorithms to study cavitation damage in microchannels.

In the recent years at IABG mbH, he has led several projects in the field of AI development and AI evaluation in military context and is responsible for the development of a software framework for AI evaluation.

Software framework for the evaluation of AI applications in military systems

The technical development of artificial intelligence (AI) has made great progress in recent years. The use of AI in military systems enables an increase of their performance in many ways. This presentation illustrates our goal to generate trust in artificial intelligence through an independent evaluation and to support during the conformity assessment.
To carry out consulting we use and further develop our software framework for AI evaluation: safeAI-kit. With this framework, we want to provide customers an evaluation of any AI system. Therefore, we also consider upcoming AI regulations and standards which are essential for a future compliance and conformity assessment process. Due to our active contribution in AI standardization bodies on national (DIN/DKE), European (CEN/CENELEC) and international levels we know about the latest developments in this regard.
Electronic Support Measures (ESM) are used to receive and analyze transmissions from reconnaissance or e.g. missile guidance radars. Electromagnetic Warfare systems of the latest generation may use AI to detect and classify emitter profiles and their operating status. Our evaluation framework offers possibilities to evaluate unsupervised, supervised AI systems for classification and regression tasks. We therefore include an expansion of our evaluation capability for Electromagnetic Warfare in our plan for future developments.
The current presentation illustrates an AI system that solves computer vision (CV) tasks. To perform the evaluation of, for example, such an object detection model, the safeAI-kit only requires image data with bounding box annotations and blackbox access to a trained model. The blackbox access is sufficient for most of the safeAI-kit methods because the evaluation focuses primarily on the inference results. Therefore, direct access to the model or retraining the model is not necessary. Nevertheless, certain methods can benefit from whitebox access to provide additional evaluation details. The safeAI-kit introduces a comprehensive five-dimensional analysis. These dimensions encompass dataset analysis, performance and robustness evaluation, uncertainty quantification, and explainability examination, all aiming at providing a thorough understanding of the model’s behavior and capabilities.