Electronic warfare school

Story

February 04, 2016

Fundamental principles of electronic warfare course offered in Canada

Wouldn’t it have been fun in college if you could have dropped your basic philosophy or English course for a beginning track on electronic warfare (EW), studying basic concepts such as electronic attack, jamming equations, laser radars, and anti-radiation missiles? Now you can get those basics in a four-day course offered by the Maple Leaf Chapter of the Association of Old Crows (AOC), Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and the AOC headquarters in Washington – and you don’t even have to be an engineer.

The first course, “Fundamental Principles of Electronic Warfare Course,” took place recently, January 18-21. According to a PDF on the curriculum, it provided “insight into the whole electronic warfare field at the systems and operational level.” Materials provided to the students said that the course was able to “avoid deep mathematical coverage, explaining all concepts in practical physical terms.”

Very little math = good news for journalists and politicians who want to give EW a try.

The course focused on the fundamental principles of electronic warfare and was not an advanced-level EW course, but rather an introductory one, says Tuhin Das, president of the Maple Leaf AOC, business operations manager for D-TA Systems in Ottawa, and spokesperson for the course.

“Attendees ranged from current Canadian military personnel as well as industry engineers and technicians – both with current EW expertise and those new to the field,” he says. “It is also attractive to nonengineers, such as business development managers like myself, who want to understand more about the technology and market from which they earn their living.”

The instructor for the first course was Dave Adamy, who has more than 40 years of experience as a systems engineer and program technical director. He holds a MSEE in Communications Theory and has published ten books.

The AOC – Maple Leaf Chapter, in partnership with Carleton University’s Department of Electronics and its Faculty of Engineering and Design, developed the pilot program under which the course is offered. The goal of this program is to reach out to Canadian EW talent and offer them a suite of Canadian-based EW courses at a much lower cost with the added university certification. Carleton University offered a “Certificate of Attendance” to those who attended the January course, which was signed by the Dean of Carleton’s Faculty of Engineering and Design.

The course is an evolution of the work begun by Das at his company, D-TA, along with its chairman and founder, Dipak Roy, aimed at inspiring young Canadian engineers to pursue careers in EW through the Maple Leaf AOC chapter and Carleton.

Roy started the Dipak and Tara Roy Advanced Sensor Processing Laboratory several years ago at Carleton, intended to help build Canadian EW defense capabilities, Das says. “Now we are taking that one step further in the relationship with the Maple Leaf AOC chapter to provide members with courses run by instructors such as Adamy and providing them with access to the sensor-processing lab. We are encouraging Canadian companies and military personnel to come into the lab and bring their equipment to experiment and test and help train operators.” For more on the formation of the Maple Leaf AOC chapter, visit http://mil-embedded.com/guest-blogs/inspiring-electronic-warfare-careers-in-canada/.

The first course was completely full. “It was cold outside and still it sold out,” Das says. “This bodes well for future courses, as it shows the demand for education on this topic is strong. We are fairly confident there will be at least one more course in 2016, possibly as early as April.”

Roy, Das, and their fellow AOC members are exploring other topics for future courses. Additional subjects under consideration for coverage include advanced EW, essentials of 21st-century EW, and EW components, as well as potential courses focused on the business aspects of EW, he says. “We are looking into distance learning as well.”

“Based on the success of the first course we are discussing with Carleton the formation of a certification program that will include a combination of all these courses,” Das says. “It can really help build Canadian EW capability.”

This was the first time any course like this was held in Canada; Canada’s defense personnel saved thousands of dollars in travel costs by having the course hosted in-country, he adds.

While the course has not yet been offered to the U.S. market, there are financial advantages to hosting the course in Canada, since the U.S. dollar is currently equal to about $1.42 Canadian, Das says. If a U.S. resident were to take this course, they would save about 40 percent right off the bat, he adds.

A course like this would be attractive to U.S. industry engineers as well as military personnel, but – based on current U.S. export regulations – it likely would have to be held in the U.S. Regardless, the concept is timely as the defense industry looks to compete for talent with better-paying commercial-technology engineering jobs. Any amount of education and positive marketing will help. For information on future courses, contact [email protected].