Last month SpaceX has foiled Russia’s attempt to block Starlink’s satellite broadband Internet in Ukraine. The Pentagon has now assessed the importance of this event. According to one of his experts, deterring Russia from trying to wage electromagnetic war has shown how important it is to respond quickly to such attacks and repel them immediately.

“The next day (after reports of Russian attempts to harm were reported by the media), Starlink changed the line of code and corrected it. And suddenly (the Russian jamming attack) became no longer effective. From the point of view of electronic warfare, it’s fantastic,” said Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

However, the United States need to respond more quickly to electronic threats and learn a great deal from how the private sector has handled the situation. The Pentagon believes that electromagnetic warfare will be much more common in modern wars, especially to form a battlefield at the beginning of a conflict.

On the other hand, the government needs much more time to make such adjustments. They get stuck on the stage of the analysis of what happened, decide how to fix it, and sign a contract to fix it.

Trepmer says the state needs to do this much faster and change without losing capacity. Duplication is also important for the United States to continue working on another system if an electronic attack fails. The state must think more innovatively when developing new equipment and must already create new systems that will provide greater speed and sustainability.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence will be introduced into future generation systems to respond faster. Wider use of digital engineering will also help the military simulate new hardware on a computer and work out flaws before starting a lengthy buying and testing process.

According to the military, the Russian invasion has taught the United States much. And while the Pentagon expected much stronger electronic warfare from Russia, it warns that this does not mean that all of Russia’s efforts have failed.