Air National Guard airmen from the 26th Range Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho deployed to Andersen AFB, Guam to lend their expertise to the Multiple Threat Emitter System, or MUTES, used to simulate air defense threats to train B-52 electronic warfare officers. The bombers and their crews from Minot AFB, N.D., are at Andersen as part of the now-continuous Pacific region strategic presence. ANG MSgt. Ronnie Pruit, MUTES work center supervisor, explains that the system’s “transmitters simulate different signals using almost the entire radio frequency spectrum, and we can shape those pulses to look like any threat the EWOs want us to simulate.”
A top Pentagon tech official called on industry this week to help the military develop “lighter, more efficient” directed energy weapons designed to go on aircraft and conduct special operations missions or down drones—areas where the Air Force’s directed energy efforts have been quiet as of late.