State-of-the-Art Review: Electronic Warfare against Radar Systems

The electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) is emerging as a sixth battlespace domain in military applications and is essential for wireless communications and remote sensing. Due to the demand for EMS, it is increasingly contested, congested, constrained, and shared. Evolving threats, doctrine, and tactics drive significant advancements in the battlespace. Electronic Warfare (EW) or Electromagnetic Warfare products need to keep pace by leveraging advances in technology driven by Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence (AI), direct radio frequency (RF) sampling, RF System on Chip (RFSoC), and ultrawideband antenna arrays. These trends drive a need for technology-intensive innovation in EW products underpinned by a coherent business-product-technology strategy. This article reviews advancements in Electronic Warfare against radar systems using a novel approach that integrates quantitative bibliometric and patentometric analyses with a qualitative assessment of EW architectures, Electronic Attack (EA) algorithms, and Electronic Support (ES) algorithms. This article marks the first instance of such a methodology being applied to systematically assess the landscape of research publications and technological innovations in the field of EW against radar systems. A taxonomy of EW System Types by military domain against radar and their role in the modern battlefield is presented together with their typical role and real-world examples. The quantitative and qualitative insights are synthesized to outline a notional next-generation EW architecture and a technology roadmap for its realization that researchers can use to guide the development of innovative EW technologies and methodologies and by EW practitioners to inform system design, operational deployment, and capability enhancements.