Electronic warfare is no longer a niche branch of defense work. It sits at the intersection of RF engineering, digital signal processing, communications, cyber, and systems integration. That intersection is precisely why we have a growing mismatch between the capabilities we are buying and the engineers we have available to employ, adapt, and sustain those capabilities in contested environments.

Evidence of the people problem is clear inside the services. The Air Force established the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing to concentrate EW expertise, and public reporting has repeatedly called out hundreds of unfilled positions as that organization expands. Those vacancies span engineering, software, intelligence, and operational jobs and create real risk: capability without cadre is just hardware on a ramp.

Academic offerings exist, but they are narrow and concentrated. The Naval Postgraduate School and a handful of specialist programs provide certificates and advanced degrees focused on EW, radar, and sensor systems. Those programs are important, but they neither scale quickly nor feed the broader commercial and civilian engineering workforce that increasingly needs EW literacy. Short courses and industry workshops fill some gaps, but they are a stopgap rather than a systemic solution.

At the same time, the broader defense and technology workforce trends show competition for RF and signal-processing talent across both the private sector and government. The underlying technical skillset that makes a good EW engineer—deep DSP, RF design, antenna and propagation knowledge, and practical experience with real radios—is in high demand in telecom, satellite, autonomous systems, and wireless startups. That competition drives up hiring costs for government and complicates retention.

Practical teaching tools exist and they work. Low-cost SDR platforms and open toolchains have matured into a credible laboratory backbone for hands-on learning. Educational research and deployment examples show SDR-based labs improve student engagement and practical skills in radio and communications courses. Those platforms are the right foundation to scale experiential EW training outside of specialist schools.

Where the gap shows up in practice

  • Platform-tied expertise. Many services still build EW expertise around specific aircraft or sensor platforms. When platforms are retired or consolidated, so is the implicit training pipeline. That leaves capability islands and thins institutional memory.

  • Contractor dependency. Facing shortages, programs lean on contractors for system development and fielding. That works short term, but it limits internal development of tactics, techniques, and procedures and undermines long-term sustainment.

  • Weak undergraduate pipelines. Few general EE or CS programs include applied EW content. Signal-processing courses often stop short of hands-on RF labs that expose students to emissions, receiver architectures, and jamming/countermeasure fundamentals.

What engineers need to learn

Curriculum must be both deep and pragmatic. Key subjects I expect every EW-capable engineer to have exposure to are:

  • Electromagnetic propagation, antennas, and RCS basics
  • Digital signal processing for communications and radar
  • Receiver architectures, front-end design, and practical measurement techniques
  • Waveform generation, coding, and spectral coexistence concepts
  • Threat assessment, emitter identification, and basic spectrum management
  • System integration, software-defined radio toolchains, and real-time reprogramming concepts
  • Legal, safety, and ethical constraints when working with emitters and jammers

Hands-on SDR labs, capture-the-flag style exercises, and red-team/blue-team scenarios are indispensable. Theory without measured signals is sterile. Practical experience with USRPs, HackRF, ADALM-Pluto, GNU Radio, and instrument-grade test equipment accelerates competency more than extra lecture hours.

Concrete steps to close the gap

1) Expand university capacity with EW tracks in EE and ECE programs. Encourage graduate certificates and scalable online lab components so working engineers can reskill. The NPS model shows how focused certificate programs can deliver relevant skills, but non-military universities need to follow with civilian-focused tracks.

2) Fund internships and rotational programs across industry, DoD labs, and academic labs. The services have had useful results by bringing interns into EW units, turning some into long-term hires. Structured rotations build cross-domain fluency and stop expertise from becoming platform-tied.

3) Invest in open educational resources and shared lab sandboxes. A community-maintained repository of benign waveform datasets, lab exercises, simulated emitters, and threat models will let universities and small companies teach consistent material without re-creating the same labs.

4) Prioritize signal-processing fundamentals in hiring and training. Recruiters should treat DSP, RF measurement, and SDR experience as primary qualifications rather than platform- or vendor-specific skills. Early-career rotational training is a force-multiplier.

5) Encourage professional societies to accredit EW study paths. IEEE, AOC, and other societies can create curricula guides, learning outcomes, and certification paths that universities and employers can rely on. Short courses are useful; accreditation helps scale quality and recognition.

Conclusion

We can build more capable electronic warfare forces and safer civilian systems if we treat EW education as a strategic investment rather than a boutique offering. The technical building blocks are known. Affordable SDR hardware, mature DSP toolchains, and a compact set of focused curricula can scale EW literacy quickly. The bigger problem is organizational: aligning universities, industry, and government incentives so engineers can be trained, hired, and retained for EW roles without being locked to a single platform or contractor. We have the tools and the instructional models. Now the demand signal needs to be matched with deliberate education policy and program funding before capability gaps calcify into operational risk.