NSMA’s State of the Spectrum session lays out a practical snapshot of where U.S. spectrum policy and band activity stood heading into 2025. The takeaways are straightforward for electronic warfare practitioners: more spectrum opportunity for commercial users, a heavier emphasis on dynamic sharing, and therefore more complexity in the RF picture that EW teams must plan for and operate within.
What the industry picture looks like NTIA’s National Spectrum Strategy has become the organizing concept for multiagency work and a public roadmap for how to unlock mid and upper bands for commercial use while preserving federal missions. The strategy explicitly promotes dynamic spectrum sharing, testbeds, and new planning frameworks that try to balance national security, commercial growth, and scientific needs. That top level shift matters for EW because it changes the rules of engagement in the RF environment.
Concrete band developments called out in NSMA’s State of the Spectrum are already reshaping the spectrum terrain. NSMA’s slide set summarizes progress and outstanding work in the lower 3 GHz window, the C-band and CBRS area, the 6 GHz unlicensed regime (including the Automated Frequency Coordination rollout), the 5.9 GHz V2X/transportation debates, and emerging activity in millimeter wave bands. Those notes are a useful operational checklist for planners who need to map where friendly, commercial, and incumbent federal emitters will coexist.
Lower 3 GHz: sharing talk, real constraints The Department of Defense’s EMBRSS feasibility assessment found that sharing 3.1 to 3.45 GHz is possible only if several stringent technical, regulatory, and resourcing preconditions are met. The study, and follow on interagency activity, makes clear that any opening of lower 3 GHz will be driven by advanced dynamic sharing mechanisms and substantial testing. In short, do not assume clearance or blanket availability for commercial services or for EW maneuvering in that band without confirmed operational safeguards and new coordination mechanisms.
6 GHz: more commercial power, more dynamic control The FCC’s approval of Automated Frequency Coordination systems to support higher power, location-aware standard power access in parts of 6 GHz is now a practical reality. That change expands ubiquitous unlicensed capacity but also inserts centralized database-driven coordination into what was once purely local unlicensed behavior. For EW crews that monitor or operate near enterprise Wi Fi and other 6 GHz users, you will see standard power devices that are coordinated in space and time, not just ad hoc emissions. That changes interference models and detection strategies.
Why this matters for EW, jamming, and drone operations 1) A busier spectrum means a more cluttered baseline. More high-power, coordinated commercial users plus persistent satellite and NTN traffic create a denser RF environment. Detecting a hostile emitter or distinguishing intentional jamming from benign congestion requires richer situational awareness than traditional narrowband monitoring.
2) Dynamic sharing breaks assumptions. Historically, many EW playbooks assumed long-term static allocations and predictable incumbents. When bands are managed dynamically through AFC, DSMS, or other centralized enablers, those assumptions fail. EW and spectrum management functions must be able to ingest sharing-system metadata and incorporate it into real time decisioning.
3) Airborne and drone operations complicate coexistence. EMBRSS specifically called out airborne radars as a hard use case for sharing. That same airborne characteristic matters for both friendly and adversary drones which frequently use commercial links in mid bands. Expect an uptick in contested use of commercial links, and a corresponding need for lawful, discriminating countermeasures and attribution capability.
Practical steps for EW teams and operators 1) Expand wideband, geolocated monitoring. Deploy sensors that record wide instantaneous bandwidth with precise geolocation and timestamping. Correlate that telemetry with AFC/DSMS databases and public coordination sources so that monitoring systems can separate coordinated commercial transmissions from anomalous signals.
2) Instrument spectrum metadata ingestion. Work with spectrum managers and vendors to accept AFC/DSMS feeds, license registries, and operator-provided geodata. Having that metadata in your analytics pipeline reduces false positives and improves quick identification of real threats.
3) Prioritize signature libraries for COTS commercial waveforms. As more enterprise and IoT equipment occupy mid bands, build and maintain signal libraries for common Wi Fi 6E and Wi Fi 7 profiles, CBRS CBSD behaviors, C-V2X/5.9 GHz waveforms, and satellite uplink/downlink signatures. These let automated systems triage the signal soup faster.
4) Invest in cognitive, proportional countermeasures. The legal and operational environment will increasingly constrain blunt wideband jamming. Develop adaptive, narrow, and context-aware mitigations that can degrade hostile links while minimizing collateral impact to coordinated commercial services and critical incumbents. Test these in controlled live ranges that emulate AFC and DSMS behavior.
5) Tighten spectrum policy and legal coordination. EW operators and program managers should embed legal review and spectrum-management coordination into exercise planning. As the NSMA notes, policy and process are central to safe coexistence. That is doubly true when tactical actions could interact with federally protected missions or dynamic sharing frameworks.
Bottom line and near term horizon NSMA’s State of the Spectrum is less a cataclysm and more a call to adapt. NTIA and DoD work on dynamic sharing, the formalization of AFC and database-managed access, and specific band studies like EMBRSS point to a future where the RF environment is fluid, data rich, and governed by both automated systems and policy guardrails. For EW, that pushes priorities toward better sensing, metadata fusion, legal coordination, and smarter, less collateral-intensive countermeasures. If you focus on those areas now you will be operationally resilient as the spectrum landscape continues to evolve.