Spectrum Maneuver

Integrating Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO) into 21st Century Warfare

By MG Mark D. Miles and COL John J. Hosey Jr.

July 1, 2026 | Gray Space, Summer 2026 Edition

Read Time: < 15 mins

AI-generated image prompt: photorealistic, cinematic shot of a modern US Army Soldier kneeling behind concrete rubble in a war-torn urban environment. The soldier is equipped with an electronic warfare backpack antenna and advanced tactical AR glasses glowing green. The glasses reveal the invisible electromagnetic spectrum, showing a bright red holographic digital web over a nearby building with a floating text callout reading ‘ADVERSARY EM SIGNATURE: C2 NODE (ESTIMATED)’. A military drone flies overhead in the hazy sky. 21st-century spectrum maneuver warfare. (Photo generated using Copilot)

Maneuver warfare has long defined military success, but technology and new adversaries demand its expansion into the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS): the invisible terrain that now shapes outcomes across all domains.

The U.S. Army enjoyed unchallenged superiority in EMS warfare during its two-decade focus on counterinsurgency (Clark et al., 2019). During that time, adversaries focused on countering the U.S. in large-scale combat operations have gained electromagnetic spectrum advantage, exposing a gap in Army doctrine: the spectrum remains treated as an enabler rather than maneuver space.

Spectrum maneuver closes that gap. By applying the fundamentals of maneuver warfare—seeking positional advantage, exploiting weakness, and avoiding adversary strength (Department of the Army [DA], 2019)—on electromagnetic terrain, the Army can restore initiative in multi-domain operations. This evolution is not optional; it is essential for success in 21st-century warfare.

The Nature of Maneuver

In Demystifying Maneuver, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Hamilton (2024) identifies three fundamentals that distinguish maneuver warfare and provide its AI-generated image prompt: photorealistic, cinematic shot of a modern US Army Soldier kneeling behind concrete rubble in a theoretical foundation across all domains, including the electromagnetic spectrum.

1. First, maneuver seeks positional advantage, gaining favorable positions to overcome an adversary’s strength through creativity and initiative. Whether crossing terrain or operating through frequency bands, maneuver forces achieve advantage where the enemy is least prepared.

2. Second, it exploits enemy weakness. Effective maneuver concentrates strength against existing vulnerabilities rather than creating them through attrition. In the electromagnetic environment, these weaknesses appear as undefended frequencies, fragile communication protocols, or gaps in protection.

3. Third, maneuver avoids enemy strength. The indirect approach circumvents areas where the enemy holds advantage, rendering those strengths irrelevant while pursuing objectives through alternate paths (Hamilton, 2024).

Current Army doctrine ADP 3-0 (DA, 2025) defines maneuver as “the employment of forces through movement in combination with fires to achieve a position of relative advantage.” While accurate, this remains heavily focused on the five warfighting domains—land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace—while largely ignoring the electromagnetic spectrum as a component of the physical dimension where maneuver concepts also apply. Success in modern warfare demands a holistic approach to maneuver across all domains, including the physical dimension.

Expanding the Maneuver Concept

Modern warfare requires coordination across all warfighting domains. Current doctrine FM 3-0 (DA, 2022), describes how forces must converge effects from multiple domains to penetrate and disintegrate enemy defenses, creating temporary windows of advantage for decisive operations. Multi-domain warfare expands traditional maneuver through temporal convergence, cross-domain effects, distributed operations, and integrated capabilities across domains.

The electromagnetic spectrum occupies a unique position in this multi-domain construct. Unlike the five warfighting domains, the electromagnetic spectrum is not itself a domain but rather maneuver space that permeates and affects all domains simultaneously. Electromagnetic energy propagates through physical space, enables communication across maritime and air operations, links space-based assets to terrestrial forces, and provides the physical layer for cyberspace operations. This creates particularly strong synergies between spectrum maneuver and cyber operations.

Yet, current doctrine still treats the electromagnetic spectrum as an enabling environment rather than a maneuver space. While it acknowledges electromagnetic warfare’s (EW) importance, it stops short of explaining how commanders can gain positional advantage through deliberate movement within the spectrum itself. Spectrum maneuver closes this doctrinal gap. While these concepts of multi-domain warfare expand our understanding of maneuver, recent conflicts demonstrate that spectrum maneuver is not merely theoretical but already a decisive factor on modern battlefields. The 2024 Kursk offensive provides a compelling illustration of how spectrum maneuver can enable breakthrough success against prepared defenses.

Kursk 2024: Spectrum Maneuver Enables Operational Breakthrough

Ukraine’s August 2024 Kursk offensive gained more territory in days than Russian forces had secured in months by executing synchronized spectrum maneuver that integrated EW, drone, and ground operations (Hambling, 2024).

The campaign began by achieving electromagnetic superiority, systematically blinding Russian reconnaissance drones and degrading command-and-control networks. Under this temporary blackout, forward-deployed EW teams used preprogrammed data from earlier reconnaissance to target specific Russian frequencies with precision jamming. This disrupted both drone control links and border communications, paralyzing situational awareness across Russian sectors (Hambling, 2024).

With Russian drones grounded and loitering munitions degraded, Ukrainian armored units advanced across terrain that would normally be untenable, exploiting the electromagnetic window created by EW teams (Russell et al., 2025). Simultaneously, Ukraine launched protected drone swarms that destroyed hardened positions and enabled ground maneuver; this was the electromagnetic equivalent of suppressive fires clearing the way for assault forces. This single spectrum maneuver action, jamming Russian drone-control frequencies, simultaneously achieved air superiority (grounding enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAVs]), intelligence denial (blinding reconnaissance), and force protection (degrading loitering munitions), demonstrating how maneuver within the electromagnetic spectrum can generate effects across multiple domains from a single action.

Ukrainian forces demonstrated exceptional disciplined initiative and emissions control throughout the operation, maintaining strict electromagnetic signature management while selectively targeting Russian systems—a critical balance that prevented counter-detection while maximizing offensive electromagnetic effects.

This operation illustrated several defining features of spectrum maneuver. First, electromagnetic actions created temporally bounded windows of opportunity before Russian forces could reprogram or deploy autonomous systems (Hambling, 2024). Second, Ukrainian forces demonstrated cross-domain effects, where control of electromagnetic terrain directly enabled freedom of movement in the physical domain. Finally, the operation validated how small, well-trained EW teams can generate mass effects across wide operational areas by precisely targeting enemy vulnerabilities rather than relying on numerical strength.

Just as air superiority was essential to 20th-century mobile warfare, electromagnetic superiority is now essential to maneuver in the drone age. Ukrainian success at Kursk underscored that future operations would hinge on commanders’ ability to understand and exploit electromagnetic terrain as deliberately as physical terrain; this was a clear demonstration that spectrum maneuver has evolved from a theoretical concept to an operational necessity.

The Kursk operation demonstrates the potential of spectrum maneuver in contemporary conflict; however, fully integrating this concept into Army operations requires a comprehensive doctrinal framework. The following sections detail how spectrum maneuver can be systematically developed and employed as an extension of maneuver warfare into the electromagnetic environment.

Spectrum Maneuver: Extending Maneuver into the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Cyber and EW officers must view themselves, not as enablers, but as spectrum maneuverists: warfighters who achieve positional advantage on electromagnetic terrain, shaped in concert with spectrum managers. Commanders, likewise, must integrate spectrum maneuver deliberately into planning and execution, as they do fires and movement.

Rather than coordinating EW effects with physical maneuver, spectrum maneuver applies the same fundamentals of maneuver warfare within the electromagnetic environment. It is not an additive capability, but an extension of maneuver warfare itself into the operational environment that increasingly determines success across all domains.

Spectrum maneuver involves employing electromagnetic forces through movement within said spectrum—combined with spectrum engineering, fires, and effects—to gain relative advantage. Unlike traditional maneuver, movement here occurs across frequency bands and network architectures; yet it still reshapes the battlespace to create opportunity. Forces can mask electromagnetic signatures with terrain, exploit atmospheric conditions, and establish electromagnetic obstacles or corridors. These effects are temporal and bounded, functioning less like occupation and more like precision fires that open windows of advantage.

The electromagnetic spectrum’s inherent speed, reach, and flexibility redefine maneuver’s scale but not its principles. Systems can reposition instantaneously and operate across multiple frequency bands, enabling agility that outpaces traditional movement. As with cyberspace operations, spectrum maneuver adapts timeless fundamentals to a new environment governed by different physics.

As an expanded form of maneuver, spectrum maneuver enhances cross-domain coordination, extends operational reach, and amplifies combat power. It secures friendly communications while denying the adversary, ensuring uninterrupted command and control while degrading enemy decision cycles. Because electromagnetic energy permeates all domains, spectrum maneuver possesses unique cascading characteristics: a single action in the electromagnetic spectrum can simultaneously enable or disrupt operations in land, maritime, air, space, and cyberspace domains. This cross-domain leverage distinguishes spectrum maneuver from maneuver within any single domain and accounts for its disproportionate operational effect.

Electromagnetic attack operations deliver, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, or destroy effects in and through the spectrum. Advanced techniques use precision and deception rather than brute-force jamming, creating windows of opportunity that disrupt command networks or sensors at the commander’s timing. Electromagnetic support enables lethal and non-lethal targeting by detecting, identifying, and locating threat EMS signatures. It also informs the effectiveness of an electronic attack technique, provides insight into threat mode changes and vulnerabilities, and supplies tactical information for rapid decision-making, situational awareness, and system reprogramming.

Modern operations require forces to adapt to enemy behavior and changing spectrum conditions at speed. Technologies such as software-defined radios and field-programmable gate arrays enable real-time reprogramming and cognitive EW, while dynamic spectrum allocation and cognitive radios provide continuous sensing and learning. Future threats will demand similar agility in directed energy and electromagnetic pulse applications.

Effective spectrum maneuver depends on an agile reprogramming enterprise—a tiered system that enables faster adaptation than the adversary. At the tactical level, operators make rapid, authorized adjustments within defined limits. At higher echelons, specialists analyze enemy adaptations and develop refinements. Strategic and technical teams design new waveforms and capabilities for emerging threats. This tiered construct allows disciplined flexibility, ensuring both speed and control across echelons.

Central to this enterprise is data dominance: the ability to sense, share, and exploit electromagnetic information at operational tempo. A unified data repository must store signatures, threat characteristics, and environmental conditions to inform real-time and predictive decision-making.

Equally essential is a standardized EW arsenal that provides commanders with precise weaponeering data, such as power levels, frequency ranges, effective ranges, and limitations. Integrated with the electromagnetic repository and fires planning systems, this arsenal allows electromagnetic effects to be planned and executed with the same rigor and predictability as kinetic fires.

Finally, spectrum maneuver extends operational reach without logistical burden or physical presence. Electromagnetic effects can influence distant engagements instantly, allowing synchronized operations that overwhelm defenses and exploit fleeting opportunities. Within expanded maneuver, spectrum maneuver enables penetration, disintegration, and exploitation. This includes neutralizing EMS networks, fracturing command systems, and sustaining electromagnetic superiority for continued operations.

The Synergy Between Spectrum Maneuver and Cyberspace Operations

Among the five warfighting domains, cyberspace operations share unique synergies with spectrum maneuver because both operate in non-physical space and can generate rapid, long-range effects. Spectrum maneuver shapes the physical layer, radio waves, propagation paths, and electromagnetic signatures, while cyberspace operations manipulate the logical layer, data, protocols, and software. When coordinated, they produce complementary effects that overwhelm adversary defenses across both planes. Spectrum maneuver can drive adversaries onto backup networks more vulnerable to cyber penetration, while cyber actions can degrade systems reliant on electromagnetic functions such as radar or communications. Their integration in reconnaissance provides a comprehensive understanding of adversary dependencies, enhancing precision and decision speed. This relationship, while operationally significant, represents one dimension of spectrum maneuver’s broader cross-domain effect across all five warfighting domains.

Operational Implementation: Integrating Spectrum Maneuver

Operationalizing spectrum maneuver requires fundamental changes across doctrine, organization, training, policy, and technology that would transform how the Army conducts operations in the electromagnetic environment. The Army has begun moving in this direction through several critical initiatives that demonstrate institutional recognition of EW’s centrality to future warfare.

The Army must accelerate and deepen these institutional changes to fully realize spectrum maneuver’s potential. Organizationally, the Army must integrate EW, cyberspace, and traditional maneuver. This integration extends beyond simply placing EW units within maneuver formations; it requires fundamentally reconceptualizing how these capabilities work together to achieve positional advantage across multiple domains simultaneously. Commanders at all levels must understand that EW is not only a maneuver force that informs planning, targeting, and decision processes, but one that also delivers, enables, and/or amplifies lethal and non-lethal effects.

Doctrinal evolution must continue treating the electromagnetic spectrum as maneuver terrain rather than merely an enabling environment. Current doctrine acknowledges EW’s importance but fails to develop comprehensive concepts for how forces achieve positional advantage through movement within the spectrum itself. Detailed tactics, techniques, and procedures that describe spectrum maneuver at tactical, operational, and strategic levels will close this doctrinal gap. Training integration represents perhaps the most critical transformation, requiring the Army to train EMSO as combined arms rather than technical specialties. This means developing training scenarios and facilities where electromagnetic, cyber, and kinetic effects converge to achieve operational objectives, with leaders learning to orchestrate these capabilities as seamlessly as they coordinate fires and maneuver.

Technology development must provide commanders and staff with agile EW capabilities that detect, locate, and deliver effects coupled with tools for electromagnetic battle management and real-time visualization at every echelon. Army capabilities managers and program managers have incorporated the requirements for a fully integrated EW system that is part of the command-and-control systems-of-systems architecture, recognizing that current systems often treat EW as separate from other battlefield functions, creating information silos that prevent effective integration. Future systems must embed electromagnetic considerations into existing command-and-control architectures, providing commanders with the same situational awareness and planning capabilities for spectrum operations that they possess for conventional fires and maneuver. Finally, legal and policy frameworks must evolve to enable rapid decision-making while ensuring compliance with laws of war and spectrum management regulations and the Army must train electromagnetic operators at every echelon to succeed in the complex EMS legal and policy environment. The speed of EW demands authorities, policies, and procedures that match operational tempo without compromising legal or regulatory requirements.

Strategic Implications and Future Considerations

The successful integration of spectrum maneuver into Army doctrine carries profound strategic implications that extend far beyond tactical battlefield advantages. Nations that master the integration of spectrum maneuver with traditional kinetic and cyber operations will gain decisive competitive advantage in future conflicts, while those that fail to adapt risk electromagnetic dominance by adversaries. This competitive dynamic creates powerful incentives for rapid doctrinal evolution and capability development across the defense enterprise.

Spectrum maneuver capabilities fundamentally alter deterrence calculations across the competition continuum by creating uncertainty for adversaries about their ability to maintain command and control, situational awareness, and coordinated operations. Unlike kinetic capabilities that require physical presence or cyber operations that demand network access, spectrum maneuver can influence adversary decision-making from significant distances and across multiple domains. This extended reach and instantaneous effect generation provides commanders with deterrent options that complement traditional diplomatic, informational, and economic instruments of power while offering escalation control mechanisms unavailable through conventional means alone.

Alliance integration represents both an opportunity and a necessity for realizing spectrum maneuver’s full potential. Effective spectrum maneuver within alliance frameworks requires standardized procedures, compatible equipment, and shared understanding of electromagnetic battle management principles that enable seamless coordination across national boundaries and command structures.

Conclusion

Spectrum maneuver represents the necessary evolution of Army doctrine for success in 21st-century warfare. By recognizing spectrum maneuver as essential to modern maneuver warfare and creating symbiosis with cyberspace operations, the Army can enhance its competitive advantage in multi-domain warfare while mitigating gaps created by decades of institutional neglect.

The choice is clear: evolve doctrine, policy, authorities, capabilities, and training to embrace spectrum maneuver or cede electromagnetic initiative to adversaries who have already recognized its decisive importance.

Notes