avid Cook
Today’s battlefield is no longer defined solely by geography or terrain — it is defined by visibility in the electromagnetic spectrum. Modern warfare is now hyper-transparent, where a single stray digital signature can mean the difference between life and death. A smartphone ping, a fitness tracker upload, or a social media photo can all become targeting beacons in this new battlespace.
The U.S. military is learning this the hard way. From the real-world deserts of Ukraine to the mock battlefields of Fort Irwin and Fort Johnson, electromagnetic emissions, open-source intelligence (OSINT), and metadata are pinpointing operators with devastating precision. Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, who leads the Army’s National Training Centre (NTC), put it bluntly while holding up his phone: “This device…is going to get our soldiers killed”. He’s not exaggerating. In one NTC training incident, an Apache helicopter pilot successfully evaded air defences — until analysts tracked a phone moving at 120 miles per hour, mapping the aircraft’s exact flight route across the desert. Real war has shown similar deadly outcomes: in Ukraine, Russian forces learned that merely turning on phones can be fatal. On New Year’s Day 2023, a Ukrainian HIMARS strike devastated a Russian barracks after soldiers’ unauthorised cell phone use gave away their coordinates.
These harsh lessons have triggered a strategic wake-up call for U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the broader military. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, LTG Jonathan Braga warned that we must “change how we think about protecting and projecting our forces”. He stressed that the digital signature of a warfighter — from phone GPS pings and personal social media posts to a spouse’s online photos — can now expose entire units in the field. In Braga’s words, “there is no sanctuary at home or abroad” in the digital age.
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