Operational requirements to establish freedom of action in contested and congested environments, as well as being able to counter modern agile radar and communications will drive opportunities for the Electronic Warfare (EW) market. The Strategy Analytics Advanced Defense Systems (ADS) service report forecasts the global EW market will grow to $20.0 billion by 2027.

• There is a renewed push to upgrade conventional EW capabilities that support anti-access/anti-denial (AA/AD) strategies. This will be coupled with the ongoing requirement to combat asymmetric threat scenarios.
• Future systems will increasingly employ wideband solid-state semiconductors to enable Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based machine learning algorithms to provide cognitive analysis of the threat environment.

Electronic Warfare will play an increasingly important role in tackling the increasing complexity that comes with operating in a spectrally constrained environment. Companies providing systems and enabling technologies will need to focus on solutions that employ wideband materials such as gallium nitride and AESA architectures to enable machine learning-based cognitive analysis, planning and countermeasures activity that can circumvent the traditional use of threat libraries.

Electronic Warfare Market and Technology Outlook 2017-2027 presents the outlook for global electronic warfare in terms of overall expenditure and expected shipments. Spending on EW systems is segmented on a functional as well as regional basis, and covers the land, air, sea and space domains. System shipments are derived through a robust analysis of the market based on platform and EW mission. Further segmentation of the market in terms of frequency and power is also presented for RF-based EA and EWS systems.

The resultant demand for semiconductor components based on an assessment of market and technology trends across the full spectrum of RF-based EA and EWS systems. The underlying numerical data is available in the Global Electronic Warfare Market Forecast: 2017 - 2027 forecast data model that looks at the total EW sector comprising electronic attack (EA) and electronic warfare support (EWS) systems, as well as electronic protection (EP) support services.

Strategy Analytics forecasts the associated market for semiconductors and other components for RF-based EW systems will grow at a CAGR of 8.4% through 2027. Future EW program will increasingly see use of GaN as this semiconductor technology becomes a staple ingredient in the makeup of EW systems. This will be coupled with requirements for direct and faster digital synthesis of RF signals across the full breadth of the frequency spectrum.

Companies that are able to “scale, integrate, incorporate and disrupt” will be the ones that are able to differentiate themselves in addressing the challenges and opportunities in supporting the defense sector as well as successfully exploit adjacent market growth that will be underpinned by these trends.