The U.S. military has fallen behind China and Russia in electromagnetic spectrum warfare, and one of the key ways to start pulling even again is to create a position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense with the clout to manage the joint electronic warfare enterprise, experts said on a Hudson Institute webinar.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), co-chair of the House electromagnetic spectrum operations caucus, said Congress has “tried to fix” the problem of oversight but has gotten pushback from the Pentagon.

“One of the problems [was] … no one was in charge of EW. Everybody felt like they owned a piece of it,” said Bacon, who previously had an Air Force career specializing in electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

“Somebody in the Pentagon needs to know they own it,” he said. The services have told him that oversight rests with their Chief or Vice Chief, but he insisted that won’t work because those officers have too much on their plate already to devote the attention to EMSO that it deserves.