CRENIC jammer advances UK EW testing

The British Army’s Project CRENIC electronic-warfare jammer is moving toward prototype testing in 2027, putting the UK’s next troop-protection system into a more demanding phase of integration, field assurance, and production readiness.

The programme forms part of the UK’s future force-protection electronic countermeasure capability. It is designed to protect troops, vehicles, and operating locations by detecting and disrupting hostile radio-frequency links, including those used to trigger improvised explosive devices or control small unmanned systems. Team Protect, led by PA Consulting and including Leonardo UK, Leidos Innovations UK, and Marshall Land Systems, was selected for the multi-year programme in 2022 under a contract worth around £45m.

Prototype testing will bring the system closer to the conditions that decide whether an electronic-warfare product can move from development into service. CRENIC has to work within power limits, antenna constraints, vehicle architectures, electromagnetic compatibility rules, software-update cycles, and the tactical problem of disrupting hostile links without degrading friendly communications.

Counter-IED jamming has been part of British operational experience for decades, but the threat environment has changed. Commercial drones, improvised loitering munitions, cheap transmitters, software-defined radios, remote triggers, and rapidly altered control links have pushed force protection toward more agile RF systems. Equipment that cannot be updated quickly risks falling behind adversaries able to change frequencies, waveforms, and control methods at comparatively low cost.

That places CRENIC at the meeting point of land systems, electronic warfare, and cyber-physical protection. The manufacturing challenge covers far more than ruggedising an electronics box. Antennas, amplifiers, filters, receivers, processors, power management, thermal design, software-defined radio elements, and operator interfaces all have to be built into systems that soldiers can carry, mount, maintain, and trust.

The same industrial pattern is visible across counter-UAS work. A system-level approach to drone defeat appeared in Lockheed demonstrates containerised C-UAS kill chain, while Britain’s broader air-defence manufacturing pressure was explored in From Skyhammer to DragonFire: Britain’s race to remake air-defence manufacturing. CRENIC operates lower in the engagement chain, but it belongs to the same shift toward layered, scalable protection against cheap and adaptive threats.

The supplier mix reflects the complexity of the task. Leonardo brings electronic-warfare and sensor experience, Marshall Land Systems adds vehicle and deployable-systems integration, Leidos contributes systems and digital capability, and PA Consulting leads the team structure. Modern EW programmes rarely sit neatly with a single hardware supplier. They need systems architecture, platform integration, software control, test facilities, operator input, and a route for spiral upgrades.

Field testing will also have to confront the side effects of jamming. Poorly managed RF disruption can interfere with friendly communications, navigation, sensors, and command systems. Effective protection therefore depends on threat libraries, spectrum awareness, smart control, and rapid reprogramming. Operators cannot be expected to manage a complex electromagnetic environment manually while under fire.

For UK industry, CRENIC helps preserve specialist RF and electronic-warfare skills that are difficult to rebuild once lost. Defence electronics manufacturing depends on engineers who understand analogue behaviour, high-power RF, signal processing, ruggedisation, testing, and operational constraints. Those skills are becoming more valuable as drones, autonomous systems, and low-cost electronic threats proliferate.

Scalability will determine how far CRENIC can go. Point solutions can protect limited assets, but land forces need equipment that can be fielded across formations and updated as threats evolve. That demands affordable production, maintainable hardware, software-control discipline, spares availability, training materials, and repair channels that function beyond initial deployment.

Electronic protection is becoming a baseline requirement for land operations, logistics, bases, and deployed infrastructure. CRENIC’s route through prototype testing will show whether the UK can turn a force-protection requirement into a repeatable, upgradeable EW product rather than a limited specialist capability.