Operationalising CEMA in the Tactical Battle Area: An Expert-Informed Structural Model for Tactical EW Battalions

Abstract—Modern sensor-to-shooter systems depend simultaneously on radio-frequency access, machine-readable protocols and trusted information exchange. Conventional electronic-warfare structures can detect, locate and degrade emitters, but they do not automatically provide the digital RF recovery, protocol analysis, security-control assessment and cross-domain coordination needed to convert electromagnetic access into a controlled cyber-electromagnetic activity (CEMA). This paper proposes an expert-informed, public-release-safe hybrid model for a Tactical EW Battalion supporting a formation in the Tactical Battle Area: a permanent CEMA Coordination and Analysis Cell at battalion level, Signals/EW-led CEMA Support Detachments attached to priority Infantry Battalions, and specialist reach-back to higher formations. A fictional, offline RF-to-cyber demonstrator illustrates one bounded technical dependency chain using BPSK transmission over an additive white Gaussian noise channel, CRC-32 error detection, optional HMAC-SHA-256 authentication and controlled modification of a synthetic sensor report. Across 840 automated observations, simulated BER tracked the analytical BPSK trend; packet recovery rose from 7/30 at −2 dB to 27/30 at 0 dB and 30/30 from 2 dB; CRC-only receivers accepted 30/30 recomputed modified frames, while HMAC-protected receivers rejected 30/30; and forward-link delivery exhibited the same RF constraint. These results confirm established technical dependencies and inform capability allocation; they do not validate an operational exploit, command relationship or authorised organisation. The contribution is a structural and employment model whose requirements are made explicit through a reproducible demonstrator