IN Brief:
- Keysight and SRC UK are collaborating on EW test and simulation modernisation.
- The work centres on Keysight’s EWASP platform and SRC UK engineering support.
- The initiative supports open, scalable, software-defined electronic warfare test architectures.
Keysight Technologies and SRC UK are collaborating to support electronic warfare test and simulation environments as defence customers move towards more open, scalable, and software-defined architectures.
The collaboration centres on Keysight’s Electronic Warfare Advanced Simulation Platform, known as EWASP. The platform supports scenario generation and test execution for electronic warfare systems operating in dense radio-frequency environments, allowing performance to be validated against realistic threat conditions in laboratory and integration settings.
SRC UK will provide in-country engineering, systems integration, mission data expertise, training, knowledge transfer, and support. The work also includes preservation and integration of existing threat libraries and test assets, allowing established data and procedures to be carried into updated simulation environments.
That continuity is a major engineering consideration in defence electronics. Electronic warfare test facilities often contain legacy assets, mission data repositories, bespoke threat libraries, and validated procedures built through years of operational and laboratory activity. Moving those assets into more flexible software-defined environments has to preserve confidence, traceability, and repeatability.
Modern EW systems combine radar, communications, jamming, electronic support, signal intelligence, and electronic attack functions inside increasingly congested electromagnetic environments. Validation therefore has to cover more than isolated subsystem performance. Systems must be tested for their ability to detect, classify, respond, and adapt under dense signal conditions, with timing, waveform behaviour, and threat interaction all represented accurately.
Test environments are also becoming more software-assisted. Emerson’s expansion of Nigel AI across test software reflects the wider demand for tools that reduce manual workload and help engineers manage more complex validation tasks. In defence EW, the same pressure is intensified by fast-changing threat libraries and mission data.
Hardware platforms may remain in service for decades, while emitters, waveforms, countermeasures, and operational assumptions evolve far more quickly. Test infrastructure has to support rapid scenario updates without sacrificing repeatability. Open and modular architectures give defence organisations a way to preserve existing assets while adding new RF simulation, analysis, automation, and scenario-generation capabilities.
Software-defined EW systems also change the relationship between development and validation. When system behaviour can be updated through software, testing has to remain active throughout the lifecycle, not only during initial acceptance. Mission data updates, library changes, and new operating modes all need controlled simulation environments that can reproduce complex electromagnetic conditions.
The Keysight and SRC UK collaboration gives UK customers a local engineering route into EWASP-based test capability, combining simulation tools with integration and mission-data expertise. As electronic warfare becomes more adaptive and software-led, test infrastructure is becoming part of the operational capability rather than a separate engineering function at the end of development.
