As new technologies emerge and new cyber and electronic warfare threats plague Soldiers within the field, U.S. Army scientists and engineers continue to define next-generation protocols and system architectures to assist develop technology capabilities to combat these threats in an integrated and expedited fashion.
As portion of the Integrated Cyber and Electronic Warfare, or ICE, program, the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s communications-electronics center, often known as CERDEC, researches the technologies, standards and architectures to support using common mechanisms used for the rapid development and integration of third-party cyber and electronic warfare, or EW, capabilities.
“Currently, within cyber and EW disciplines there are different supporting force structures and users equipped with disparate tools, capabilities and frameworks,” said Paul Robb Jr., chief of CERDEC Intelligence and knowledge Warfare Directorate’s Cyber Technology Branch.
“Under the ICE program we glance to define common data contexts and software control mechanisms to permit these existing frameworks to speak in a fashion that could support the concurrent leveraging of obtainable tactical capabilities in response to which asset at the battlefield provides the right projected military outcome at a selected cut-off date,” said Robb.
The boundaries between traditional cyber threats equivalent to someone hacking a laptop in the course of the Internet, and standard EW threats which include radio-controlled improvised explosive devices that use the electromagnetic spectrum have blurred allowing EW systems to access the info stream to combat EW threats, in line with Giorgio Bertoli, senior engineer of CERDEC I2WD’s Cyber/Offensive Operations Division.
Additionally, significant technological advancements including a trend towards wireless in commercial applications and army systems have occurred over the past decade, said Bertoli.
“This blending of networks and systems, often called convergence, will continue and with it come significant implications as to how the military must fight within the cyber environment of today and tomorrow,” said Bertoli.
“The concept of technology convergence originated as a way to explain the amalgamation of traditional wired versus wireless commercial services and applications but has recently evolved to also include global technology trends and U.S. Army operational connotations — specifically within the context of converging cyber and EW operations,” said Bertoli.
The Army finds itself in a distinct position to aid mitigate adverse outcomes because of this convergence trend.
“Post force deployment, the military has the majority of sensors and EW assets at the tactical battlefield in comparison with some other service or organization posing both risks and opportunities. Our military’s reliance on COTS [commercial-of-the-shelf] systems and wireless communications presents a venue for our adversaries to attack. Conversely, the proximity and high density of receivers and transmitters that we deploy may be leveraged to enable both EW and cyber operations,” said Bertoli.
“The ability to leverage both cyber and EW capabilities as an integrated system, acting as a force multiplier increasing the commander’s situational awareness of the cyber electromagnetic environment, will improve the commander’s ability to gain desired operational effects,” said Robb.
A paradigm shift in how the military views system and technology development will further enhance CERDEC’s ability to rapidly adapt to new cyber and EW threats.
“The biggest hindrance we’ve at once seriously isn’t a technological one, it’s an operational and policy one,” said Bertoli. “The Army traditionally loves to build systems for a selected purpose – build a radio to be a radio, build an EW system to be an EW system, but these hardware systems today have significantly more inherent capabilities.”
To demonstrate the concepts of multi-capability systems, CERDEC chose to not solely focus its science and technology efforts on researching solutions to deal with specific cyber and EW threats but additionally to develop the architecture onto which scientists and engineers can rapidly develop and integrate new, more capable solutions.
“As an example, the sector Wide Web has grown into an architecture that’s so powerful your tech savvy 10-year-old can build an internet site – and a horny powerful one at that,” said Bertoli. “The only reason it really is possible is because there’s a wealth of common tools, like web browsers and servers, and standards akin to HTML or HTTP already in place for them to make use of.”
“The ICE program is making an attempt to increase this model to the cyber and EW community by providing mechanisms to enable the leveraging of obtainable tactical assets to support cyberspace operation mission sets. Early focus revolves round the development of augmented situation-awareness capabilities but will evolve to incorporate the enabling of a large number of cyberspace operations,” said Bertoli.
ICE will provide the military with common tools and standards for developing and integrating cyber and EW capabilities.
“Capabilities may be developed to combat EM [electromagnetic] and cyber threats individually, but here’s neither time nor low in cost and easily won’t scale inside the long time. The domain is simply too large and may only continue to expand,” said Bertoli.
“In the tip, we [CERDEC] believe here is the only real way the military may be ready to keep pace with the expected technology advancements and rate of change associated with cyberspace and the systems that comprise it,” said Bertoli.
The Army acquisition community has also seen changes within the relationship between cyber and EW.
“Tactical EW systems and sensors provide for significant points of presence at the battlefield and may be used for cyber situational awareness and as delivery platforms for precision cyber effects to produce a method of Electronic Counter Measures and Electronic Counter-Counter Measures for example,” said Col. Joseph Dupont, program manager for EW under Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors.
“There is not any doubt in my mind that we must provide for a more integrated option to cyber warfare, electronic warfare and electromagnetic operations to achieve success one day conduct of unified land operations,” said Dupont.
CERDEC, because the Army’s research and development experts in cyber and EW, works closely with this system Executive Offices, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command and military Cyber Command to shape operational concepts and doctrine by providing technical expertise regarding technically achievable solutions within the context of the tactical cyberspace operations and supporting materiel capabilities for the military.
In addition to working with the Army’s strategy and policy makers, CERDEC I2WD has tapped into its facilities and pre-existing expertise to further the ICE program.
CERDEC I2WD maintains state-of-the-art laboratories that support both closed and outside testing facilities to present relevant environment conditions to conduct research that gives a continuing cyber-electromagnetic environment with both wired and wireless modern communication infrastructure.
“We leverage these facilities and our inherent core competencies in cyber, EW and signals intelligence to interact with the military and the community at large, both academia and industry partners, to collaborate on developing and integrating relevant technologies to realize domain superiority in a changing environment,” said Robb.
The fully-instrumented labs include commercial information assurance products and make allowance for in-depth experimentation while sustaining automated rapid network re-configuration technology and virtualization technologies to support scalable testing. Additionally, I2WD expands its potential environment by maintaining remote connections with external government sites, which also enables collaborative experiments.
The combination of those assets and expertise allows CERDEC to illustrate achievable capability improvements regarding cyber and EW convergence.
“During a better three years, the most important thing we are able to do in the ICE effort is show the art-of-the-possible by providing technology demonstrations on both existing and experimental Army systems to supply concrete proof of the benefits this type of capability delivers,” said Bertoli.
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