Army officials are looking to a new five-year, $25 million grant with research institutions to develop a cyber network concept needed to thwart threats aimed at its growing number of internet-connected battlefield devices.
The Army Research Lab’s Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) Reign initiative tasks a new research group with developing capability concepts to address the new security challenges with smart technology used in warfighter’s weapons and armor.
Recipients of the grant, which was first awarded in October, include SRI International, and researchers with the University of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, Berkeley and University of Southern California.
“Battlefields are by nature fast-paced adversarial environments and security challenges arising from these cyber-physical environments will be addressed in every research task,” Tancrede Lepoint, a computer scientist with SRI International, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Army’s IoBT devices offer improved perception capabilities, situational awareness and risk assessment tools, and greater connectivity, and officials have previously pledged to make every piece of equipment connected to all others through a battlefield network (Defense Daily, Mar. 6 2017).
Despite the growing number of IoBT devices, Army officials have yet to deploy a cyber network of “things” to oversee the security of smart equipment and ensure that new vulnerabilities don’t come up as missions adapt.
IoBT Reign researchers are called on to develop concepts for a network that is able to analyze vulnerabilities in real-time, be self-aware, have continuous monitoring, and integrate cognitive abilities to combine data from devices and warfighters.
Army Research Lab officials also want the research group to consider the role of autonomous agents collaborating with soldiers on the battlefield to boost the mission-effectiveness of IoBT devices.
SRI officials are taking the lead with researching capabilities to identify out-of-ordinary circumstances in an automated manner with data-driven inductive learning tools, according to the company’s statement.
The initial IoBT Reign grant covers the five-year period, with a follow-up option for an additional five years.