Cyber Superiority for Air Force Combatant Commanders: Integrated Air/Space/C2/Cyber Dynamic Spectrum Exploitation for Enhanced Situational Awareness

This effort is to investigate advanced cyberspace capabilities that can integrate global and theater resources in support of the combatant commander in order to provide operators with robust situational awareness, control of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, and maneuverability in cyberspace. Applications of interest include, but are not limited to warfighting in the cyberspace domain and applied cognitive task analysis for the understanding of cognitive task demands. In this effort, we will apply a dynamic radio frequency (RF) resource management approach for EM spectrum exploitation to further secure our info-structure capabilities, thwart cyber attacks, and maintain our freedom to operate dynamically in the cyberspace domain. This approach will involve EM spectrum monitoring and control to determine wireless access to critical info-structures by both authorized users and cyber intruders. The goal is to achieve intrusion detection, prevention, and response at the physical layer. This is indeed a new area of research, as most of the existing info-structure security work mainly focuses on higher layers (data, network). Because knowledge of security appliqués at the physical layer is lacking and not well understood, the advances in intrusion detection and access control technologies at the higher layers will be leveraged; however, even those technologies are not sufficient and fully robust, as the physical layer has its unique characteristics that demand in-depth studies. This will be a core research topic for the proposed research effort, which will investigate EM spectrum exploitation and control at the physical layer to provide an additional cyber defense shield. BENEFIT: The results of the research will have application to commercial computer networks, airline operations, and telecommunication systems.)