Toolkit for Assessing Electromagnetic Disruption Recovery (TAEMDR) - Surrogate Targets

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) requires surrogate targets for testing HPEM weapons to gauge weapon effectiveness, assess target recovery time following HPEM attack, and test other tools and techniques for use in HPEM engagements such as battle damage assessment (BDA) techniques. Surrogate targets are necessary because actual targets are expensive and in limited supply. For offensive programs, surrogate targets provide a stand-in for adversarial systems during tests, and are designed to be similar to digital systems employed by adversaries. For defensive programs, surrogate targets are used in place of friendly systems to assess the impact should they be subject to electromagnetic attack. Potential targets include, but are not limited to, industrial control systems (ICS), power generation systems, mobile command systems, integrated air defense systems (IADS), and complex air operations center (AOC) networks. To accomplish this development, VCS will modify its training boxes for offensive cyber security training on cyber-physical systems (CPS). These training boxes provide targets for training engineers in offensive cyber techniques, and are conceptually similar to the surrogate targets that will be used for HPEM testing. While the non-defense commercial training boxes are designed for training, this effort will adapt them for HPEM testing to provide a generic target for conducting both real and simulated HPEM attacks. Vigilant will also leverage virtual targets created for offensive cyber testing as part of our research in creating our Cyber Battle Damage Assessment Tool (CyBDAT) under Navy SBIR contract N68335-18-C-0048, targets created for testing our Toolkit for Assessing Electromagnetic Disruption Recovery (TAEMDR) for the USAF SBIR contract FA9451-16-C-0526, and our Electromagnetic Battle Damage Assessment Toolkit (EMBDAT) for the USAF SBIR contract FA9451-20-C-0527. These virtual targets will be improved and implemented in representative hardware.