AIRCRAFT CYBER COMBAT SURVIVABILITY

Abstract

The aircraft combat survivability (ACS) design discipline has proven effective in producing survivable combat aircraft for over fifty years. Currently, the discipline only focuses on kinetic threats; however, an emerging class of cyber weapons has brought forth a new challenge in the endless fight between attackers and defenders. Cyber is a legitimate anti-aircraft threat, and the recent rise in cyber-related incidents raises major concern for our military and its ability to carry out mission objectives. While the attack vectors and damage mechanisms of cyber weapons are fundamentally different from those of traditional kinetic threats, modifying the fundamental ACS concepts can help produce cyber-survivable combat aircraft. This research lays the groundwork for expanding the ACS design discipline fundamentals to include emerging anti-aircraft cyber threats. In this new aircraft cyber combat survivability (ACCS) design discipline, ACS terms are redefined to address cyber threats and a new cyber kill chain is proposed to help assess an aircraft’s cyber-survivability. The development of 12 survivability enhancement concepts aims to assist program managers and engineers in designing platforms that are better equipped to survive in a hostile cyber environment. An approach to modeling cyber-attacks using the ACCS probabilistic kill chain shows how to assess an aircraft’s cyber-survivability and demonstrates the effectiveness of survivability enhancement features.