Proceedings Volume 8405

Defense Transformation and Net-Centric Systems 2012

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Proceedings Volume 8405

Defense Transformation and Net-Centric Systems 2012

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Volume Details

Date Published: 14 May 2012
Contents: 5 Sessions, 19 Papers, 0 Presentations
Conference: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing 2012
Volume Number: 8405

Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

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  • Front Matter: Volume 8405
  • Net-Centric Architectures and Systems
  • Communications and Networks
  • Wide Area Persistent ISR and Networked Sensors I: Joint Session with Conference 8389
  • Wide Area Persistent ISR and Networked Sensors II: Joint Session with Conference 8389
Front Matter: Volume 8405
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Front Matter: Volume 8405
This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 8405, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, and the Conference Committee listing.
Net-Centric Architectures and Systems
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Defining and using open architecture levels
M. A. Cramer, A. W. Morrison, B. Cordes, et al.
Open architecture (OA) within military systems enables delivery of increased warfighter capabilities in a shorter time at a reduced cost.i In fact in today's standards-aware environment, solutions are often proposed to the government that include OA as one of its basics design tenets. Yet the ability to measure and assess OA in an objective manner, particularly at the subsystem/component level within a system, remains an elusive proposition. Furthermore, it is increasingly apparent that the establishment of an innovation ecosystem of an open business model that leverages thirdparty development requires more than just technical modifications that promote openness. This paper proposes a framework to migrate not only towards technical openness, but also towards enabling and facilitating an open business model, driven by third party development, for military systems. This framework was developed originally for the U.S. Navy Littoral and Mine Warfare community; however, the principles and approach may be applied elsewhere within the Navy and Department of Defense.
Models and algorithms for determining inter-unit network demand
Jeffrey P. Ridder, Samuel W. Brett, Craig M. Burris, et al.
Analysts often use inter-unit demand for communication services as the basis for assessing network performance and the impact on mission effectiveness. Traditional methods base inter-unit demand on Information Exchange Requirements (IER's) most often derived from a variety of disparate sources that can result insignificant limitations. This paper describes models and algorithms that enable automated support for the challenging steps of tailoring the data from an established unit demand database in order to derive the inter-unit demand for specific scenarios. Such a capability is referred to as "demand parsing." The necessary operational constraints are modeled by applying an organizational distance metric, using weights associated with a small set of functionally driven usage patterns, to a node-link structure established at a level of resolution appropriate for the analytical context. An innovative agent based algorithm is applied to address the resulting multi-objective optimization problem by calculating solutions that satisfy both the operational constraints and those imposed by the unit demand. Using an agent based paradigm, the operational model and the algorithm were combined into a prototype tool that was applied within the parsing process to estimate the inter-unit demand for communications supporting units in a realistic air operation. The peak errors in meeting both types of constraints were found to be less than 20%. These levels are consistent with the errors in the unit database intended for first order assessments.
A flexible tool for scenario analysis of network demand
Jack E. O'Donnel, Ayanah S. George, Danielle M. Wynn, et al.
This is another in a sequence of papers reporting on the development of innovative methods and tools for estimating demand requirements for network supply capabilities. An extension of the demand estimation methodology, this paper focuses on steps required to assess the adequacy of performance of candidate networks by means of an integrated tool. The steps include mapping units in a scenario to units in the associated database to determine their aggregate demand, developing an appropriate logical network with computational constraints dictated by the scenario, and calculating inter-unit demand of the units in the logical network. Because of the complexity of the end-to-end process, assuring repeatability while facilitating rapid exploration of issues is a challenge. Earlier tools implementing this process were fragmented and prone to error, requiring significant analyst effort to accomplish even the smallest changes. To address these limitations, the process has been implemented in an easy to use, integrated tool. This allows complete exibility in manipulating data and promotes rapid, but repeatable analyses of tailored scenarios.
The Ozone Widget Framework: towards modularity of C2 human interfaces
David Benjamin Hellar, Laurian C. Vega
The Ozone Widget Framework (OWF) is a common webtop environment for distribution across the enterprise. A key mission driver for OWF is to enable rapid capability delivery by lowering time-to-market with lightweight components. OWF has been released as Government Open Source Software and has been deployed in a variety of C2 net-centric contexts ranging from real-time analytics, cyber-situational awareness, to strategic and operational planning. This paper discusses the current and future evolution of OWF including the availability of the OZONE Marketplace (OMP), useractivity driven metrics, and architecture enhancements for accessibility. Together, OWF is moving towards the rapid delivery of modular human interfaces supporting modern and future command and control contexts.
Military clouds: utilization of cloud computing systems at the battlefield
Sarıkürk Süleyman, Karaca Volkan, Kocaman İbrahim, et al.
Cloud computing is known as a novel information technology (IT) concept, which involves facilitated and rapid access to networks, servers, data saving media, applications and services via Internet with minimum hardware requirements. Use of information systems and technologies at the battlefield is not new. Information superiority is a force multiplier and is crucial to mission success. Recent advances in information systems and technologies provide new means to decision makers and users in order to gain information superiority. These developments in information technologies lead to a new term, which is known as network centric capability. Similar to network centric capable systems, cloud computing systems are operational today. In the near future extensive use of military clouds at the battlefield is predicted. Integrating cloud computing logic to network centric applications will increase the flexibility, cost-effectiveness, efficiency and accessibility of network-centric capabilities. In this paper, cloud computing and network centric capability concepts are defined. Some commercial cloud computing products and applications are mentioned. Network centric capable applications are covered. Cloud computing supported battlefield applications are analyzed. The effects of cloud computing systems on network centric capability and on the information domain in future warfare are discussed. Battlefield opportunities and novelties which might be introduced to network centric capability by cloud computing systems are researched. The role of military clouds in future warfare is proposed in this paper. It was concluded that military clouds will be indispensible components of the future battlefield. Military clouds have the potential of improving network centric capabilities, increasing situational awareness at the battlefield and facilitating the settlement of information superiority.
Overcoming the challenges of secure mobile applications for network-centric, data-sensitive applications
Gaining the competitive advantage in today's aggressive environment requires our corporate leaders and Warfighters alike to be armed with up-to-date knowledge related to friendly and opposing forces. This knowledge has to be delivered in real-time between the core enterprise and tactical/mobile units at the edge. The type and sensitivity of data delivered will vary depending on users, threat level and current rules of dissemination. This paper will describe the mobile security management that basis access rights on positive identification of user, authenticating the user and the edge device. Next, Access Management is granted on a fine grain basis where each data element is tagged with meta-data that is crypto-bound to the data itself to ensure authenticity of contents and observance of data sensitivity.
Securing services in the cloud: an investigation of the threats and the mitigations
The stakeholder's security concerns over data in the clouds (Voice, Video and Text) are a real concern to DoD, the IC and private sector. This is primarily due to the lack of physical isolation of data when migrating to shared infrastructure platforms. The security concerns are related to privacy and regulatory compliance required in many industries (healthcare, financial, law enforcement, DoD, etc) and the corporate knowledge databases. The new paradigm depends on the service provider to ensure that the customer's information is continuously monitored and is kept available, secure, access controlled and isolated from potential adversaries.
A framework for developing reliable corporate services in an agile environment
The new operational environment is exemplified by continuously shifting mission requirements that challenges our Information Systems to dynamically add functionality, increase throughput and overcome threats to deliver new capabilities, quicker, with less cost, and more accuracy. It is essemntial that we engineer a flexibile design and follow an agile development process to keep up with these rapid changes. Security considerations should continue to be architected in the initial system capability and implemented in an agile environment to ensure security of the environment, protection of contenets, control resources and authentication of users are accomplished in the new Information Technology systems. Today's systems are being tasked to ingest process and analyze dramatically different, high volume data sets than they were originally designed to handle while they have to interact with multiple new systems that were unaccounted for at design time. Agile development of modular systems based on commercial standards has proven to be the best way to achieve these dynamic requirements and continuously meet the everchaning security threats and providing the required service levels.
Modeling socio-cultural processes in network-centric environments
The major focus in the field of modeling & simulation for network centric environments has been on the physical layer while making simplifications for the human-in-the-loop. However, the human element has a big impact on the capabilities of network centric systems. Taking into account the socio-behavioral aspects of processes such as team building, group decision-making, etc. are critical to realistically modeling and analyzing system performance. Modeling socio-cultural processes is a challenge because of the complexity of the networks, dynamism in the physical and social layers, feedback loops and uncertainty in the modeling data. We propose an overarching framework to represent, model and analyze various socio-cultural processes within network centric environments. The key innovation in our methodology is to simultaneously model the dynamism in both the physical and social layers while providing functional mappings between them. We represent socio-cultural information such as friendships, professional relationships and temperament by leveraging the Culturally Infused Social Network (CISN) framework. The notion of intent is used to relate the underlying socio-cultural factors to observed behavior. We will model intent using Bayesian Knowledge Bases (BKBs), a probabilistic reasoning network, which can represent incomplete and uncertain socio-cultural information. We will leverage previous work on a network performance modeling framework called Network-Centric Operations Performance and Prediction (N-COPP) to incorporate dynamism in various aspects of the physical layer such as node mobility, transmission parameters, etc. We validate our framework by simulating a suitable scenario, incorporating relevant factors and providing analyses of the results.
Communications and Networks
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Protection without detection: a threat mitigation technique
Joshua White, Joseph R. McCoy, Paul Ratazzi
Networking systems and individual applications have traditionally been defended using signature-based tools that protect the perimeter, many times to the detriment of service, performance, and information flow. These tools require knowledge of both the system on which they run and the attack they are preventing. As such, by their very definition, they only account for what is known to be malicious and ignore the unknown. The unknown, or zero day threat, can occur when defenses have yet to be immunized via a signature or other identifier of the threat. In environments where execution of the mission is paramount, the networks and applications must perform their function of information delivery without endangering the enterprise or losing the salient information, even when facing zero day threats. In this paper we, describe a new defensive strategy that provides a means to more deliberately balance the oft mutually exclusive aspects of protection and availability. We call this new strategy Protection without Detection, since it focuses on network protection without sacrificing information availability. The current instantiation analyzes the data stream in real time as it passes through an in-line device. Critical files are recognized, and mission-specific trusted templates are applied as they are forwarded to their destination. The end result is a system which eliminates the opportunity for propagation of malicious or unnecessary payloads via the various containers that are inherent in the definition of standard file types. In some cases, this method sacrifices features or functionality that is typically inherent in these files. However, with the flexibility of the template approach, inclusion or exclusion of these features becomes a deliberate choice of the mission owners, based on their needs and amount of acceptable risk. The paper concludes with a discussion of future extensions and applications.
Dynamic routing control in heterogeneous tactical networks with multiple traffic priorities
Mariusz A. Fecko, Larry Wong, Jaewong Kang, et al.
To efficiently use alternate paths during periods of congestion, we have devised prioritized Dynamic Routing Control Agent (pDRCA) that (1) selects best links to meet the bandwidth and delay requirements of traffic, (2) provides load-balancing and traffic prioritization when multiple topologies are available, and (3) handles changes in link quality and traffic demand, and link outages. pDRCA provides multiplatform load balancing to maximize SATCOM (both P2P and multi-point) and airborne links utilization. It influences link selection by configuring the cost metrics on a router's interface, which does not require any changes to the routing protocol itself. It supports service differentiation of multiple traffic priorities by providing more network resources to the highest priority flows. pDRCA does so by solving an optimization problem to find optimal links weights that increase throughput and decrease E2E delay; avoid congested, low quality, and long delay links; and exploit path diversity in the network. These optimal link weights are sent to the local agents to be configured on individual routers per traffic priority. The pDRCA optimization algorithm has been proven effective in improving application performance. We created a variety of different test scenarios by varying traffic profile and link behavior (stable links, varying capacity, and link outages). In the scenarios where high priority traffic experienced significant loss without pDRCA, the average loss was reduced from 49.5% to 13% and in some cases dropped to 0%. Currently, pDRCA is integrated with an open-source software router and priority queues on Linux as a component of Open Tactical Router (OTR), which is being developed by ONR DTCN program.
Proactive and adaptive reconfiguration for reliable communication in tactical networks
Hui Zeng, Kyung Joon Kwak, Julia Deng, et al.
Due to the layer-independency design, in current wireless networks, only after a complete failure occurs in one of the involved layers, is the next higher layer notified, and by then performance degradation may already be observed. Also, the new connection establishment process has to go through all the layers. It is time-consuming and usually results in an extra latency and resource unavailability within the transition region, which in turn leads to inefficient bandwidth usage and a poor user experience. Moreover, the root-cause of the connection termination is typically hidden, and not utilized for the repair or reestablishment. To mitigate the problem, in this paper, we propose a proactive and adaptive cross-layer reconfiguration (PACR) scheme for reliable communication in tactical networks. The PACR scheme allows the user (e.g., network operator) to adaptively reconfigure operating parameters in the corresponding layers through proactive prediction, root-cause identification, and cross-layer negotiations. The core of the PACR scheme is an integrated crosslayer information sharing architecture that expedites information exchange and inter-layer interactions between different network layers in a proactive manner. Through simulation and experiments, it has been shown that our proposed PACR scheme can significantly improve the network performance, and facilitate the nodes or users to make smart decisions accordingly in an adaptive manner.
Addressing security, collaboration, and usability with tactical edge mobile devices and strategic cloud-based systems
Success in the future battle space is increasingly dependent on rapid access to the right information. Faced with a shrinking budget, the Government has a mandate to improve intelligence productivity, quality, and reliability. To achieve increased ISR effectiveness, leverage of tactical edge mobile devices via integration with strategic cloud-based infrastructure is the single, most likely candidate area for dramatic near-term impact. This paper discusses security, collaboration, and usability components of this evolving space. These three paramount tenets outlined below, embody how mission information is exchanged securely, efficiently, with social media cooperativeness. Tenet 1: Complete security, privacy, and data integrity, must be ensured within the net-centric battle space. This paper discusses data security on a mobile device, data at rest on a cloud-based system, authorization and access control, and securing data transport between entities. Tenet 2: Lack of collaborative information sharing and content reliability jeopardizes mission objectives and limits the end user capability. This paper discusses cooperative pairing of mobile devices and cloud systems, enabling social media style interaction via tagging, meta-data refinement, and sharing of pertinent data. Tenet 3: Fielded mobile solutions must address usability and complexity. Simplicity is a powerful paradigm on mobile platforms, where complex applications are not utilized, and simple, yet powerful, applications flourish. This paper discusses strategies for ensuring mobile applications are streamlined and usable at the tactical edge through focused features sets, leveraging the power of the back-end cloud, minimization of differing HMI concepts, and directed end-user feedback.teInput=
A decision and utility theory construct for dynamic spectrum access systems
Todd W. Martin, Kuo-Chu Chang
Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) networks seek to opportunistically utilize unused RF capacity rather than relying on static spectrum assignments. The networks change their spectrum access characteristics such as fre- quency, power, and modulation to adapt and allow for access to spectrum while not causing harmful interference to other spectrum users. An essential element of DSA system operation is decision-making under uncertainty due to incomplete or inaccurate situational awareness. This paper describes ongoing eorts in applying decision and utility theory constructs to DSA systems. The construct combines elements of communications theory, formal value and utility axioms of probability and decision theory, and constraint satisfaction. It provides a mechanism that allows DSA systems to quantitatively evaluate options for attaining the desired capacity subject to constraints in radio performance, uncertainty in spectrum dynamics, operating cost, and avoidance of harmful interference to other spectrum users. The resulting construct provides insight into DSA operational trades for evaluating, ranking, and selecting alternative solutions. A decision-theoretic construct is developed and analyzed to illustrate the methodology and resulting trades among alternative utility function classes.
Information dissemination in disadvantaged wireless communications using a data dissemination service and content data network
Matthew Gillen, Joseph Loyall, Karen Zita Haigh, et al.
Disadvantaged wireless communications, such as those in fractionated spacecraft systems, need real-time, reliable, and fault tolerant information dissemination from information producers (such as sensors) to information consumers (such as information exploitation, analysis, or command and control systems). Such systems are well-suited to the publishsubscribe paradigm, but cannot afford the large footprint of many publish-subscribe systems and do not provide the underlying high-bandwidth, stable connectivity many publish-subscribe systems assume. Similarly, publish-subscribe systems cannot, by themselves, provide the real-time performance and quality of service needed by many missioncritical and spacecraft applications; they need enforcement and control provided by an underlying network. This paper presents a concept for a dissemination system suited to space-borne platforms that combines a lightweight implementation of the OMG's Data Dissemination Service with a simplified Content Delivery Network. The result is a topic-based publish-subscribe information dissemination service that supports decoupled publishers and subscribers of varying numbers, automated failover, and quality of service (QoS), coupled with a topic-based network that can enforce QoS parameters and efficiently deliver published messages based on the subscriptions registered by consumers.
Wide Area Persistent ISR and Networked Sensors I: Joint Session with Conference 8389
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Advanced thermal management technologies for defense electronics
Kristen P. Bloschock, Avram Bar-Cohen
Thermal management technology plays a key role in the continuing miniaturization, performance improvements, and higher reliability of electronic systems. For the past decade, and particularly, the past 4 years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has aggressively pursued the application of micro- and nano-technology to reduce or remove thermal constraints on the performance of defense electronic systems. The DARPA Thermal Management Technologies (TMT) portfolio is comprised of five technical thrust areas: Thermal Ground Plane (TGP), Microtechnologies for Air-Cooled Exchangers (MACE), NanoThermal Interfaces (NTI), Active Cooling Modules (ACM), and Near Junction Thermal Transport (NJTT). An overview of the TMT program will be presented with emphasis on the goals and status of these efforts relative to the current State-of-the-Art. The presentation will close with future challenges and opportunities in the thermal management of defense electronics.
Wide Area Persistent ISR and Networked Sensors II: Joint Session with Conference 8389
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Wide area persistent surveillance with no gimbal
Modern aerial video has depended on high quality gimbals. The benefits of these gimbals include motion correction, navigational information, and a standardized mounting interface for sensors to the platform. The downside to the gimbal is the weight, power, and cost of the system, as well as the potential for mechanical failure. These negative factors are increasingly significant as medium sized and small unmanned aircraft proliferate. Luckily, in many cases, it is possible to fly without a gimbal. With the advent of large format video systems, we can achieve high quality video in the visible domain with un-gimbaled video. The massive field of view and high resolution given by these new systems provides a large amount of data redundancy, and it is possible to use this redundancy to improve algorithmic stabilization, to overcome aircraft motion, and to sharpen geolocation estimates. We describe an example system that flies without a gimbal and detail the algorithms that facilitate the high quality of the video. We present actual imagery from a system with no gimbal with relevant data to evaluate its performance, and we discuss the tradeoffs involved in system design with and without a gimbal.
Kestrel: force protection and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) persistent surveillance on aerostats
David R. Luber, John E. Marion, David Fields
Logos Technologies has developed and fielded the Kestrel system, an aerostat-based, wide area persistent surveillance system dedicated to force protection and ISR mission execution operating over forward operating bases. Its development included novel imaging and stabilization capability for day/night operations on military aerostat systems. The Kestrel system's contribution is a substantial enhancement to aerostat-based, force protection systems which to date have relied on narrow field of view ball gimbal sensors to identify targets of interest. This inefficient mechanism to conduct wide area field of view surveillance is greatly enhanced by Kestrel's ability to maintain a constant motion imagery stare of the entire forward operating base (FOB) area. The Kestrel airborne sensor enables 360° coverage out to extended ranges which covers a city sized area at moderate resolution, while cueing a narrow field of view sensor to provide high resolution imagery of targets of interest. The ground station exploitation system enables operators to autonomously monitor multiple regions of interest in real time, and allows for backtracking through the recorded imagery, while continuing to monitor ongoing activity. Backtracking capability allows operators to detect threat networks, their CONOPS, and locations of interest. Kestrel's unique advancement has already been utilized successfully in OEF operations.