Military Embedded Systems

In the past, any reflection on America’s military competitiveness looked at how it stacked up against traditional adversaries such as China and Russia. But the world is changing quickly, and the U.S. needs to ensure that its military stays strong and can compete against new threats – Iran, Lebanon, and North Korea, for example – and not just face off with old enemies.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled autonomous systems have revolutionized military operations and modern warfare. These uncrewed systems are well-suited for dangerous and repetitive tasks, enhancing situational awareness and logistical capabilities while reducing risks to human personnel. However, their growing role raises significant security concerns: Uncrewed vehicles rely heavily on machine learning (ML) and can be vulnerable to cyberattacks that could jeopardize missions, troops, and critical technologies. While no system is unhackable, system architecture becomes critical in ensuring a device is as resilient as possible to cyberattack not just on the day of initial deployment but several years into its product life cycle. Because of this, robust safeguards are necessary throughout their development and deployment life cycles. Secure design principles, encryption, access controls, and secure communications can harden these systems against unauthorized access.