Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

42 Military Communications and Information Technology...
is being used and must be protected for commercial reasons, or where legacy equipment
with known vulnerabilities is required for an operation. War-time technical
specifications (e.g. cryptographic algorithms) may be kept secret for national security
reasons. The issue of not revealing too much about what we know about an attacker’s
capability may also arise; for example, governments may choose to avoid disclosing
that a certain attack has been uncovered to allow the attack’s duration and success to
be monitored to learn about the capabilities of an adversary.
IV. Applications of openness
A. Open air interfaces
There is a persistent aspiration within defense to exploit open air-interface
standards developed by industry bodies, such as Wi-Fi developed by the IEEE [10],
the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) developed by the 3 rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) [11] and the tactical data network, Link 16,
which was developed by NATO under the Standardized Agreement (STANAG)
framework [12].
For the specific scope of air-interfaces ‘openness’ may be defined in terms
of system performance for various scenarios. Understanding true radio performance
is critical to several core functions within the MOD including:
• Defining acceptance criteria for systems procurement;
• Aiding in mission planning for link and emission ranges;
• Efficient spectrum allocation through spatial reuse;
• Understanding impact of electronic warfare on links.
The following is a list of objective criteria which could be used to create
a standard evaluation approach, deriving metrics from non-intrusive lab testing:
• Channel Equalization;
• Link Performance;
• Spectral Characteristics;
• Packet Completion;
• Signaling & Synchronization.
B. Open network design
Network design and planning is currently done on a program-by-program
basis in the MOD, partly due to the lack of guaranteed interoperability between
devices. It is not that there is a strict lack of confidence in network layer interoperability,
but more fundamentally, there is no acknowledged way to consistently
capture vital network statistics.
The information required for network design diverges widely based on the user
requirements; high level traffic loading analysis is required for strategic planning