In this near-future war space, “current, commonly available, interconnected ‘things’ will exist in the battlefield and be increasingly intelligent, obfuscated, and pervasive,” according to Army documents.

Experts, however, put a caveat on that vision. The IoT landscape cannot come to fruition without robust, modernized networks. The promised wellspring of new ISR data “requires connectivity and security,” said Mike Leff, vice president for global defense at AT&T Public Sector. “You need a robust network to give you that competitive advantage on the battlefield.”

Envisioning battlefield IoT

Military leaders back this assessment. Eager as they are to cull ISR data from an IoT-rich environment, they say they need a modernized network infrastructure to support that capability.

In October 2017, for instance, the Army announced it had selected the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to lead a $25 million initiative to develop the scientific foundations of a next-generation internet of battlefield things (IoBT). In the announcement, Army leaders stressed the need for a robust network to make connected devices truly battle-worthy.

IoBT must appropriately leverage all networks — blue, gray and red, said Stephen Russell, the chief for the Army Research Lab’s battlefield information processing branch. In this construct, blue networks are secure and military-owned; gray networks are often civilian networks with uncertain trustworthiness; and red networks are adversarial networks.

Russell stressed that the effort to exploit the unique capabilities of a networked battlefield will be an interdisciplinary problem that brings together researchers in cyber-physical computing, information theory, security, formal methods, machine learning, networking, control and cognitive science, among other disciplines.

The Navy has taken a similar read on emerging IoT. A June 2017 document notes that as connected devices are deployed more widely, availability becomes an increasing concern. The networks carrying medical data, for instance, “should never go down — even for a second. And if they do, we need to be able to get them back up and running quickly.”

Some have expressed concern that present military networks don’t meet this standard. IoT devices that run without firewalls or antivirus protection could easily be compromised on current networks, Marine Corps Maj. Scott Cuomo told an IoT summit hosted by the AFCEA DC Chapter.

Looking forward

With their limited bandwidth, today’s military networks may not be able to support the emerging intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability that might be supported by widespread IoT deployments. The likelihood of urban combat where bandwidth is in greater demand could amplify the problem, Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kawada said during a panel at the MilCom conference in October 2017.

At the same time, the rise of IoT brings with it significant opportunity, not just in terms of ISR but also in support of logistics.

“When you are deploying expeditionary forces and moving stuff from one part of the world to the other, IoT offers the chance to have total visibility across that supply chain,” Leff said.

To take advantage of that opportunity, military leaders say they will need networks robust enough to handle the bandwidth demands and flexible enough to configure as needed in rapidly changing circumstances.

One key to network modernization is the rise of software-defined networking (SDN). By shifting network operations to the software environment, SDN makes it easier to stand up and configure networks, and allows for a more flexible approach to network management.

“The legacy infrastructure is device-dependent, hardware-heavy, and has multiple firewalls, multiple boundaries,” Army Lt. Gen. Alan R. Lynn, the previous commander of DoD Information Networks, said at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s (AFCEA) Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium. “In the future, what we see is a software-defined network that kind of encrypts and decrypts at the endpoint so that it can ride essentially any network that’s available, any untrusted network.”

Emerging solutions

The Joint Service Provider, a subcomponent of the Defense Information Systems Agency, released a request for information last fall for exactly these kind of networking solutions, which it said promised to “simplify, flatten and optimize the network topology, design and operations through use of virtualization, routing and orchestration techniques.”

Other elements of the military are moving in a similar direction. The Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES), for instance, delivers network services nimbly through a virtualized infrastructure.

The Navy clearly intends to follow the idea further. Addressing the service’s annual Forecast to Industry event last fall, DISA official Jessie Showers said as much.

“Come in and show us how we can use SDN in DoD operations,” he told the crowd. He added that a global software-based network — based at least in part on commercial offerings — could be in play by 2023. “We will accomplish this by utilizing and leveraging capabilities that are already present around the globe,” he said.

DISA awarded a task order enlisting Leidos and its partner AT&T to help it take the first steps toward transforming the Department of Defense Information Network to a software-defined network.

Tangible outcomes

Along similar lines, Army leaders say it is already seeing tangible outcomes from a migration to software-based networking.

Consider, the recent Army evaluation of the Tactical Communications Node-Lite and Network Operations and Security Center-Lite systems, which leaders held in July 2017 at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Not only were both deemed “suitable, survivable and effective,” said Paul Mehney, spokesman for Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T). In addition, both saw significant reductions in size, weight and power, such that they can now be sling-loaded by a helicopter across the battlefield or rolled onto a C130 aircraft, providing significantly increased agility and operational flexibility.

“In a large part, these [size, weight and power] reductions were made possible through the software virtualization of hardware components,” Mehney said.

Beyond such logistical considerations, software-defined networking offers the military the ability to adapt readily to changing circumstances. Because so much of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance enterprise is dependent on networks, a software-based approach ensures connectivity will be there where it is needed.

“When you go to a software-defined network, you have a network that is adaptable,” said Mike Leff, vice president for global defense at AT&T Public Sector. “You can virtualize functions not based on where the hardware is, but where the need is. It’s a network-on-demand capability.”

In late 2017 Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, described the Army’s networks as “a critical enabler of readiness and lethality.” As such, an upcoming review of all Army networks “will assist the Army in proactively integrating, aligning and reforming our IT portfolios to ensure infrastructure, programs, weapons and other systems are prepared to adapt.”

A linchpin of the review — and of most military network upgrades presently under consideration — is a reliance on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions.

“We’ve become very reliant on the capability that industry provides,” said Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of networks, services and strategy, in the office of the Army’s CIO. “In many cases we had systems that came to us that were way too complex for soldiers to understand and for leaders to manage.”

From cybersecurity to internet of things implementations, a range of IT modernization efforts depend on the military having access to robust, modern networks. Defense leaders and industry experts say there are good reasons why the military would look to the commercial side as the starting point for such solutions.

Over the past decade carrier service providers have invested more than $300 billion in modernizing their network infrastructure, according to CTIA – The Wireless Association. The Department of Defense would have to spend billions just to reach the same level of proficiency, and it is unlikely DoD could sustain such an effort for the long haul either in terms of spending or staffing.

“If you can take advantage of commercial investment, you have a global services backbone that provides a network-on-demand capability, a more intelligent network with bandwidth that could be sized dynamically up and down,” said Mike Leff, vice president for global defense at AT&T Public Sector.

Military leaders say they are in fact looking to commercial solutions as the first line of defense in their quest for sturdier, more agile network capabilities.

Take for instance Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T). That office is taking what it calls a “find-try-adapt-buy” approach to the acquisition of networking assets.

“Find and try” means the Army will continually field-test available solutions for military application, while “adapt and buy” suggests the Army will then acquire and adapt the best of these solutions to meet unique military challenges, said Paul Mehney, spokesman for PEO C3T.

“This approach to mission command network modernization will allow rapid insertion of new technology, by leveraging commercial systems not specifically designed to exact military-grade standards,” he said.

This commercial-first message was broadcast clearly at last fall’s annual MILCOM conference hosted by AFCEA. “Your No. 1 mission is to buy, not make,” said Lt. Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, product manager for tactical mission command within PEO C3T.

Daiyaan pointed to the emerging command post computing environment as one example of commercial solutions in action. “Our organization bought a [commercial off-the-shelf] solution, we’re adapting it to make sure it does everything we need it to do in the Army and then we’re going to field it,” Daiyaan said.

Experts say that in following the lead of commercial providers, the military can at last break out of the siloed, overly prescriptive solutions that have for decades characterized defense networking infrastructure.

“DoD needs the flexibility to move and maneuver quickly,” Leff said. “To do that you have to have a network that adapts rapidly to the actual threat environment. Simply put, commercial networks are intrinsically faster and more resilient, and have much greater reach and capability.”

“Cyberthreats have changed the way Army looks at the network, data, and networked systems,” Gen. Paul Nakasone, the former head of U.S. Army Cyber Command who now leads U.S. Cyber Command, said in a news release last year. “[The network] is not only an enabler for mission command and day-to-day business operations, but also a weapons platform for cyberspace operations.”

In this environment, military leaders are tasked with upgrading creaking legacy networking architecture, and they say they are looking to industry to help lead the way.

The Army, for instance, last fall announced a sweeping effort to modernize its networks to support concepts such as multidomain battle in its joint operations. The service said it would take a deep look at modifications needed to make networks more responsive to war-fighter needs, including demands on the cyber front.

Army documents specifically point to industry solutions as the means to “to rapidly upgrade network mission requirements,” which will result in “better protected and resilient network capabilities for the Army as it integrates joint and coalition partner solutions.”

Such efforts can be seen across the armed services. The Coast Guard has said it is looking to commercial solutions to upgrade its 1990s-era computer networks in support of stronger cyber operations. The Navy is likewise looking at networks as the front line in the cyber fight.

Capt. Michael Abreu, the Next Generation Enterprise Network program manager, has said that cybersecurity is a high-priority item to modernize the network. “Navy cybersecurity requires everyone to treat Navy networks like a weapons system,” as one Navy document describes it.

Industry experts say it makes sense for military leaders to look to the commercial side in their efforts to bolster their networks’ cyber defense.

Volume alone suggests commercial players may be well-placed to support that fight. AT&T, for example, sees some 170 petabytes of internet data flowing through its network daily. “You can imagine what kinds of information that provides to the threat landscape, how that feeds into detecting threats before they happen,” said Mike Leff, vice president for global defense at AT&T Public Sector.

The Air Force last summer launched a monitoring system to watch over the health of all Air Force networks. The scale of that effort helps define the scope of the problem: its roughly 800,000 end points generating some 100,000 security events every hour.

“If you just think of the sheer scale of the network, and the number of connections that happen every minute, it can be mind-boggling,” said 1st Lt. John Bennion, a data analytics pathfinder program manager at Air Force Life Cycle Management-Hanscom, in an Air Force news release.

Given the complexity of the problem, military leaders say they plan to tap into industry’s ability to automate responses to cyberattacks using cognitive networks, artificial intelligence, neural networks and other sophisticated defenses.

“If we fail to achieve that vision of the network, we fail as a nation,” said Lt. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army. “This is serious stuff.”