Redefining the Air-gap for our Weapon Systems

As cyber conflict propagates from traditional networks to military-grade embedded weapons platforms, US adversaries will no doubt heavily invest in these low-risk, high-reward ventures. Currently the US is under prepared to defend this terrain due to false notions of security, specifically relying on the air-gapped systems and one-dimensional functional testing for protection. Furthermore, the US risks degrading its ability to project conventional air power should an adversary sufficiently disrupt these systems. However, the US can invest in changes to development lifecycle to reduce this risk. This paper evaluates three recommendations that may deter an adversary from contesting this key cyber terrain. These include investments into negative testing, security requirements to block invalid and potentially malicious data, and promising technologies such as attestation for embedded systems. We argue that the unique design of an embedded weapon system will allow these modest investments in cyber defense to drastically increase the cost to the adversary to contest this space, and potentially drive them from it. Such investments could serve to refine the concept of air-gap between our embedded weapon systems and the broader contested cyber terrain of military networks.