Cyber Simulation TRaining for Impacts to Kinetic Environment (CyberSTRIKE)

Naval strike groups may contain space-based, airborne, on-the-surface, and subsurface platforms, and include numerous ground- and ship-based systems for sensor data collection and analysis. Increasingly, Great Power Competitor’s (GPC) Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) teams are focusing on disruption of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities as one step in a complex kill chain used to track, target, manipulate, and disable Naval assets. It is imperative that Naval commanders understand and train against these threat SIGINT capabilities and include the cyberspace domain in their operational approach to the modern Naval battlespace. Battle staffs need training which considers cyberspace effects as warfare threats, in line with the traditional kinetic and non-kinetic effects that affect warfighting operations. Existing live, virtual, constructive, and gaming (LVC&G) systems are not developed to incorporate offensive and defensive cyberspace operations as a part of combined training. Also, varying training system fidelities and resolutions cause difficulties in fair interoperation of cyberspace effects between systems.  Our research will involve investigation of three related areas to meet this training need.  First, we investigate shipboard Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) systems and their interfaces to determine targets of cyberspace effect injection during training within the Naval Continuous Training Environment (NCTE).  Second, we research, design, and develop a prototype of intelligent cyber sensors that detect cyber range data and create cyberspace effects to impart on a virtual ship’s C4I systems.  Third, we develop an architecture for a toolset, termed Cyber Simulation TRaining for Impacts to Kinetic Environment (CyberSTRIKE), to distribute cyberspace effect data to traditional training architectures such as the Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) system to enable integrated cyber-kinetic training.  We integrate the CyberSTRIKE prototype into the NCTE Research, Development, Test, and Experimentation (RDTE) architecture to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for Navy training. The overall goal of this work is to provide training support during Fleet Synthetic Training (FST) events to impart awareness to Naval commanders of cyberspace operations on their assets and to gain an understanding of the use of the cyberspace domain in conjunction with other traditional kinetic domain operations.