USMA Digital Commons (United States Military Academy, West Point)
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Resiliency by Retrograded Communication - the Revival of Shortwave as a Military Communication Channel
Get PDFIn the last three decades, the great powers have become increasingly dependent on satellite communication (SATCOM), very high frequency (VHF), and ultrahigh frequency providing high bandwidth line-of-sight communications. These military communication channels lack resilience because an electronic warfare (EW) campaign can affect both VHF and SATCOM simultaneously. The 1940s preferred spectrum, high frequency, with its different propagation patterns, offers an opportunity for military communication resiliency in the 21st century. The concept of retrograding could give an operational advantage and create the ability to sustain communication in EW saturated environment
Dean\u27s Significant Activities Report 08-21-20
Get PDFhttps://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/books/1026/thumbnail.jp
A Peacekeeping Mission in Afghanistan: Pipedream or Path to Stability?
Get PDFThis article analyzes how an international peacekeeping operation (PKO) can support an intra-Afghan peace settlement by mitigating information and commitment problems and fostering compliance during the settlement’s implementation phase. To frame the information and commitment problems currently hindering an intra-Afghan settlement, I briefly review noncooperative bargaining theory, its application to civil conflicts, and how PKOs can lessen mutual uncertainty and foster stability. Anchoring this research on Afghanistan, I analyze the first peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, the 1988–1990 United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP). UNGOMAP’s eventual failure to foster peace highlights Afghanistan’s complexities and the dangers of an insufficiently resourced PKO operating in a state without a viable, incentive-compatible settlement. I apply these lessons to policy analysis, where I explore possible PKO options and their potential for incentivizing compliance with a future intra-Afghan deal. Though a viable PKO currently seems improbable given Afghanistan’s ongoing violence and the Taliban’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces, future conditions may change, and I highlight necessary prerequisites where a PKO may become possible. If designed properly, an Afghanistan PKO can fill a critical monitoring and verification capacity and bolster Afghanistan’s prospects for long-term stability
Insights into Expertise and Tactics in Human-Robot Teaming
No full textAs robot capabilities rapidly evolve, the dynamics of human-robot teams will change. Autonomous, intelligent technologies will come to serve in roles that more closely resemble those of teammates, as opposed to tools. This will require humans to adapt and remain agile in developing novel strategies and tactics for employing these systems in complex, real-world scenarios. Building on previous work that presented a novel data set collected from teams of humans and robots playing capture the flag, the current research aims to identify measures capable of predicting successful teaming that lead to a positive, winning outcomes in the game. Video and text log analysis were used to describe game play and identify specific successful tactics. In conjunction with the experience levels of the participants, a number of measures of communication with autonomous robot teammates and robot efficiency were used to predict game performance. Only one metric was found to successfully predict game outcomes across all four games: level of robot involvement with offensive maneuvers. Several possible mechanisms for this observation are discussed, as well as multiple directions for future research directions leveraging this human-robot teaming platform
High Frequency Communications Features Highs and Lows
No full textAs cyber threats continue to grow, so does the reality that digital satellite communications can be degraded and denied either through digital or electromagnetic means. If these capabilities are compromised, however, high frequency radio provides a means to continue communicating even beyond the line of sight by leveraging the ionosphere to refract radio signals back to earth
COVID-19: The Information Warfare Paradigm Shift
Get PDFThomas Kuhn\u27s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions highlights the critical term “paradigm shift,” which occurs when it suddenly becomes evident that earlier assumptions are no longer correct. The plurality of the scientific community studying this domain accepts the change. These paradigm-shifting events can be scientific findings or, as in the social sciences, a system shock that creates a punctured equilibrium, triggering a leap forward acquiring new knowledge. In information warfare, the government lines of effort have been to engage fake news, intercept electoral interference, fight extremist social media as the primary combat theater in the information space, and use the tools to influence a targeted audience to defend against an adversary that seeks to influence our population. The COVID-19 pandemic generates a rebuttal, or at least a challenge, of the information warfare assumption that our government’s authority, legitimacy, and control are mainly challenged by tampering with the electoral system, fueling extremist views, and distributing fake political news. The fake news and extremist social media content exploit fault lines in our society and create civil disturbances, tensions between federal and local government, and massive protests that impact only a fraction of the population. We have seen with COVID-19, for example, public health has a far more powerful effect on public sentiment and is more likely to create reactions of larger magnitude within the citizenry, which ripple out
Development and Human Factors Evaluation of a Portable Auditory Localization Acclimation Training System
Get PDFAuditory situation awareness (ASA) is essential for safety and survivability in military operations where many of the hazards are not immediately visible. Unfortunately, the Hearing Protection Devices (HPDs) required to operate in these environments can impede auditory localization performance. Promisingly, recent studies have exhibited the plasticity of the human auditory system by demonstrating that training can improve auditory localization ability while wearing HPDs, including military Tactical Communications and Protective Systems (TCAPS). As a result, the U.S. military identified the need for a portable system capable of imparting auditory localization acquisition skills at similar levels to those demonstrated in laboratory environments. The purpose of this investigation was to develop and validate a Portable Auditory Localization Acclimation Training (PALAT) system equipped with an improved training protocol against a proven laboratory grade system referred to as the DRILCOM system and subsequently evaluate the transfer-of-training benefit in a field environment.
In Phase I, a systems decision process was used to develop a prototype PALAT system consisting of an expandable frame housing 32-loudspeakers operated by a user-controlled tablet computer capable of reproducing acoustically accurate localization cues similar to the DRILCOM system. Phase II used a within-subjects human factors experiment to validate whether the PALAT system could impart similar auditory localization training benefits as the DRILCOM system. Results showed no significant difference between the two localization training systems at each stage of training or in training rates for the open ear and with two TCAPS devices. The PALAT system also demonstrated the ability to detect differences in localization accuracy between listening conditions in the same manner as the DRILCOM system. Participant ratings indicated no perceived difference in localization training benefit but significantly preferred the PALAT system user interface which was specifically designed to improve usability features to meet requirements of a user operable system. The Phase III investigation evaluated the transfer-of-training benefit imparted by the PALAT system using a broadband stimulus to a field environment using gunshot stimulus. Training under the open ear and in-the-ear TCAPS resulted in significant differences between the trained and untrained groups from in-office pretest to in-field posttest
Autonomous Drone Delivery from Airdrop Systems (ADDAS): Aerially Deploying Folding-Wing Drones for Ground Reconnaissance
No full textExtending the long-range capabilities of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) is paramount to protecting small Soldier teams operating in remote battlefield scenarios. Currently, many small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) reconnaissance assets have the range necessary to facilitate small-unit missions. The purpose of this paper is to detail the design and testing of a system that fills this capability gap by creating folding-wing drones designed to be aerially deployed from an airdropped dispenser. The dispenser is attached to the Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS), which is an autonomously navigated cargo delivery parafoil that can glide several miles, and which can land within 100 meters of its target. To employ the system, the dispenser is launched from a high-altitude aircraft. The system must survive the opening of the parachute in high speed forward flight and provide cushioning to the drones and other components. Once the JPADS navigates the dispenser to a predetermined altitude and distance from the intended reconnaissance area, the dispenser deploys multiple folding-wing drones. The soldiers on the ground can access the drones’ live video feeds through a handheld video transmitter. The system combines the precision navigation and information-transmission capabilities of the fixed wing drone with the long-range capabilities of the JPADS. With a commercial-off-the-shelf drone as the folding-wing aircraft platform, the team designed a wing connection hub that allows for rapid folding and unfolding of the drone’s wings, a separate canister for each drone within the dispenser, and a dispenser capable of interfacing with both the canisters and the JPADS. Though currently in the technology-demonstration phase of the project, the team envisions the system being fully autonomous from launch of dispenser to end of mission
REBUF: Jam Resistant BBC based Uncoordinated Frequency Division
Get PDFOne of the central tenants of information security is availability. One common form of attack against the availability of information in wireless networks is jamming. Currently, the most common techniques to provide jam-resistant communication, such as frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS), are based on the use of a symmetric shared secret. However, there are theoretical approaches to jam resistance without a pre-shared secret. One theoretical approach using concurrent codes, called the BBC algorithm, was developed at the United States Air Force Academy.
We developed and tested the effectiveness of REBUF, a Jam Resistant BBC based Uncoordinated Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) system. REBUF is the first known implementation of the BBC algorithm in a simultaneous frequency division multiplexing system. The contributions of this paper include: demonstrating the practical use of a BBC based FDM system, the ability of such a system to jam traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, and the resilience of such a system to some common forms of jamming
Interference Measurements Between Single-Beam, Mechanical Scanning, Time-of-Flight Lidars
No full textSignal interference between light detection and ranging (lidar) sensors has the potential to degrade range data integrity, which may challenge multilidar applications such as autonomous vehicles if not adequately considered. Our work proposes a methodology for evaluating lidar interference, analyzes distinct lidar interference phenomena, and validates a previously proposed model of interference between two circularly scanning, pulsed lidar sensors. The comparison between Monte Carlo simulated and experimentally observed interference events suggests that lidar interference may be inferred through geometrical approximations of lidar scanner arrangements. The experimental data quantify the occurrences of at least two modes of lidar interference—direct and scattered interference. When present, direct interference was found to occur one to two orders of magnitude greater in total occurrence than scattered interference. However, direct interference’s effects represented an average range error ofAlternatively, scattered interference was observed with an average range error two to four orders of magnitude greater than direct interference and proportional to the maximum range of the victim lidar. Further characterizations of interference phenomenon are presented that include the angular distribution of erroneous ranging data, range distributions of errors, loss of in-tolerance points, and potential radiometric influences