Cross Domain IW Threats to SOF Maritime Missions: Implications for U.S. SOF

As cyber vulnerabilities proliferate with the expansion of connected devices, wherein security is often forsaken for ease of use, Special Operations Forces (SOF) cannot escape the obvious, massive risk that they are assuming by incorporating emerging technologies into their toolkits. This is especially true in the maritime sector where SOF operates nearshore in littoral zones. As SOF—in support to the U.S. Navy— increasingly operate in these contested maritime environments, they will gradually encounter more hostile actors looking to exploit digital vulnerabilities. As such, this monograph comes at a perfect time as the world becomes more interconnected but also more vulnerable

Cooperative Networking towards Maritime Cyber Physical Systems

An innovative paradigm named Cooperative Cognitive Maritime Cyber Physical Systems (CCMCPSs) is developed to achieve high-speed and low-cost communication services. The analysis of the available white space at sea, as well as the framework, is presented. Specifically, a bilevel game with two stages of PUs-to-SUs (primary users to secondary users) and SUs-to-SUs is proposed, to address the resource allocation issue of Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay mode with maximal-ratio combining (MRC) receiving mode in destination. Stackelberg game with priority is employed between PU and SUs, while a symmetrical system model is considered among SUs-to-SUs. The game theoretic procedure that converges to Nash equilibrium based on the utility and payoff function is illustrated. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed strategy could effectively increase the throughput as well as the payoffs of the system