A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CYBER THREATS AND PROTECTIVE MEASURES IN UNMANNED AND NAVAL MILITARY FORCES.

Abstract

The high rate of development of unmanned military systems (UMS) such as drones, autonomous ground vehicles and unmanned maritime platforms has transformed modern warfare and at the same time presented a new cyber threat. At the same time, the military justice systems are becoming more and more dependent on the digital infrastructures, which means that the Military systems are prone to being targeted by both the state and non-state actors. In this paper, the issue of cyber threats to UMS and the military judicial networks is analyzed critically and the evaluation of current protection measures is provided, as well as the identification of the gaps that persist. The mixed-methods design that presents a quantitative approach to incident data based on open-source intelligence and a qualitative analysis of the defense reports gives the study a result of 68% of all reported UMS cyber-attacks involved command-and-control (C2) hijacking or GPS spoofing, with Military systems experiencing a higher number of data integrity and confidentiality breaches. The threat landscape is dominated by advanced persistent threats (APTs) of the Chinese, Russian, and non-state agents. It is true that implementation lags are a critical issue despite advancements in the area of zero-trust architecture and AI-based anomaly detection. The article suggests a three-level defense design that incorporates quantum-resistant cryptography to develop blockchain-enhanced audit trails to be used by Military systems and compulsory red-teaming of all operational UMS. The results highlight the pressing necessity of international standards of cyber operations against unmanned systems.