IOT Technology in Defence

Abstract:
Military commanders have always lived and died by information—both quantity and
quality. Current military operations are focused at a difficult, multifaceted, deeply
distinctive, and challenging state – some with unanticipated accomplices and occasional
foes. Military commanders work at a solid time and high rhythms of operation. But the
IOT (Internet of Things) brings with it organizational and security challenges that
present both opportunities and obstacles. Internet of Things (IoT) describes the use of
connected sensors and actuators to control and monitor the environment, the things
that move within it, and the people that act within it. The military may become more
efficient and effective by integrating sensor systems, actuators, and control systems
with current military infrastructures.
Keywords: IOT (Internet of Things), Military, sensors, actuators, military
infrastructures.
INTRODUCTION:

IoT, with its ability to capture and analyse data to generate insights, is emerging as an enabling
technology for defence in Australia, which is currently undergoing the most significant re-equipment
since World War II. While defence was a driver of technological developments such as GPS up until
the 1960s and 1970s, private commerce is driving the development of technologies such as IoT, and
defence is positioning itself to leverage these technologies for its operations. This raises concerns
about reliability and security of commercially sourced devices and communications networks.

A major application is in national security, where defence will increasingly rely on IoT, and
advanced and autonomous systems to protect society from threats such as terrorism. Data and digital
warfare, intelligent bases, and maintaining the health and wellbeing of personnel are also areas where
IoT solutions could be beneficial.

Defence is taking an integrated approach to developing new technologies in collaboration with

universities and industry, supported by the Next Generation Technologies Fund.As well as custom
solutions, defence makes use of solutions and equipment developed for other industries,
including satellites and nanosatellites, drones, warehousing, autonomous robots, smart energy,
microgrids, and machine vision.

In order for defence to take full advantage of IoT, it will need to update approaches to management
and acquisition frameworks as well as considering the technical aspects of solutions.

Increase in anti-military activities lead to increased need of computer applications in Military

Environments. Many nations have failed to track the physical activities responsible for loss of lives
irrespective of prior warning or information available with them. Remote movement tracking has
become the necessity of Military forces over the course of time. These needs can be fulfilled by
wireless communication techniques and IoT can give the solutions to these problems by the means of
faster, better and safer way of transferring information with the help of powerful and reliable
wireless communication. This paper discusses different scenarios and different factors associated
with the implementation of loT application in Military environment. Not limiting to only security
purposes, IoT applications can also be designed to monitor health of soldiers on battlefield or to
provide logistic support system. Both these requirements have equal importance as surveillance in
battlefield.

Fig.1:IOT in Defence

Researchers from all over the globe have proposed different methodology based on IoT as well as
considering different factors influencing the working of those application. This paper does the study
of this applications and their effectiveness in actual implementation.
Along with the applications, security issues of this application is also an important concern. The
protocols involved in such as -

• 6LOWPAN
• MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) COAP (Constrained Application Protocol)
• Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy
• Wi-Fi Zigbee
• RFID
• LoRa

With the Connected Devices architecture or its autonomous presence within the closed loop network
of devices, IoT has already impacted several sectors. Many countries in military and defence
applications are seeking to use the IoT as a means of addressing various issues in war and fighting.
Below, there are distinct IoT defence and military applications areas that have been highlighted.
The Internet of Things (IoT) in the defence industry, also known as the Internet of Military Things
(IoMT) or Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT), is in its early stages.

Internet of Military Things:

Global Data forecasts that leading companies in C4ISR, cybersecurity, autonomy, and other related
fields, such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thales, BAE Systems, L3 Harris
Technologies, Leonardo DRS, and Airbus, will be part of the IoMT revolution.

Below are some of the key technology trends impacting the IoMT theme over the next 12 to 24
months, as identified by GlobalData.

• AI and analytics:

AI is a key element for the optimal use of IoMT, as it allows for more efficient analysis of the vast
amounts of data that flow at a high rate from an increasingly large number of edge devices.

Defence/security-related intelligence mainly comes in the form of open-source intelligence (OSINT),

logistics, support and maintenance, and battlefield intelligence. With around 80% of the information
available on the internet, other media sources, and social networks, analysis has relied on expert
systems.

Big data analytics can scan through a larger volume of data and at the same time reduce the
associated noise using AI technologies, such as machine learning. Logistics, support and
maintenance hugely benefit from big data analytics.

Predictive or condition-based maintenance can reduce costs and increase the availability of
platforms. Depending on the customer and their security concerns, as well as the available industrial
capabilities IoMT, in conjunction with big data analytics and performance-based logistics (PBL), is a
highly-promising combination for the defence industry.

Finally, battlefield intelligence IoMT is expected to maintain a human-centric or man-in-the-loop

approach. Due to its nature, which involves firing against targets, especially when it comes to
operations in civilian areas, human identification and clearance for firing will always be necessary.
There are many ethical dilemmas that arise from this necessity, which are expected to act as barriers
to the rapid expansion of IoMT in the field of armed unmanned systems. For this specific market
segment, it is important for a user to invest in the quality and quantity of its sensors, so as to be able
to recognise and identify targets.

AI still experiences issues related to causality. For example, machines still cannot always tell the
difference between a man holding a baseball bat and a weapon, and, if it does come up with an
answer, it cannot always explain why. That is an extremely important aspect especially for the
security domain, where unmanned systems with AI technology, especially when operating in
swarms, could eventually carry out their missions near civilians and civilian assets.

In terms of the moral dilemmas posed, people are very reluctant to have in their vicinity an
unmanned system that could decide for itself what or who consists a threat, even if the accuracy rate
of the algorithm is the highest possible.
Many defence contractors already offer their solutions for OSINT analysis and systems’ health
monitoring, which are also available to the civilian market as well. Examples of such companies are
Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ESRI, and Palantir Technologies.

• Sensors:

Sensor technology is evolving fast. EO/IR sensors, radar, sonars, motion or sound detectors have
their capabilities augmented as the technology they incorporate improves. For example, EO/IR can
see further, at much tougher climatic and atmospheric conditions, whether it is day or night,
compared to just a few years ago.

Phased-array radars can multi-task, simultaneously collecting intelligence in the land, maritime or air
domains without losing range coverage or accuracy. Moreover, subcomponent technology allows
those sensors to be manufactured in miniature, allowing their integration in a multitude of platforms.

Therefore, developments in components technology increase the capabilities of IoMT backbones

rapidly. It will also change the commercial landscape, as subsystems manufacturers will remain at
the forefront of the market, closing the gap with platform manufacturers.

• Health monitoring systems:

The sensors domain does not only include the aforementioned examples (radar, sonar, etc.). During
the last few years, the defence industry has been developing highly technological sensors that are
able to monitor a system’s health status. These tools do more than simply alert the operator of a
platform to a malfunction. They combine sensor input and data analytics to offer predictive analytics
data for failures or malfunctions long before they appear.

Spending on logistics, in the form of spare parts and life-cycle costs, will be reduced as users will be
able to streamline their logistical supply chain, while at the same time increasing the availability of
systems and platforms.

• Processors and transmitters:

Considering that IoMT is based on the existence of a safe, secure, and capable network, powerful
processors will remain a core component for processing big data at a fast pace. Moreover, with data
being transmitted wirelessly through radio communication systems, transmitters need to be capable
of transmitting larger volumes of data further and faster.

• Data storage:

The defence industry is working on a variety of solutions aimed at tackling the technical issues
related to the storage of large volumes of data. Many private companies, including Amazon, are
offering storage solutions to government users, including the US DoD. However, a data storage
capability for combat operations will have to comply with many technical specifications and would
probably have to be separate from purely COTS solutions.

In the civilian market, IoT is becoming the next cloud battleground. Amazon, Google, Microsoft,
Alibaba and IBM are vying with each other to provide the cloud infrastructure that will connect and
run the world’s connected things.
Various IoT-specific cloud services have been launched to enable fast and efficient data storage and
processing in the cloud, mainly on infrastructure as a service (IaaS), but also on platform as a service
(PaaS) solutions. Vendors are increasingly looking to verticalise these to attract industry-specific
workloads.

• Security:

Security presents one of the most critical obstacles to IoT deployment. However, in providing
security solutions, suppliers have had trouble going beyond their traditional domains. For example,
operators’ IoT security offers have mostly been about device authentication and network reliability.
Clearly, breaches can occur at the device level, network level, app-level, storage level, and data
level. There is some work in progress to help vendors and operators come together.

Fig: 3: Design War Matrix with IOBT

IOT PROTOCOLS:
The IoT system can only operate and transfer data online if the two devices are linked securely from
the communication network. Some of these protocols are namely 6LoWPAN, MQTT, COAP,
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LoRa, RFID etc that are included in IOMT.

• 6LoWPAN is a somewhat contorted acronym that combines the latest version of the Internet
Protocol (IPv6) and Low-power Wireless Personal Area Networks (LoWPAN). 6LoWPAN,
therefore, allows for the smallest devices with limited processing ability to transmit
information wirelessly using an internet protocol. It’s the newest competitor to ZigBee.
• MQTT is known as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. It is a lightweight
messaging protocol and helps resource constrained network clients with a simple
 communication mechanism. Unlike, most messaging system, we don’t have to assign
addresses to MQTT clients. MQTT uses simple publish/subscribe communication based on a
topic.
• CoAP stands for Constrained Application Protocol, and it is defined in RFC 7252. CoAP is a
simple protocol with low overhead specifically designed for constrained devices (such as
microcontrollers) and constrained networks. This protocol is used in M2M data exchange and
is very similar to HTTP, ...etc.
• Bluetooth network technology connects mobile devices wirelessly over a short-range to form
a personal area network (PAN). The Bluetooth architecture has its own independent model
with a stack of protocols, instead of following the standard OSI model or TCP/IP model.
• Wi-Fi is a wireless networking protocol that allows devices to communicate without direct
cable connections. It's technically an industry term that represents a type of wireless local
area network protocol based on the 802.11 IEEE network standard.
• LoRa, essentially, is a clever way to get very good receiver sensitivity and low bit error rate
(BER) from inexpensive chips. That means low-data rate applications can get much longer
range using LoRa rather than using other comparably priced radio technologies.
• RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. It’s a system of data communication
whereby data stored in an RFID asset label is transferred to an RFID reader through radio
waves. Unique radio waves emitted by the tag allows the reader to identify individual assets.

Fig: 4: IOT PROTOCOLS

Applications of IoT in Defence and Military:
In the modern world, military operations are becoming more complex and unpredictable. Using IoT
can help defence and military personnel to take suitable actions in increasingly pressurized
environments. Here are the most important applications of IoT in defence and the military.

FIG: 5: APPLICATIONS OF IOT IN DEFENCE AND MILITARY

1. Gathering Battlefield Data:

IoT enables armed forces to survey the battlefield with
unmanned aerial drones that are equipped with cameras
and sensors. These drones can capture live images, trace
the landscape and location of the enemies, and send real-
time data to the command center. Using this data,
officers can keep an eye on the battlefield and make
informed decisions on time.

2. Monitoring Soldier’s Health:

Another application of IoT in defence and the military is

knowing the health status of a soldier. This is done by
placing sensors in the soldiers’ clothes to track or
centrally monitor their physical health and mental health.
Sensors can monitor heart rate, body temperature, and
thermal distribution as well as some behavioral attributes
like speech patterns. The data about their changing
medical condition can be shared with doctors in real-time
so that they can arrange medical supplements or
equipment in advance based on their needs.
3. Equipment and Vehicle Fleet Management:

Regular maintenance of military vehicles and efficient

transportation of ammunition and troops is important for
a successful military operation. Connected sensors and
analytics provided by IoT technology can help in tracking
supplies from the source to where they are required on the
battlefield.

Incorporating sensors into military vehicles can help track

their position, fuel efficiency, damage level, engine
status, and other crucial parameters. Smart tracking of defence and military transportation enables
military fleets to quickly identify inconsistencies and implement solutions. This helps them lower
transportation costs and reduce human operational efforts.

Similarly, arms, ammunition, and unmanned equipment can also be tracked using sensors. Integrating
sensors into weapons can help the soldiers know when to reload. Unmanned equipment can be tracked
and monitored during spying and surveillance the enemy grounds.

4. Identifying the Enemy:

Enemies can access military bases with stolen badges or

appear as civilians. IoT sensors can capture irises,
fingerprints, and other biometric data to determine the
identity of a person and find the individuals who can pose
a threat.

5. Smart Bases:

IoT sensors and devices can be incorporated into military

bases to improve the efficiency, performance, and
convenience of assets and services on a military base. It
can help in automated screening, efficient resource
management, and more. Smart management of resources
such as water and electricity can help enhance the
capacity and output of military bases.
6. Remote Training:

IoT can help military personnel to get prepared for the

real battlefield fight. Movement sensors, acoustic sensors,
and more can screen the personnel during preparation or
practice and send data and insights to the coaches who
prepare them.

7. Data Processing & Analysis:

The information collected by IoT about various defence

and military areas, such as weapons, aircraft, fleet, and
troops can increase the effectiveness of their
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems.
The data obtained related to these areas can enable
armed forces to identify key threats quickly and with
more accuracy. Military personnel can perform analysis
on the collected data to recognize patterns and derive
correlations.

Conclusion:

With the increasing anti-military activities, the use of IoT in the military and defence has become a
necessity. Integrating IoT into existing military and defence infrastructures can help them become
more efficient and effective and can significantly reduce combat losses in lives and equipment.
Incorporating IoT into any kind of operation such as battlefield combat, spying an enemy base, or
search and rescue. Combining IoT with Machine Learning can further help the military and defence
in getting critical insights into the battlefield in real-time, enabling them to carry out a successful
operation.