Ball Aerospace and SiCore pursue embedded computing cyber security for avionics and weapon systems
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, 18 Oct. 2016. U.S. Air Force researchers are working with two U.S. defense technology companies on a multi-million-dollar project to safeguard military avionics, embedded computing, and other weapons systems technologies from computer hackers and other cyber security threats.
Officials of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, have announced eight-year contracts to two companies -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., and SiCore Technologies Inc. in Farmingdale, N.Y. -- for the Avionics Vulnerability Assessment, Mitigations, and Protections (AVAMP) program.
For the AVAMP effort, cyber security experts at Ball Aerospace and SiCore Technologies will investigate and develop methodologies, tools, techniques, and capabilities to identify susceptibilities and mitigate cyber vulnerabilities of avionics systems.
Experts from the two companies are focusing on embedded computing system cyber security technologies involving vulnerabilities from physical, remote, and supply chain access.
The program's scope includes manned and remotely piloted vehicles; on-board intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems; munitions; and any equipment, component, or subsystem that could compromise Air Force weapons.
Ball Aerospace and SiCore Technologies each won potential $47.9 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts last March.
U.S. military avionics cyber security technologies developed in the AVAMP program should be able to interface and interoperate with anti-tamper and open-systems avionics architectures and apply to a wide-range of aircraft that operate in contested environments involving electronic warfare (EW) systems, space systems, and mobile devices.
For this project Air Force researchers are asking Ball Aerospace and SiCore Technologies to develop automated tools to support avionics vulnerability assessments; automated reverse engineering, program understanding, and software assurance tools to identify and detect weaknesses in avionics; malware detection tools and countermeasures; and techniques to detect, respond, and adapt to never-before-seen types of cyber attacks.
On the AVAMP program contract, Ball Aerospace and SiCore Technologies will do the work in Dayton, Ohio, and should be finished by March 2024. For more information contact Ball Aerospace & Technologies online at www.ball.com/aerospace, or SiCore Technologies at www.sicore-tech.com.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
