How vulnerable is battlefield artificial intelligence (AI) to cyber and electronic warfare (EW) attack?
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers are asking industry to find ways of assessing the vulnerabilities of military artificial intelligence (AI) programs to enemy cyber attack.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a broad agency announcement (HR001125S0009) earlier this month for the Securing Artificial Intelligence for Battlefield Effective Robustness (SABER) project.
AI security risks
Today there are no ways to assesses deployed military AI-enabled systems for their vulnerabilities to cyber attack, DARPA officials warn; the security risks of AI-enabled battlefield systems remain unknown.
To rectify this, the DARPA SABER project seeks to build an AI research group equipped with the necessary counter-AI techniques, tools, and technical competency to assess AI-enabled battlefield systems.
AI technology has reached a level of maturity sufficient to integrate the technology into U.S. military systems. AI could give battlefield advantage by helping improve the speed, quality, and accuracy of decision-making while enabling machine autonomy and automation.
Yet AI has been shown a vulnerability to an adversary's taking control of its data input, which can lead to data poisoning, physically constrained adversarial patches for evasion, and model stealing attacks.
AI-enabled machine autonomy
The SABER research team will assess the potential vulnerabilities of AI-enabled autonomous ground and aerial systems that could be deployed within the next one to three years.
SABER wants contractors to develop physical, adversarial AI, cyber security, and electronic warfare (EW) techniques to perform these AI cyber vulnerability assessments. The SABER program manager is Lt. Col. Nathaniel Bastian.
Companies interested should submit abstracts no later than 31 March 2025, and full proposals by 6 May 2025 to the DARPA BAA Tool online at https://baa.darpa.mil. Several contracts are expected, and companies are not required to submit abstracts to submit proposals.
Email questions or concerns to DARPA at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/5e377ad0bb1c4208a56f2f9187386be6/view.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
