Ruggedbattlefield
networking
Providing secure communications to networked
warfighters
Today’s battlefield, not unlike today’s
commercial business environment, is an
information war zone. As forces seek to gain
a competitive edge through information
dominance, a high-speed, highly available
and secure network becomes critical to
even the basic operations of war. Almost all
modern battlefield assets are connected to a
high-speed IP network with routers, switches
and packet processors at their core.
An insatiable demand for bandwidth is
driving network innovation in delivering
voice, video, and data services in the
commercial world. Military forces are
seeking to leverage these commercial
innovations, but they have additional
requirements and greater challenges to
overcome for battlefield deployments:
RoutingforDynamic
Battlefield Environments
The Internet is based on a static network
configuration. The routers, switches and
network nodes are confined to a datacenter
in a single geographic location and are
usually connected to reliable, high-speed
links. Commercial routers are designed to
operate in this static configuration.
Contrast this to a battlefield network where
network nodes are constantly moving
over dispersed geographic locations, and
network nodes may drop due to enemy
attack or due to unreliable radio links that
suddenly decline in bandwidth. Standard
routing protocols such as the Border
Gateway Protocol (BGP) or open shortest
pathfirst(OSPF)fallshortinsuchbattle-
field networks.
Routersdesignedspecificallyforbattlefield
deployment address the dynamic nature of
the network by implementing specialized
protocolandmanagementfeatures.For
example,GE’sRTR8GEBattlefieldRouter
features radio-aware protocols and quality
of service (QOS) mechanisms that enable
it to monitor and measure radio hop effi-
ciency and effective available bandwidth.
This enables the router to intelligently
direct traffic across the most effective hop
sequence, and when necessary to regulate
traffic flow for QOS.
Cyber Threat Avoidance
andResilience
Any IP-based edge network node is vulner-
able to denial of service attack, unwanted
network access or network sabotage.
Various security-focused tools like firewalls,
network monitoring and intrusion detection
systems are deployed to protect IP networks.
New battlefield routers such as GE’s
RTR8GEhavebeendesignedfromthe
ground up with advanced hardware-
assisted security features:
Firewall
• Bruteforceattackmitigation
• DoSandDDOSprotection
• TCPreassemblyforfragmentedpacket
protection
• Networkattackdetection
• SYNcookieprotection
• Malformedpacketprotection
• Zone-basedIPspoofing
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
• Protocolanomalydetection
• Statefulprotocolsignatures
• IPSattackpatternobfuscation
• Customersignaturescreation
• Frequencyofupdates
(daily and emergency)
Information Assurance
and Anti-tamper
Advanced security software and protocols
are designed to protect data as it enters
a network or transfers between network
nodes.Designersofbattlefieldroutersmust
also recognize the potential threat of a foe
physically accessing the router hardware
and accessing critical data stored in it. This
so-called data-at-rest could include infor-
mation about network topology, encryption
schemes, passwords or even snippets of
the network traffic itself. In some instances
an attacker may attempt to insert data, or
malicious code such as a virus or backdoor
access with a Trojan horse.
MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS