Kinetic and Cyber

TL;DR

This paper compares situation awareness in cyber and kinetic warfare, highlighting similarities and differences, and discusses how insights from conventional warfare can inform cyber conflict understanding.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of SA in cyber and kinetic warfare, identifying parallels and unique challenges, and suggests research directions for cyber SA.

Findings

SA impacts mission outcomes in both domains

Cognitive biases are present in both KSA and CSA

Kinetic SA relies on physical terrain maps, while cyber SA lacks a common representation

Abstract

We compare and contrast situation awareness in cyber warfare and in conventional, kinetic warfare. Situation awareness (SA) has a far longer history of study and applications in such areas as control of complex enterprises and in conventional warfare, than in cyber warfare. Far more is known about the SA in conventional military conflicts, or adversarial engagements, than in cyber ones. By exploring what is known about SA in conventional, also commonly referred to as kinetic, battles, we may gain insights and research directions relevant to cyber conflicts. We discuss the nature of SA in conventional (often called kinetic) conflict, review what is known about this kinetic SA (KSA), and then offer a comparison with what is currently understood regarding the cyber SA (CSA). We find that challenges and opportunities of KSA and CSA are similar or at least parallel in several important ways. With respect to similarities, in both kinetic and cyber worlds, SA strongly impacts the outcome of the mission. Also similarly, cognitive biases are found in both KSA and CSA. As an example of differences, KSA often relies on commonly accepted, widely used organizing representation - map of the physical terrain of the battlefield. No such common representation has emerged in CSA, yet.