Policy-Aware Edge LLM-RAG Framework for Internet of Battlefield Things Mission Orchestration

TL;DR

This paper introduces PA-LLM-RAG, an edge-based LLM framework for IoBT mission control that enhances safety and policy compliance through retrieval-augmented reasoning and command verification.

Contribution

It presents a novel policy-aware LLM orchestration framework integrating retrieval and verification for safe IoBT mission management.

Findings

Effective detection of policy-violating commands.

Low-latency response suitable for edge deployment.

Combining safeguards with JudgeLLM improves reliability.

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a promising interface for intent-driven control of autonomous cyber-physical systems, but their direct use in mission-critical Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) environments raises significant safety, reliability, and policy-compliance concerns. This paper presents a Policy-Aware Large Language Model Retrieval-Augmented Generation (referred as PA-LLM-RAG), an edge-deployed LLM orchestration framework for IoBT mission control that integrates retrieval-augmented reasoning and independent command verification. The proposed PA-LLM-RAG framework combines a lightweight retrieval module that grounds decisions in operational policies and telemetry with a locally hosted LLM for mission planning and a secondary JudgeLLM for validating user generated commands prior to execution. To evaluate PA-LLM-RAG, we implement a simulated IoBT environment using RoboDK and assess four open-source LLMs across controlled mission scenarios of increasing complexity, including baseline operations, threat detection, coverage recovery, multi-event coordination, and policy-violation requests. Experimental results demonstrate that the framework effectively detects policy-violating commands while maintaining low-latency response suitable for edge deployment. Gemma-2B achieving the highest overall reliability with 4.17 sec latency and 100% success rate. The findings highlight a clear tradeoff between reasoning capacity and responsiveness across models and show that combining deterministic safeguards with JudgeLLM verification significantly improves reliability in LLM-driven IoBT orchestration.