Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) is characterized by geographically dispersed forces maintaining a high level of situational awareness, allowing increased combat effectiveness. Computer network operations (CNO) are becoming an effective weapon to undermine the capability of net-centric systems. Hence, there exists an urgent need to evaluate and train for vulnerabilities and resilience of net-centric military systems to computer network attacks from multiple, diverse, and (possibly) coordinated threats on communication networks.

Published research and initial investigations have demonstrated efficacy of countermeasures to security threats. However, such countermeasures to security threats are evaluated in isolation, that is, their side-effect on other operational systems have not been considered nor has their impact on other metrics such as force effectiveness been analyzed.

In a synthetic environment, the communication capability is often simulated at a very low fidelity, rarely accurately modeling network constraints. As a result, communications effects are not well considered, often causing actions resulting from near perfect communications to be unrepresentative of reality, contributing to negative analysis and training.

This paper examines and analyzes the impact of using a cyber warfare communication model versus the limitations of simplified communication models in existing synthetic environments.

The authors have created a test bed for the attack/defense of networks that allows integration into a live, virtual and constructive (LVC) environment. Utilizing this framework with commercially available communications and entity simulation software, the authors examine the impact of cyber threat communication modeling on successful analysis and training results.