Intelligent Autonomous Agents are Key to Cyber Defense of the Future Army Networks
This is an incremental review of challenges and potential solutions for developing autonomous cyber defense agents in military networks.
The paper addresses the need for intelligent autonomous agents in future Army network cyber defense, identifying key architectural components but noting that current AI cannot yet handle battlefield complexity, with ongoing research showing progress.
Intelligent autonomous agents will be widely present on the battlefield of the future. The proliferation of intelligent agents is the emerging reality of warfare, and they will form an ever growing fraction of total military assets. By necessity, intelligent autonomous cyber defense agents are likely to become primary cyber fighters on the future battlefield. Initial explorations have identified the key functions, components and their interactions for a potential reference architecture of such an agent. However, it is beyond the current state of AI to support an agent that could operate intelligently in an environment as complex as the real battlefield. A number of difficult challenges are yet to be overcome. At the same time, a growing body of research in Government and academia demonstrates promising steps towards solving some of the challenges. The industry is beginning to embrace approaches that may contribute to technologies of autonomous intelligent agents for cyber defense of the Army networks.