Analyzing the effect of information attack on Air and Missile Defense performance

With the growing reliance on net-centric warfare, understanding the effect of information operations (IO) on the overall mission becomes increasingly important. Traditional information assurance (IA) metrics quantify attributes of the underlying information system, such as the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of critical services and data, without providing mission-level perspective. Meanwhile, information attacks and defenses are not typically incorporated into Air and Missile Defense (AMD) force-level analysis. There is a demonstrated need to analyze AMD mission-level IO effects and bridge the gap between IO and force-level mission metrics. This paper describes a methodology to quantify the impact of information attacks on AMD mission performance. After a brief discussion of the systems engineering approach, we present simulation results that assess the mission-level impact of a variety of information attacks. We conclude with a discussion of initial progress toward a metric framework to link IO and force-level metrics.