Trustworthiness of Situational Awareness: Significance and Quantification

Abstract

Situational awareness (SA) is of tremendous significance for successful operations in many domains, such as surveillance, humanitarian, search, and rescue missions, and national security. SA is particularly important for the defense sector, and is regarded as the decisive factor in military and air combat engagements. Commanders and operators rely on the accuracy and fidelity of SA for comprehending the environment, decision-making, and carrying out actions based on these decisions for accomplishing a mission. SA, however, is susceptible to adversarial attacks that can compromise the security and trust of SA systems. In this paper, we discuss the significance of security and trust of SA from an air force perspective. We then propose a model for quantifying the trustworthiness of an SA system. We further present numerical examples that demonstrate the quantification of trustworthiness of an SA system using our proposed model. Finally, we conclude this paper with future research directions for quantifying the security of SA systems.