- Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)
ITD developed a solution to the problem of Internet Protocol (IP) packet encryption and authentication and codified its solution through engagement with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This led to Internet standards as documented in RFC 1825, Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol; RFC 1826, IP Authentication Header; and RFC 1827, IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP). The specified architecture applies to both IPv4 and IPv6 and is cryptographic algorithm agnostic, so both commercial and NSA type 1 algorithms are compatible with the standard.
- World’s First Implementation of IPv6
ITD developed the first implementation of the IPv6 next generation internet protocol. This allowed NRL to confirm that specifications in the RFCs were correct, and most importantly, demonstrate to industry that it was feasible to build a network protocol stack with integrated encryption and authentication. NRL made the implementation, including its source code, available to industry to facilitate broad adoption.
Onion routing is a general approach to securing both routing and traffic-flow information for network communications by separating identification of network location from routing. In basic form, it uses public-key cryptography to build a cryptographic circuit along an unpredictable path of onion routers. Symmetric-keys, established during path building, are then used to pass data back and forth between the path originator and a network destination, such as an Internet web server. The onion routing patent received the NRL Edison Invention Award in 2002 and was identified as one of NRL’s top 100 technology contributions to sea power and national security during its Centennial celebration in 2024. Numerous follow-on onion routing networks have been deployed, and now underpin a broad field of research on privacy-enhancing technologies. Onion routing’s most identifiable implementation is the Tor network that is maintained by the Tor Project, a U.S. 501(c)3 incorporated in 2006. As of 2023, the Tor network is accessed by 2 million daily users over 8,000 relay nodes, with public accounts of peak usage nearing 7.5 million users.
- Programmable Embeddable INFOSEC Product (PEIP)
The Programmable Embeddable INFOSEC Product (PEIP) is a family of programmable cryptographic devices that provide cryptographic algorithm execution for all COMSEC devices, up to 10 simultaneous COMSEC device emulations, and supports field-deployable cryptographic algorithm upgrades. The first phase of the PEIP family of cryptographic devices provided receive-only capabilities to replace the KG-3X family of cryptographic devices and was denoted as the KOV-17. The KOV-17s (and its radiation hardened variant) replaced all of the KG-3X cryptographic devices in U.S. Navy SSNs, SSBNs, and USAF Minuteman Silos.
The Network Pump is a high assurance cross domain solution (CDS) product that allows applications operating on lower security level networks to exchange information with applications on higher security level networks. The Pump provides a failsafe and redundant security architecture that maintains network and security domain separation, as well as high assurance filtering without leakage of information from the high network to the low network. The Pump is system and network agnostic and can serve several applications simultaneously.
NORM is a transport layer Internet protocol designed to provide reliable data transport in multicast groups. It is formally defined by the IETF in RFC 5740, which was published in November 2009. It includes reliability mechanisms, congestion control, flow control and forward error correction to support bulk transfer, messaging, and streaming content at optimized rates with delay and lost packet tolerance. NORM has transitioned to many materiel acquisition programs in every service branch, as well as other U.S. Government agencies and public applications.
Flying Squirrel is a software application suite that provides real-time discovery, analysis, and mapping of IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n wireless networks and Bluetooth devices. In an effort to standardize wireless security for the purpose of detecting, and thus deterring, unauthorized wireless activity, the DoD’s Enterprise-Wide Solutions Steering Group, in 2006, selected Flying Squirrel as the standard DoD tool for wireless discovery and mapping. In order to meet follow-on requirements for continuous monitoring, a variant of Flying Squirrel called Orb-weaver was developed to fulfill this requirement using multiple fixed sensors. Flying Squirrel and Orb-weaver technology helps combat the exfiltration of sensitive information over wireless signals. Flying Squirrel was identified as one of NRL’s top 100 technology contributions to sea power and national security during its Centennial celebration in 2024.
ITD developed ARCADIA, a computational model for creating intelligent agents that embodies a theory of human cognition. It emphasizes the concept of attention for how it performs perception, reasoning, and decision making. ARCADIA agents have performed well on a wide range of tasks (e.g., object recognition, tracking, and autonomous driving). Current work includes deploying an ARCADIA agent to control the actions of a turret-mounted camera that performs active perception to ensure interesting objects and events are sensed.
- Advances in Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Goal Reasoning
ITD pioneered research on autonomous agents that can dynamically adapt their goals to their current environment. They have been demonstrated for controlling underwater autonomous vehicles (e.g., to avoid potential threats), simulated unmanned air vehicles in human/UAV air combat teams, and for satellite constellation decision making during ISR missions. NRL researchers extended these algorithms to reason with networks of goals, which supports collaborative autonomy objectives involving reasoning about the goals of human-robot teams.
ITD researchers have developed methods for reducing training time (by an order of magnitude), increasing the accuracy, and simplifying the deployment of deep (neural) networks. This has included automated techniques for tuning hyper-parameters (e.g., using cyclical methods for setting the learning rate) and for leveraging evidence of underfitting or overfitting the training data.
ITD has developed a variety of swarm intelligence algorithms for several unmanned air and ground platforms, and demonstrated their ability to learn emergent behaviors, follow gesture commands, and communicate in GPS-denied environments. Bio-inspired designs have been a strong focus; this has included using bat echolocation models to enable location and navigation of small, unmanned air systems, using slime mold behavior models to discover targets and establish communication networks among a swarm, and mosquito larvae models for locomotion of a heterogeneous swarm of air and underwater vehicles.
Organization
ITD (Code 5500) is organized into six Branches with specific foci and expertise, as detailed in the following six mission statements:
5510: The Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI) transfers emerging technology to Navy and joint warfighters based on the automation and extension of artificial intelligence and thinking processes crucial to complex decision-making. The Center's research program emphasizes four broad areas. Research in intelligent systems addresses cognitive approaches to intelligent and autonomous systems and Warfighter interaction with autonomous systems, as well as the development of systems capable of enhancing human/team performance. Research in adaptive systems emphasizes techniques that allow systems to change their level of autonomy in real time based on the operational environment and interactions with users, adapt to changes in their environment and to changes in their own capabilities, and learn new behaviors through interaction with the world. Interactive systems emphasize research, design, and development of novel user interaction techniques and multi-modal interfaces for autonomous systems and intelligent systems with particular interest in linking natural language interfaces to other modes of computer interaction, such as gestures and graphical modes of human-machine interactions. Research in perceptual systems investigates both low-level and high-level perceptual processes, and how cognition can improve the ability of systems to understand the world around them. Application areas include: autonomous vehicles and systems; intelligent decision aids; lessons-learned systems; command and control systems; cognitive robotics; human-robot and human-computer interaction; the cognition of complex visualizations, graph comprehension, interruptions, and resumptions; spatial cognition; audition; software and hardware for sensing and perception; discourse for human-computer dialog; linguistics of spatial relations; and speech input in human-computer interactions. The Center provides consultation and support to other components of NRL, the Navy, and DoD.
5520: The Networks and Communication Systems Branch conducts research and development in the area of military networks and communication systems. Research efforts emphasize the development and adaptation of communication and networking technology to meet Navy and DoD requirements. Commercial and open-source/open-standard capabilities are adopted where possible, and special emphasis is given to advancing open standards that are commercially viable and that can also meet DoD requirements. Otherwise, Science and Technology (S&T) efforts focus on those areas that are DoD-unique and unlikely to be addressed by other sectors. Methods are developed to dynamically allocate communication resources to meet warfighting needs. A particular focus concentrates effort in supporting network-, transport-, and application-layer functional performance over shared communication media; this includes the development of mechanisms that enable acceptable application performance under typical wireless operational network conditions of limited data rate, frequent link outages, high packet-loss, and network dynamics caused by node mobility. Use of discrete-event computer simulations, including industry standard software tools, permit design and testing of all forms of packet-switched networks. We implement prototype systems to test new networking concepts and capabilities. Experiments are conducted in the laboratory, on the NRL campus, over DoD R&D networks, and at various field activities. We provide systems engineering, consultation, and support to other components of NRL, Navy, and DoD in the areas cited above.
5530: The Information Operations Branch performs basic research, advanced concepts research, and prototype development focused on defensive and offensive technologies with the end goal of achieving information dominance across all warfighting domains. Research and development thrusts in this area focus on the development of Cyber/EMW effects, analysis and exploitation of commercial wireless technologies, non-traditional communications techniques required to enable distributed information operations (IO), and the design and development of autonomy-enabled non-kinetic payloads. Specific S&T focus areas include advanced signal processing techniques, enhancements to detection and geolocation theory, special communications, software defined radio technologies, advances in the area of COMINT technologies and algorithms designed to enable distributed autonomous operations in highly denied environments.
5540: The Center for High Assurance Computer Systems (CHACS) performs basic research, exploratory development, and advanced technology demonstrations in techniques for processing and communicating data that must exhibit critical properties such as secrecy, integrity, availability, safety, and timeliness. Current research activities cover a broad range of topics including communication security, network security, computer security, security evaluations, security engineering, formal specification/verification, software engineering, and real-time systems. Current applications include cryptographic devices, cryptographic key technology, cryptographic protocols, secure command and control systems, Internet security, and high-speed network security. The Center also provides consultation and support to other components of NRL and the Navy in the planning and execution of projects that exploit secure information processing technology. The Center works closely with the National Security Agency (NSA), Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
5580: The Information and Decision Sciences Branch conducts basic and applied multidisciplinary research in human factors, human-systems integration, artificial intelligence, mathematics, modeling and simulation, enterprise and service-oriented architectures, and systems engineering in order to prototype and develop adaptive and resilient military decision systems. The primary application domains of the Branch research include Command and Control, logistics, cyber/electronic-warfare, personnel training, personnel selection, maritime domain awareness, autonomy, and Testing, Evaluation, Verification and Validation (TEV&V) of complex decision systems.
5590: The Center for Computational Science (CCS) conducts advance computing, data storage and communications systems modeling and simulation (M&S, to include emulation) to address Navy, DoD and IC requirements. The Center investigates and develops leading-edge technologies to establish an advanced computational environment that will benefit both researchers and warfighters. The Center studies new computing, storage and communications technologies – and their system-level interactions – to evaluate their potential. Promising technologies are further developed, enhanced, and transitioned based on customer needs. Primary research and development thrusts include: Information Systems Architectures (integrating High Performance Computing (HPC), High Performance Networks (HPN), and High Performance Data Systems, in both open and secure environments); Innovative Computer Architectures; Global Data Services (including wide-area CONUS/OCONUS efficient communications, distributed computing and secure data access); Tactical and Tactical-Edge data links, Mobile Area Networks; and scalable DevOps environments enabling software engineering for HPC frameworks. The Center also researches the integration of highly scalable geo-dispersed networked computing with harsh constraints on latency, data-location, data volume in a technology environment in which deployable software & hardware systems change rapidly. The CCS is an Affiliated Resource Center (ARC) within DoD's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) where it provides access to leading edge computing systems and networks to both NRL and DoD partners.