The modern battlespace is rapidly evolving into a multi-domain operational environment where the convergence of electromagnetic spectrum operations and cyberspace significantly alters mission execution dynamics. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), especially those used for reconnaissance and strike missions, function as strategic force multipliers, yet their dependence on wireless communication makes them inherently vulnerable to cyber threats. This paper presents a mission-engineering-based quantitative framework to evaluate the impact of cyber threats on military drone operations. By linking measures of performance (MoP) to Measures of Effectiveness (MoE), scenario-driven simulations assess the cyber resilience of reconnaissance (UAV-R) and strike (UAV-S) platforms. Key performance indicators―such as communication latency, autonomous navigation resilience, misfire rate, and data integrity―were used to compute integrated effectiveness scores. Results indicate an effectiveness degradation of approximately 31.6% for UAV-R and 38.9% for UAV-S under cyber-contested conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to apply a mission engineering framework for quantitatively assessing the cyber survivability of military UAV operations. The framework serves as a decision-support tool for evaluating mission viability and designing resilient cyber defense structures in UAV-centric military operations.
Chung-Man Oh (Fri,) studied this question.
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