A Mission-Centric Cyber-Resilience Benchmark for Silent-Watch Operation of Electrified Ground-Platform Power Architectures
SOC spoofing on electrified platforms can silently cripple mission endurance when defenses are undersized.
A new paper from researchers Hongyu Wu and Raul Rodriguez introduces a mission-centric cyber-resilience benchmark specifically designed for silent-watch operation of electrified ground-platform power architectures. Silent-watch mode—where the engine is off and mission loads run on stored energy—relies heavily on supervisory energy management, making it vulnerable to attacks like battery state-of-charge (SOC) spoofing. Instead of evaluating attacks solely through detector response or control error, this benchmark ties SOC spoofing directly to mission outcomes using a reduced-order DC-bus model, residual-based detection, and fallback load shedding. Four mission-facing metrics—endurance, critical-load service, unsafe-voltage exposure, and detection delay—provide a holistic view of resilience. The work is validated through MATLAB-to-Simulink parity across five regression scenarios, setting the stage for hardware-in-the-loop testing with OPAL-RT/EXataCPS.
The study's core finding is that SOC spoofing creates a structured stealth-versus-impact envelope. Small biases have limited mission effect, intermediate biases produce a closed-form endurance deficit proportional to bias magnitude, shed power, and average battery draw, and large biases completely disable the SOC-driven guard. Critically, the team demonstrates that defense value depends as much on fallback depth as on detection. An undersized fallback action can paradoxically leave the defended system worse off than an undefended attacked one, highlighting the need for careful trade-offs in cyber-resilient power system design. This work offers a practical benchmark for engineers building next-generation military and autonomous electric platforms.
- Connects battery SOC spoofing to mission outcomes via four metrics (endurance, critical-load service, unsafe-voltage exposure, detection delay).
- Identifies a closed-form expression for intermediate bias impact: endurance deficit depends on bias magnitude, shed power, and average battery draw.
- Shows that undersized fallback actions can make defended systems more vulnerable than undefended ones.
Why It Matters
For defense and autonomous platform engineers, this benchmark shows cyber-resilience in power systems hinges more on fallback depth than detection alone.