The Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking proposals for the development of a specialized Large Language Model (LLM) aimed at enhancing cybersecurity for aviation and missile systems, addressing vulnerabilities from both traditional and AI-based threats. The primary objective is to create a tool that assists assessment teams in identifying and modeling vulnerabilities, thereby providing critical inputs for both blue and red teams within the DoD. This initiative is crucial for improving the cyber resilience of weapon systems during their development phase, ultimately enhancing their operational effectiveness against sophisticated cyber threats. Interested parties can submit Phase I proposals with a funding cap of $250,000 for a six-month period, with the application due by January 8, 2025. For more details, visit the solicitation agency's website at https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/.

## Description

The primary problem this topic addresses is the growing complexity of traditional and AI/ML-based cybersecurity threats to DoD weapon systems, increasingly connected and automated weapon systems architectures, and the need for advanced tools to enhance development-phase cyber resiliency efforts and exploit modeling. This topic is essential because it will improve US DoD aviation and missile platforms' resilience, survivability, and lethality through the enhanced identification and exploitation modeling of system vulnerabilities during system development. This will achieve significant impact in the most cost-effective phase of the system lifecycle. The proposed approach leverages state-of-the-art LLMs to develop a specialized tool for system security engineering risk reduction efforts (blue team and AAMCATs) and provides critical exploitation inputs to DoD-approved red team operations. This topic innovates on existing technology by fine-tuning a foundational LLM built to analyze complex weapon system codebases, identify vulnerabilities, and generate proof-of-concept exploits. This approach combines natural language processing and code analysis capabilities, creating a powerful tool that surpasses current manual and automated analysis methods. The proposed LLM will be trained on the large amounts of relevant data available to DEVCOM AvMC including code, network traffic, static and dynamic analysis results, external software code bases and malicious software examples, and threat intelligence from partner US Government organizations. The LLM will be integrated with AvMC software and hardware integration labs to provide further tuning and address the issue of run-time analysis when software code is unavailable to the cyber resiliency team.

## Objective

The proposed topic will develop a Large Language Model (LLM) tailored to reduce the risk of traditional and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) adversarial attacks on aviation and missile systems. The proposed LLM will assist &ldquo;blue&rdquo; and adversarial assessment teams with vulnerability identification and exploitation modeling. Outputs from the LLM will be utilized as inputs to US Army DEVCOM AvMC &ldquo;blue&rdquo; team activities and inputs to designated DoD red teams. The LLM prototype will identify vulnerabilities and create proof-of-concept exploits in a threat intelligence-informed environment.

## Phase I

This topic is only accepting Phase I proposals for a cost up to $250,000 for a 6-month period of performance. Technical Feasibility Study of the proposed LLM including data and technical requirements, cost, and acquisition plans/schedule. The final Study whitepaper milestone is due six months after the start of the project. Interim milestones include Data Identification, Sufficiency, and Access (2 months), Weapon System Prototype Identification (3 months), Interim Model Selection/Strategy (4 months), and Resource Identification (5 months).

## Phase II

Prototype-scale model training and deployment in a controlled environment that identifies defined vulnerabilities and generates representative proof of concept exploits of a selected aviation or missile weapon system (24 months). Interim milestones will validate or inform the project development team to include a Concept Review in month 6 (design concept approval), a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) in month 10 (review of preliminary design and datasets), an Intermediate Design Review (IDR) in month 14 (approval to proceed to model development/training), a Training Review in month 19 (approval for full-scale training), and a Critical Design Review (CDR) at month 22 (review fully trained model/results). Monthly status reports will inform progress toward milestone and objective achievement.

## Phase III: Dual Use Applications

Implementation of the developed LLM can be used as a resource to design systems and identify security flaws for commercial, academic, and research use cases. The model potentially scales when trained with commercial data.<ul><li>&emsp;Financial Services: As the biggest buyer of cybersecurity software and services, financial services and Wall Street will be a big market segment for these systems</li><li>&emsp;eCommerce: Protect systems that use AI/ML, like Amazon, from malicious actors</li><li>&emsp;Manufacturing: As digital engineering continues to proliferate, manufacturing will need AI/ML vector analysis</li><li>&emsp;Healthcare: Similar to the proliferation of AI in other sectors, healthcare contains very sensitive data that requires state-of-the-art AI/ML cybersecurity </li><li>&emsp;Energy &amp; Utilities: Again, similar to the above sectors, it requires AI/ML cybersecurity. </li></ul>

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The project A254-006 focuses on developing a specialized Large Language Model (LLM) aimed at enhancing cybersecurity for aviation and missile systems, addressing vulnerabilities arising from both traditional and AI-based threats. The LLM will assist assessment teams in identifying and modeling vulnerabilities, producing valuable inputs for both blue and red teams within the Department of Defense (DoD). 

The project's significance lies in its potential to bolster the cyber resilience of weapon systems early in their development, thereby enhancing their operational effectiveness. The proposed method incorporates advanced natural language processing and code analysis to surpass current analysis technologies. 

The project comprises two phases: Phase I involves a feasibility study with specific interim milestones aimed at identifying data requirements and weapon system prototypes, capped at $250,000 over six months. Phase II entails training a prototype LLM within a controlled environment, focusing on exploit generation for aviation or missile systems over 24 months, incorporating reviews at various stages to ensure progress.

Furthermore, the developed LLM may have dual-use applications across sectors like finance, e-commerce, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy, highlighting its broader potential beyond defense. The initiative emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity in increasingly digital environments, aiming to mitigate risks from sophisticated cyber threats.

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