Security strategy for US Air Force to use commercial data link

The ACARS data link security strategy presented in this paper is based on internationally accepted cryptographic standards. The proposed algorithms were approved by NSA for US government use. The use of standards and the PKI infrastructure will reduce the implementation cost due to the availability of COTS software and components. The proposed strategy will satisfy the authentication, cryptographic data integrity, and encryption needs of the USAF. It will permit the USAF to use a commercially available technology now for most of its command and control applications for air transport, thereby conserving scarce military communication resources for tactical applications.