Anti-Drone Capabilities: Using a Quality Assurance Technology to Identify Exploitable UAV Weaknesses

This paper considers the challenge of cybersecurity attacks against unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using a quality assurance (QA) paradigm. Anti-quality assurance (AQA), in essence turns quality assurance, which is designed to identify defects to prevent incorrectly manufactured or damaged products from being sold or deployed, on its head. Using the same QA technologies, AQA uses remote-sensed imagery and fault tree analysis to identify exploitable weaknesses in UAVs that represent a prospective pathway to achieving drone impairment or destruction goals. This paper presents the AQA concept and its application to drones.