Security vulnerabilities of cyberphysical unmanned aircraft systems

Unmanned aerial vehicles have rapidly become the air vehicle of choice across many industries in the global market, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicting no less than 4.3 million unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) sold annually by 2020 [1]. The aerospace industry has enjoyed great success in the rapid innovation of aircrafts and automation, but with rapid innovations in new technologies, comes new risks and vulnerabilities. Aviation, unlike many other industries, operates in extremely high-risk environments, with very little thresholds to security breaches. In a world with rapid advances in technology and elevated threats to homeland security from technologically able state and nonstate actors, it becomes an unavoidable obligation on military and civil aviation regulatory bodies to reinforce the need to investigate and assess the security of UAS in conventional and software-defined radio (SDR) cyberphysical UAS architectures, with their corresponding attack vulnerabilities, to ensure the aviation UAS industry is ready to face the many security challenges ahead with a clear security framework for the design and implementation of secure UAS.