The Internet of Military Things (IoMT) is a class of Internet of things for combat operations and warfare. It is a complex network of interconnected entities, or "things", in the military domain that continually communicate with each other to coordinate, learn, and interact with the physical environment to accomplish a broad range of activities in a more efficient and informed manner. The concept of IoMT is largely driven by the idea that future military battles will be dominated by machine intelligence and cyber warfare and will likely take place in urban environments. By creating a miniature ecosystem of smart technology capable of distilling sensory information and autonomously governing multiple tasks at once, the IoMT is conceptually designed to offload much of the physical and mental burden that warfighters encounter in a combat setting.
Over time, several different terms have been introduced to describe the use of IoT technology for reconnaissance, environment surveillance, unmanned warfare and other combat purposes. These terms include the Military Internet of Things (MIoT), the Internet of Battle Things, and the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT).
Overview
The Internet of Military Things encompasses a large range of devices that possess intelligent physical sensing, learning, and actuation capabilities through virtual or cyber interfaces that are integrated into systems. These devices include items such as sensors, vehicles, robots, UAVs, human-wearable devices, biometrics, munitions, armor, weapons, and other smart technology. In general, IoMT devices can generally be classified into one of four categories (but the devices are meant to be ubiquitous enough to form a data fabric):
Data-carrying device: A device attached to a physical thing that indirectly connects it to the larger communication network. Data-capturing device: A reader/writer device capable of interacting with physical things. Sensing and actuating device: A device that can detect or measure information related to the surrounding environment and converts it into a digital electronic signal or a physical operation. General device: A device embedded with processing and communication capabilities that can exchange information with the larger network.
In addition to connecting different electronic devices to a unified network, researchers have also suggested the possibility of incorporating inanimate and innocuous objects like plants and rocks into the system by fitting them with sensors that will turn them into information gathering points. Such efforts fall in line with projects related to the development of electronic plants, or e-Plants.
Proposed examples of IoMT applications include tactical reconnaissance, smart management of resources, logistics support (i.e. equipment and supply tracking), smart city monitoring, and data warfare. Several nations, as well as NATO officials, have expressed Interest in the potential military benefits of IoT technology.
History
Advancements in IoMT technology largely stemmed from military efforts to bolster the development of sensor networks and low-power computing platforms during the 1960s for defense applications. During the Cold War, the U.S. military pioneered the use of wireless sensor network technologies to detect and track Soviet submarines. One example was the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), a network of underwater acoustic sensors, i.e. hydrophones, placed throughout the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to act as underwater listening posts for above-ground facilities. Much of the sensor and networking technologies that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) developed during this time period ultimately served as the foundation for modern IoT systems. Critically, the DoD helped set the stage for future IoT research in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, an early precursor to the Internet that geographically-dispersed military scientists used to share data.
In the 1980s, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) formally partnered with academic researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Carnegie Mellon University to further develop distributed, wireless sensor networks. From there, research into wireless sensor technologies spread throughout the civilian research community and eventually found use for industrial applications such as power distribution, wastewater treatment, and factory automation. During this time period, the DoD also invested heavily in the miniaturization of integrated circuits in order to embed various objects with tiny computer chips. As a result of their funding, the commercial microelectronics industry was able to recover when it faced potential decline at the time.