Prof. Ray Buettner, US Navy: Hardware Cutout Switches Are Needed in Weapons

Transcript:

   We need the hardware cutout so that you can't just control everything by software.  There has to be an independent system that will render the software side of the system inoperative or to a controlled minimum mode.  We need that cutout switch, and I think that's doable.  But good engineering and good testing will be required to see that happen.  If we're going to make them weapon systems, we need to invest the extra cost to make sure we can control - We can always cause a graceful or controlled failure when we need to.  And I think that just has to be part of good design.

- Prof. Ray Buettner, Naval Postgraduate School, 2020

Without this architecture, next-gen software-enabled weapons systems will be able to be hacked en masse, resulting in a hostile takeover of thousands or tens of thousands of US networked weapons simultaneously.

If you work at a defense contractor, please take Prof. Buettner's advice extremely seriously during the system architecture phase of every project. I propose that to fail to do so should be considered criminal negligence, as it would be intentional disregard of industry best practices ---- the best practices stated here by Prof. Buettner.

His bibliography: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3gSfhaIAAAAJ&hl=en

The Naval Postgraduate School website: https://nps.edu/