Unmanned systems security: Models, challenges, and future directions

A series of promising technologies such as artificial intelligence and the sixth-generation mobile network are thriving in recent years, resulting in unprecedented development of unmanned systems. Because of its faster processing ability, stronger adaptability and longer working hours, unmanned systems have been widely applied in all kinds of fields, including but not limited to military, industry, agriculture, and medical treatments. The broad application also presents many problems, making the security of unmanned systems a significant concern. Nevertheless, current research is mostly focused on a single or specific system, while paying little attention to general security issues in unmanned systems. Toward this end, we provide in this article a unified definition and a brief overview of unmanned systems. After that, a two-dimensional security model is proposed from a holistic perspective, based on which we present comprehensive security analysis for unmanned systems, including the attack types and corresponding countermeasures. Several existing challenges are also identified and discussed in detail as well as future research directions.