The Internet of Battle Things

The battlefield of the future will be densely populated by a variety of entities ("things") -- some intelligent and some only marginally so -- performing a broad range of tasks: sensing, communicating, acting, and collaborating with each other and human warfighters. We call this the Internet of Battle Things, IoBT. In some ways, IoBT is already becoming a reality, but 20-30 years from now it is likely to become a dominant presence in warfare. To become a reality, however, this bold vision will have to overcome a number of major challenges. As one example of such a challenge, the communications among things will have to be flexible and adaptive to rapidly changing situations and military missions. In this paper, we explore this and several other major challenges of IoBT, and outline key research directions and approaches towards solving these challenges.