Post-quantum Key Exchange with ML-KEM in the Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-05

This writeup is for the IETF draft draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04, intended to be
a Proposed Standard.

Document History

1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?

I believe that the WG reached a broad consensus.  A total of 18 people agreed with the
adoption call and 8 people agreed with the WGLC.  No disagreement was seen on the
mailing list or in any of the working group meetings.

2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?

No.  There was some small controversy about a possible downgrade attack (addressed by
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention), but that really was against the RFC 9370
structure that this can use, not this draft itself (and is being addressed separately by
the referenced draft)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No such threat of an appeal or extreme discontent was noted.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

There exist at least four implementations in the public (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks,
Strongswan, Apple).  The document does not currently include an Implementation Status
section.

Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

No, it does not.  It is entirely an internal option for IKE.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

It does not involve a MIB, YANG, media types or URI, hence such reviews are not required.

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

The document does not contain a YANG module

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

No parts of the document were written in a formal language.

Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

I believe that it is ready to be handed off to the Area Director

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

No issues need to be addressed; the security considerations already address things
adequately.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The request is for a Proposed Standard; I believe it is appropriate because it is stable, has
resolved known design choices (which, in this case, are not that many), is believed to be
well-understood, has received significant community review, and has received a good
amount of community interest.  I believe that the datatracker state attributes correctly
reflect this.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

A query for IPR claims was made on the IPsec mailing list on 2/27/26; the author (Panos)
replied on 2/27/26 that he was unaware of any such IPR claims.

Two entities (Algo consulting and CNRS) have asserted intellectual property claims
regarding ML-KEM. NIST has reached an agreement with these parties to allow for the
royalty-free, global use of ML-KEM, provided that implementations adhere to the
specifications defined in FIPS 203.  An implementation of this draft would adhere
to that specification.

See https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/documents/selected-algos-2022/nist-pqc-license-summary-and-excerpts.pdf
for a summary of the agreement.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The sole author expressed in a private email a willingness to be acknowledged as an author.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

The current version of the draft (draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04) has all known nits
addressed.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

I believe that the references are categorized properly.  Now, it is possible to implement this
draft without RFC 9242 or RFC 9370; however, in most situations, they will be required, and
hence I believe their categorization as normative is appropriate.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

All normative references are freely available, either as RFCs or as NIST publications.

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

There are no normative downward references.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

All normative references are in a complete state (either a published RFC or NIST
publication).

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No, this document does not change the status of any RFC.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

The IANA considerations section is appropriate.  IANA has already added preliminary entries
into its "Transform Type 4 - Key Exchange Method Transform IDs" registry; all that
remains is for IANA to retarget them to this RFC when it is published.  In addition, the
version of the protocol in the current draft is compatible with the preliminary version
cited, hence retargeting the IANA entries does not cause interoperability issues.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

No new IANA registries are required.

The following Last Call announcement was sent out (ends 2026-06-15):

From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
CC: debcooley1@gmail.com, draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem@ietf.org, ipsec@ietf.org, ipsecme-chairs@ietf.org, sfluhrer@cisco.com
Reply-To: last-call@ietf.org
Sender:
Subject: Last Call:  (Post-quantum Key Exchange with ML-KEM in the Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)) to Proposed Standard


The IESG has received a request from the IP Security Maintenance and
Extensions WG (ipsecme) to consider the following document: - 'Post-quantum
Key Exchange with ML-KEM in the Internet Key Exchange
  Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)'
  as Proposed Standard

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final
comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
last-call@ietf.org mailing lists by 2026-06-15. Exceptionally, comments may
be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the beginning
of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

Abstract


  NIST standardized ML-KEM, a new key encapsulation mechanism, which
  can be used for quantum-resistant key establishment.  This draft
  specifies how to use ML-KEM by itself or as an additional key
  exchange in IKEv2 along with a traditional key exchange.  These
  options allow for negotiating IKE and Child SA keys which are safe
  against cryptographically relevant quantum computers.




The file can be obtained via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem/


The following IPR Declarations may be related to this I-D:

  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/7227/

This writeup is for the IETF draft draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04, intended to be
a Proposed Standard.

Document History

1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?

I believe that the WG reached a broad consensus.  A total of 18 people agreed with the
adoption call and 8 people agreed with the WGLC.  No disagreement was seen on the
mailing list or in any of the working group meetings.

2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?

No.  There was some small controversy about a possible downgrade attack (addressed by
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention), but that really was against the RFC 9370
structure that this can use, not this draft itself (and is being addressed separately by
the referenced draft)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No such threat of an appeal or extreme discontent was noted.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

There exist at least four implementations in the public (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks,
Strongswan, Apple).  The document does not currently include an Implementation Status
section.

Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

No, it does not.  It is entirely an internal option for IKE.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

It does not involve a MIB, YANG, media types or URI, hence such reviews are not required.

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

The document does not contain a YANG module

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

No parts of the document were written in a formal language.

Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

I believe that it is ready to be handed off to the Area Director

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

No issues need to be addressed; the security considerations already address things
adequately.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The request is for a Proposed Standard; I believe it is appropriate because it is stable, has
resolved known design choices (which, in this case, are not that many), is believed to be
well-understood, has received significant community review, and has received a good
amount of community interest.  I believe that the datatracker state attributes correctly
reflect this.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

A query for IPR claims was made on the IPsec mailing list on 2/27/26; the author (Panos)
replied on 2/27/26 that he was unaware of any such IPR claims.  As of 3/15/26, no one
else has responded with any claims.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The sole author expressed in a private email a willingness to be acknowledged as an author.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

The current version of the draft (draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04) has all known nits
addressed.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

I believe that the references are categorized properly.  Now, it is possible to implement this
draft without RFC 9242 or RFC 9370; however, in most situations, they will be required, and
hence I believe their categorization as normative is appropriate.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

All normative references are freely available, either as RFCs or as NIST publications.

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

There are no normative downward references.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

All normative references are in a complete state (either a published RFC or NIST
publication).

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No, this document does not change the status of any RFC.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

The IANA considerations section is appropriate.  IANA has already added preliminary entries
into its "Transform Type 4 - Key Exchange Method Transform IDs" registry; all that
remains is for IANA to retarget them to this RFC when it is published.  In addition, the
version of the protocol in the current draft is compatible with the preliminary version
cited, hence retargeting the IANA entries does not cause interoperability issues.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

No new IANA registries are required.

This writeup is for the IETF draft draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04, intended to be
a Proposed Standard.

Document History

1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?

I believe that the WG reached a broad consensus.  A total of 18 people agreed with the
adoption call and 8 people agreed with the WGLC.  No disagreement was seen on the
mailing list or in any of the working group meetings.

2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?

No.  There was some small controversy about a possible downgrade attack (addressed by
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention), but that really was against the RFC 9370
structure that this can use, not this draft itself (and is being addressed separately by
the referenced draft)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No such threat of an appeal or extreme discontent was noted.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

There exist at least four implementations in the public (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks,
Strongswan, Apple).  The document does not currently include an Implementation Status
section.

Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

No, it does not.  It is entirely an internal option for IKE.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

It does not involve a MIB, YANG, media types or URI, hence such reviews are not required.

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

The document does not contain a YANG module

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

No parts of the document were written in a formal language.

Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

I believe that it is ready to be handed off to the Area Director

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

No issues need to be addressed; the security considerations already address things
adequately.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The request is for a Proposed Standard; I believe it is appropriate because it is stable, has
resolved known design choices (which, in this case, are not that many), is believed to be
well-understood, has received significant community review, and has received a good
amount of community interest.  I believe that the datatracker state attributes correctly
reflect this.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

A query for IPR claims was made on the IPsec mailing list on 2/27/26; the author (Panos)
replied on 2/27/26 that he was unaware of any such IPR claims.  As of 3/15/26, no one
else has responded with any claims.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The sole author expressed in a private email a willingness to be acknowledged as an author.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

The current version of the draft (draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04) has all known nits
addressed.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

I believe that the references are categorized properly.  Now, it is possible to implement this
draft without RFC 9242 or RFC 9370; however, in most situations, they will be required, and
hence I believe their categorization as normative is appropriate.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

All normative references are freely available, either as RFCs or as NIST publications.

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

There are no normative downward references.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

All normative references are in a complete state (either a published RFC or NIST
publication).

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No, this document does not change the status of any RFC.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

The IANA considerations section is appropriate.  IANA has already added preliminary entries
into its "Transform Type 4 - Key Exchange Method Transform IDs" registry; all that
remains is for IANA to retarget them to this RFC when it is published.  In addition, the
version of the protocol in the current draft is compatible with the preliminary version
cited, hence retargeting the IANA entries does not cause interoperability issues.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

No new IANA registries are required.

This writeup is for the IETF draft draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04, intended to be
a Proposed Standard.

Document History

1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?

I believe that the WG reached a broad consensus.  A total of 18 people agreed with the
adoption call and 8 people agreed with the WGLC.  No disagreement was seen on the
mailing list or in any of the working group meetings.

2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?

No.  There was some small controversy about a possible downgrade attack (addressed by
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention), but that really was against the RFC 9370
structure that this can use, not this draft itself (and is being addressed separately by
the referenced draft)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No such threat of an appeal or extreme discontent was noted.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

There exist at least four implementations in the public (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks,
Strongswan, Apple).  The document does not currently include an Implementation Status
section.

Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

No, it does not.  It is entirely an internal option for IKE.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

It does not involve a MIB, YANG, media types or URI, hence such reviews are not required.

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

The document does not contain a YANG module

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

No parts of the document were written in a formal language.

Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

I believe that it is ready to be handed off to the Area Director

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

No issues need to be addressed; the security considerations already address things
adequately.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The request is for a Proposed Standard; I believe it is appropriate because it is stable, has
resolved known design choices (which, in this case, are not that many), is believed to be
well-understood, has received significant community review, and has received a good
amount of community interest.  I believe that the datatracker state attributes correctly
reflect this.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

A query for IPR claims was made on the IPsec mailing list on 2/27/26; the author (Panos)
replied on 2/27/26 that he was unaware of any such IPR claims.  As of 3/6/26, no one
else has responded with any claims.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The sole author expressed in a private email a willingness to be acknowledged as an author.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

I worked with the author to work out these nits.  The current version of the draft (draft-ietf-
ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04) has two known valid minor nits: a) two information references (RFC 8784,
RFC 9867) which are not mentioned in the text (they were to text that has since been removed)
and b) a nonASCII quotation mark that could be replaced by an ASCII one. Neither of these are
fsshowstoppers, and the author has stated that the next version of the draft will fix these.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

I believe that the references are categorized properly.  Now, it is possible to implement this
draft without RFC 9242 or RFC 9370; however, in most situations, they will be required, and
hence I believe their categorization as normative is appropriate.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

All normative references are freely available, either as RFCs or as NIST publications.

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

There are no normative downward references.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

All normative references are in a complete state (either a published RFC or NIST
publication).

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No, this document does not change the status of any RFC.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

The IANA considerations section is appropriate.  IANA has already added preliminary entries
into its "Transform Type 4 - Key Exchange Method Transform IDs" registry; all that
remains is for IANA to retarget them to this RFC when it is published.  In addition, the
version of the protocol in the current draft is compatible with the preliminary version
cited, hence retargeting the IANA entries does not cause interoperability issues.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

No new IANA registries are required.