This paper describes the initial results of a research program that is designed to enhance the security of wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) by developing a distributed intrusion detection capability. Our approach uses self-organizing spiking neural networks that have the ability to establish connections across a widely distributed, and highly dynamic network. This capability enables our approach to demonstrate a distributed reasoning functionality that facilitates the detection of complex attacks against MANETs. The results of the evaluation of our approach and a discussion of additional areas of research is presented.