Army Procurement and RDTE Programs Spending on Artificial Intelligence, FY 2021-23

Each spring, Deltek’s Federal Market Analysis (FMA) team takes a thorough look at the Department of Defense’s Procurement and Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation (RDT&E) budget requests for the fiscal year to come. FMA identifies programs using keywords that invest in certain technologies of importance to the contractor community. These technologies include cloud computing, big data analytics, cybersecurity/electronic weaponry, and others.

The Army data reveals an intent to spend $1.7B in FY 2023 on programs that use or prepare for the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technology in one way or another. This is up $200M from the $1.5B enacted for FY 2022.

Splitting the total numbers by Budget Activity yields the following insight.

As we can see, Army’s anticipated RDT&E spending continues to increase. AI/ML related Procurement funding, by contrast, fluctuates annually depending on the Army’s needs.

Identifying the specific AI/ML spend in every program is generally impossible due to the nature of the reported data. Readers should keep in mind, therefore, that the numbers presented here are the requested budgets for programs that plan to use the technology for a specific purpose (e.g., security, business processes, weaponry, etc.). The numbers presented here should not be considered the Army’s entire AI/ML related budget for FY 2023. They are best thought of as a signpost indicating what the Army could potentially spend on AI/ML.

Planned Investment by Largest Programs

Summing up, the chart below lists the Army programs with an AI/ML component that could be readily identified. They are  arranged from largest to smallest in dollar terms.

Because the totals shown are from the Procurement and RDT&E budget requests it means that the work involved could be new and available to contractors if a contract for it is competed.