The Air Force Wants Artificial Intelligence for Multiple Uses

Recently, I highlighted Air Force efforts to embrace and leverage numerous emerging technologies in various ways. One additional emerging technology that bears specific, closer investigation is the Air Force’s efforts to realize the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to increase effectiveness and efficiencies across both mission and enterprise systems.

As is the case at so many federal departments and agencies, AI and ML fall within the larger category of automation technologies – to include robotic process automation (RPA) – as a means to reducing the burden of repetitive tasks, such as data retrieval and aggregation and other tasks.

Here are just a few of the automation and AI-related efforts underway at the Air Force:

• AF Automation Strategy is Coming: The Air Force is drafting a new automation strategy to help guide investments in areas such as robotic process automation (RPA), with a goal of quickly passing data between systems without the need for human interaction.
• Space AI: The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer Lisa Costa is on the record as viewing artificial intelligence and machine learning as critically important to building space domain situational awareness and a resilient space architecture.
• IA Research Center: The Air Force is creating an academic-affiliated research center to focus on tactical autonomy support missions such as situational awareness, force protection, cyber defense and logistics. The center will also focus on system collaboration and man-machine learning.
• Weather Modeling: The Air Force is using AI for military planning to improve weather models over parts of the world where the U.S. military may be headed but does not have ground-based sensors to collect data.
• Injury Prevention: The 118th Air Support Operations Squadron is using AI to improve fitness training, reduce injuries and watch for traumatic brain injuries using data sensors on personnel to gather and feed the data into a machine learning platform.

As these and similar efforts materialize and mature, expect efforts to multiply in scope and size. Many get their start at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). (Or see their .com site.)

As with most initiatives to develop and harness these automation technologies, the Air Force will continue to look to innovative companies with which to partner to bring new capabilities to bear on the military service’s multifaceted operational domain.   

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For more information on Air Force and other Department of Defense and Intelligence Community IT initiatives and forecasts for contractor addressable spending, see Deltek’s report, Federal Defense and Intelligence IT Market, 2022-2024.