WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is exploring a wide range of artificial intelligence capabilities, from predictive maintenance of intercontinental ballistic missiles to analysis of reams of satellite data.
This has won Air Force and Space Force research contracts to provide AI tools that can identify vulnerabilities in acquisition programs by analyzing historical data and predicting potential problems before they occur. Opportunities arise for AI startups like Virtualistics.
Kyle Rice, chief technology officer for Verticalix’s federal business, said he has heard Space Force leaders talk about the need to improve how the service acquires satellites and other systems. said he believes AI tools can help.
AI can alert you to risks in procurement by analyzing historical data and uncovering patterns in past contracts, Rice said Feb. 13 at the Aerospace Forces Association Conference in Aurora, Colorado. Said at the war council.
AI for predictive maintenance
Pasadena, Calif.-based Verticalix has a contract with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center to use its platform to predict maintenance needs for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile fleet. Under a separate contract, Air Force Global Strike Command is using an AI platform for predictive maintenance of the nation’s bomber fleet. This technology helps identify maintenance needs and potential equipment failures, and manage inventory and human resources.
“Space Force leadership is talking about improving procurement, making things faster and how to streamline it,” Rice said. “From an AI perspective, I’m excited about this because one of his areas of AI that is gaining attention, especially in the Department of Defense, is around project evaluation.”
This is basically using AI techniques to look at data about past programs. “We collect so much data about how we build things: procurement documents, financial documents, delivery schedules,” Rice said. “And when you run the model against them, you get a really good idea of what the attributes are that will make the system successful.”
Uncovering hidden trends and red flags related to vendors, projects and technologies could save the Department of Defense millions of dollars, he said. “This is a very interesting use case for AI,” he said. “We can determine that this project may not get off the ground because they are doing certain things that are not related to on-time delivery success.”
This is an example of “collecting data and doing something good with it,” Rice said.
Can AI be trusted?
Rice spoke on a panel moderated by Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military aide to U.S. Space Force acquisition executive Frank Calvelli.
Purdy said the Space Force is looking to AI to enhance space situational awareness. Companies are developing AI systems that can scan vast amounts of satellite data and automatically identify and track objects in orbit. This real-time intelligence is critical to monitoring threats and protecting critical space assets.
Purdy also raised questions about whether governments can effectively trust AI, rightly pointing to the public’s wariness of AI chatbots that generate misinformation.
Rice explained that most AI tools used by the military, such as those for space domain awareness, rely on structured data sets, so the analysis results are not fabricated. “That means that once we have the results, we can back them up and understand why the model is suggesting things the way they do,” he says. “Obviously, for the Department of Defense’s specific use cases, this is very important.”
In contrast, widely used AI applications like ChatGPT fall into the category of generative AI. “That’s great. There’s a lot you can do there. But the major drawback is that it’s not an explainable method. Even if you get a result, you don’t actually know how you got there.” Hmm. There’s no way to prove that.”
“For some use cases that’s a bad thing, but for others it doesn’t make any difference,” Rice added.
He pointed out that the military is primarily looking for AI to enhance analytics, not content creation. The strength of Generative AI is its ability to create new things. However, what you generate may not actually be accurate. So it can be used in conjunction with other types of AI that are more deterministic. ”
