Pentagon Earmarks $100 Million Develop AI Pilot Projects & Speed Up “Real-World Experimentation”

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The Department of Defense (DoD) has allocated $100 million to integrate generative artificial intelligence technologies across multiple domains to discover AI use cases, implement AI at a tactical level and test new models in a real-time environment for rapid feedback. The announcement is part of a newly set AI Rapid Capabilities Cell that replaces the department’s Task Force Lima, formed in August last year to study the suitability of generative artificial intelligence applications to the DoD’s requirements.

The new AI cell at the Pentagon will deploy tools across the department’s warfighting and enterprise domains, such as intelligence, logistics and weapons development.

Pentagon Expands Focus On AI By Launching Rapid Capabilities Cell With $100 Million To Spur Generative AI Applications

Over half of the AIRCC’s funding, or $75 million, will cover AI pilot projects and go to small businesses to develop AI use cases suitable for the Pentagon’s needs. These applications cover enterprise and warfighting use cases and domains such as logistics and operational planning. Within this funding, $40 million will be allocated to small businesses portion to “create priority applications” that are “ready to be scaled as quickly as possible,” according to DoD.

The remaining $35 million is for pilot projects to demonstrate the impact of AI on the Pentagon’s operations. This amount will be spread across four pilot projects, with two covering enterprise needs and two serving warfighting needs. As part of this effort, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, will team up with Command divisions to run 90-day pilot projects as part of “the first major effort deploying frontier AI models to support warfighter needs in real-time.“

Along with these two investments, the Pentagon has allocated $25 million for AI experiments and real-world implementation of frontier models.

Within this, the bulk is allocated towards establishing AI sandboxes for “testing and experimentation on government networks.” A sandbox is an isolated environment that enables programmers to run applications without affecting the broader software ecosystem. The CDAO will start this effort by rolling out two sandboxes by January 2025 and follow up with two additional sandboxes in the summer. As per the Pentagon, the initiative “will be executed in partnership with cloud service providers and will leverage industry to incorporate frontier AI models, development tools, and fine-tune capabilities in the sandboxes.”

The remaining $5 million will test AI’s implementation in real-life use cases across the department’s command divisions. The Pentagon has a global presence and operates through 11 command divisons such as the Space Command, Cyber Command, the Indo-Pacific Command and the Central Command.

The department’s Chief Digital and AI Officer, Dr. Radha Plumb, stressed the department needs an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to develop and deploy AI tools. She believes that the American private sector is the global leader in AI, adding that the DoD has to “responsibly harness the tremendous promise of AI in everything from financial management to logistics to operations planning to autonomous systems.”

Dr. Plumb’s department will work on the lessons learned from Task Force Lima, which was established last year. The task force recommended that the department increase the pace of AI pilot projects, work with industry and academia to use generative artificial intelligence and determine the best GenAI projects to scale.