U.S. Air Force Seeks Industry Collaboration for AI-driven Command and Control in Contested Environments

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., has issued a broad agency announcement (FA8750-23-S-7006) for the Artificial Intelligence and Next Generation Distributed Command and Control project. This initiative aims to harness artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance command and control capabilities in contested environments.

Challenges and objectives

The primary challenge of this project is to effectively manage AI for command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) amidst adversarial interference. 

By transitioning from a monolithic command and control node to a distributed architecture, the Air Force seeks to empower military decision-makers with advanced AI capabilities to assess the battlespace, formulate optimal plans, and direct forces seamlessly.

Technical areas

The project comprises eight technical areas:

Command and Control of Mission-Tailored AI: Adapting AI models swiftly to address specific mission requirements and establishing robust battle management tools for training and deploying mission-tailored AI.

Federated, Composable Autonomy and AI Toolbox: Developing collaborative AI tools to facilitate information sharing, raw data analysis, and third-party developers’ creation of AI components.

Advanced Wargaming Agents: Integrating AI into wargaming technology to enhance evaluation benchmarks, gaming environments, and simulation capabilities.

Interactive Learning for C4I Data: Implementing efficient machine learning approaches that leverage human input to rapidly train models for various intelligence and planning tasks.

Command and Control Complexity Dominance Generative AI C4I: Exploring strategies to exploit operational complexity and impose cognitive overload on enemy agents to influence their decisions and actions.

Software Defined Distributed Command and Control: Prototyping use-cases to leverage generative AI in optimizing distributed command and control resources across operational theaters.

Tactical AI: Leveraging distributed sensors to detect, analyze, and mitigate interference sources through intelligent command and control mechanisms.

Project details and how to participate

The Artificial Intelligence and Next Generation Distributed Command and Control project is anticipated to allocate approximately $99 million over the next four years. Interested parties are invited to submit white papers outlining their capabilities and proposed solutions to the respective technical contacts listed for each area. The deadline for white paper submissions is March 2027.

Companies with promising submissions may be invited to submit full proposals for further consideration. White papers should be emailed to the technical contacts of each technical area.