WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army invested $50 million in small and nontraditional businesses to develop a variety of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions under its AI/ML open-topic solicitation.

Released in December 2022, the U.S. Army Small Business Innovation Research Program’s solicitation sought to enhance the Army’s operational capabilities and address broader national security efforts by tackling critical information gaps via AI technologies. With the help of industry, the Army prioritized the development of solutions ranging from radio-frequency identification to language translation.

During the Phase I performance period, 39 small and nontraditional vendors delivered concepts within these priority areas that highlighted their technologies’ commercial viability and technical feasibility. Now the Army will fund 26 of the selected businesses to a total of nearly $50 million to transform their concepts into prototypes ready for demonstration.

View the full AI/ML Open Topic infographic here.

The Army SBIR Program offers Phase I contract opportunities to small and nontraditional vendors exhibiting commercial viability, feasibility and technical merit. The program provides Phase II and Direct to Phase II contracts to vendors with mature technologies capable of gaining increased federal support and solving Army needs.

Vendors receive access to technical, acquisition and operational Army experts. These specialists offer information on the Army’s critical needs while providing guidance from within the Army research and development ecosystem. Selectees capitalize on this by collaborating with technical points of contact that serve as a resource for vendors as they mature their technologies for insertion into Army acquisition programs.

The Army SBIR Program releases contract opportunities on a rolling basis to respond to current and anticipated Soldier technology needs. The program will continue to promote new contract releases via topic announcements and email. We encourage you to follow U.S. Army SBIR|STTR on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn for the latest program announcements, updates and solicitation opportunities.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology leverages technologies and capabilities to provide U.S. Soldiers a decisive advantage in any environment by developing, acquiring, fielding and sustaining the world’s finest equipment and services. For more information, visit the ASA(ALT) web page and follow @ArmyASAALT.

Please contact the Army SBIR mailbox if you have any questions.

By Daniel Smoot, Office of Army Prize Competitions and Army SBIR Program

AUSTIN, Texas — As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into a number of industries, organizational leaders from the public and private sector are considering both the opportunities and risk posed by this rapidly evolving field of technology.

During a March 12 South by Southwest Conference panel in Austin, tech enthusiasts from the U.S. Army and industry discussed how advances in AI-augmented humans and humanoids — non-human entities, such as robots, that possess human characteristics — have the potential to reshape how humans work and accomplish complex tasks.

The panelists additionally discussed the importance of pursuing responsible AI, so that the new technology will serve to improve human lives and abilities.

“AI is not a panacea,” said Army Futures Command Director of Integration Col. Troy Denomy, who participated in the panel. Denomy clarified that AI can be a useful tool in optimizing the capabilities of humans and machines but is not a replacement for human brainpower or skill. He added that the Army does not want to create situations in which humans are working for robots but rather seeks to enable robots to work for humans.

To better understand the advantages AI can offer, the Army is evaluating new AI assistance methods through its Soldier-centered design model, which places Soldier participation and feedback at the core of experimentation efforts. The method takes inspiration from private industry best practices shaped around ensuring end-user satisfaction, such as Microsoft’s human-centered design methods.

Panelist Steven Bathiche, who leads Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group, highlighted how AI developers are shifting away from remote-controlled programming toward task-based programming, which allows humans to complete more complicated tasks by automating the repetitive ones. Bathiche commented on the Army’s historical ability to enable greater innovation and problem-solving in emerging fields of technology through mutually beneficial partnerships with entrepreneurs and industry.

Fellow speaker Young Bang, who serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, emphasized that interfaces with technology must evolve alongside the technology itself, so that analysts and Soldiers can more easily and intuitively interact with AI systems. Carefully assessing risk is also critical, and the Army continues to apply frameworks to identify and counteract risks, including when adopting third-party generated algorithms. The Army also plans — with the help of industry — to deepen its understanding of how integrating new AI capabilities may impact Soldiers’ well-being and behaviors, with an aim of improving personal, professional and operational outcomes.

“It’s about innovation and failing quickly. We don’t want programs that last 10 years and then decide to kill it. We want to learn faster and faster from our mistakes,” Bang said.

By Army Futures Command

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — First Army is leveraging the potential of artificial intelligence during large scale mobilization exercises and other missions.

Lt. Col. Melissa Sayers, First Army operations research systems analyst, or ORSA, said the first use will come during the 2024 iteration of Pershing Strike, First Army’s annual exercise to validate the Army’s ability to mobilize forces in support of large-scale combat operations.

The use will be limited but by the following year, the plan is for it be an integral part of the exercise and other First Army operations. It is forecasted to eventually be a routine part of how First Army does business. The hope, Sayers said, is that, “not only do will we have a simulation that we can run a million scenarios on but it’s part of our everyday operations, helping us get to decisions faster.”

Artificial intelligence is the use of computer systems to perform tasks that traditionally require human input and do them much faster. For First Army, faster information would lead to a boost in efficiency during operations that move a multitude of Soldiers and equipment to an assortment of locations across the country for training and mobilization.

“The machine can’t do it without the human,” Sayers noted. “Say we had a large-scale mobilization operation and we had all these units ready to head out the door and the medical unit shows up at 50 percent strength. With AI, we have the ability to pre-calculate solutions. We estimate what is going to happen if you make this decision, and we can go ahead and run it and calculate all those different decisions and have the best three or four recommended to the commander. The commander still makes the decisions but we can get there a lot faster if we have it pre-calculated and ready to run when something happens.”

AI is used in all manner of situations, from customer service to medical diagnoses to traffic patterns. At First Army, the plan is for it to create more efficient operations in exercises and mobilizations, including a large-scale mobilization operation if such an event arises.

“That’s what First Army cares about,” Sayers said. “We want to be able to push out the Reserve Component in a timely manner in event of a large-scale conflict. Once you have the model created, you can start playing with it. It helps leaders at very high levels figure out what levers to pull and what resources to apply to maximize what’s happening on the ground.”

Sayers noted the positive impact this can have for units of any size and the individual Soldiers.

“We have units full of people that need to be processed,” she said. “They need to arrive at their home station, they need to make sure they have all their equipment. What does it take to get the equipment fully maintained? What does the shipping network look like? How many observer coach/trainers should we have and of what flavor — do we need aviation, medical, infantry? How many medical stations? What if one of those stations goes down? What if one shows up at only half-strength? What happens at that location and what are our options to react to that problem. We can plot all this out.”

Partially due to the value of AI, First Army added an ORSA this year. “Anytime First Army has needed to do advanced analytics, it’s had to outsource it,” Sayers said. “They’ve never had anyone inhouse to advise the command and do the work.”

It’s a microcosm of what’s talking place across the Army.

”The ORSA role has exploded in the last couple of years,” Sayers said. “We’ve been limited on what we’re able to provide to the commands because the amount of data was not there to do deep qualitative analysis. Suddenly all this data is able to be collected because we have the hardware to be able to store it and we have the hardware to be able to collect it.”

Because of that, First Army and its partners will be better equipped to provide combatant commanders with trained and ready Reserve Component Soldiers.

By Warren Marlow