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

WASHINGTON — National Security Agency Director Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone today announced the creation of a new entity to oversee the development and integration of artificial intelligence capabilities within U.S. national security systems.

The AI Security Center will become the focal point for developing best practices, evaluation methodology and risk frameworks with the aim of promoting the secure adoption of new AI capabilities across the national security enterprise and the defense industrial base.

The new entity will consolidate the agency’s various artificial intelligence, security-related activities.

“The AI Security Center will work closely with U.S. Industry, national labs, academia across the [intelligence community] and Department of Defense and select foreign partners,” Nakasone said during a discussion hosted by the National Press Club in Washington.

He added that the unique talent and expertise at the NSA make the agency well suited to support the government’s effort to ensure the U.S. maintains its competitive edge in AI.

U.S. officials have emphasized the increasing role AI is having in shaping the national security landscape and have taken steps to shape the future of the emerging technology.

Nakasone noted the most recent strategies guiding U.S. national security, defense and intelligence emphasize the increasingly consequential role of AI.

In January, the Defense Department updated its 2012 directive that governs the responsible development of autonomous weapon systems to the standards aligned with the advances in artificial intelligence.  In 2020, the department also published its Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway, which serves as a key example of U.S. leadership in promoting responsible stewardship of the rapidly emerging technology.

The U.S. has also introduced a political declaration on the responsible military use of artificial intelligence, which further seeks to codify norms for the responsible use of the technology.

Nakasone, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command and serves as the chief of the Central Security Service, warned that it is critical the U.S. maintain its leadership in AI as the technology matures.

“AI will be increasingly consequential for national security in diplomatic, technological and economic matters for our country and our allies and partners,” Nakasone said

“Today, the U.S. leads in this critical area, but this lead should not be taken for granted,” he said. “Our adversaries, who have for decades used theft and exploitation of our intellectual property to advance their interests will seek to co-opt our advances in AI and corrupt our application of it,” he said.

He said it is imperative that the NSA sets a clear path forward to address “both the opportunities and challenges of AI as industry rockets forward with innovation.”

“AI security is about protecting AI systems from learning, doing and revealing the wrong thing,” he said.

“We must build a robust understanding of AI vulnerabilities foreign intelligence threats to these AI systems and ways to encounter the threat in order to have AI security,” he said. “We must also ensure that malicious foreign actors can’t steal America’s innovative AI capabilities to do so.”

By Joseph Clark, DOD News