The U.S. Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office has increased the ceiling value of the contract it awarded to C3 AI to $450 million for expanded deployment of the company’s predictive analytics and aircraft maintenance platform.
Initially capped at $100 million, the modified contract requires work to be completed by October 2029, C3 AI said.
The company’s Predictive Analytics and Decision Assistant, or PANDA, is designed to monitor aircraft components to deliver near-real-time insights. The platform could enable predictive maintenance for hundreds of aircraft, including the B-1 Lancer, the C-5 Galaxy, the KC-135 Stratotanker, the C-17 Globemaster III and the C-130J Super Hercules.
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CBM+ System of Record
Powered by the C3 Agentic AI Platform and the C3 AI Readiness application, PANDA was designated by the Air Force RSO as the system of record for Condition Based Maintenance Plus and predictive maintenance. According to the company, the platform supports a Department of Defense initiative to improve fleet availability and reduce lifecycle costs through improved readiness.
“We believe our program with RSO may be the largest production AI deployment in the U.S. DoD today,” said Ed Abbo, chief technology officer at C3 AI. “At the scale of the U.S. Air Force, this system has the potential to increase aircraft availability by up to 25%. We consider it a great privilege to continue to serve and to expand our AI operations to assist the U.S. DoD in meeting its mission objectives.”
