- “AI-enabled technologies are helping soldiers detect explosive hazards, identify cyber threats and improve battlefield awareness
- The Army is using AI to accelerate acquisition processes
- Army officials and industry executives will discuss AI adoption, experimentation and deployment at the 2026 Army Summit
The U.S. Army has implemented artificial intelligence at scale, integrating the technology into all aspects of military operations from the enterprise to the tactical edge. In line with executive mandates and the Department of War’s strategy to become an AI-first warfighting force, the Army is heavily investing in and accelerating the experimentation and deployment of AI to enhance warfighting, address capability gaps and protect the nation from adversaries. War’s
The Potomac Officers Club will host a panel on AI at the 2026 Army Summit this Thursday. Join military decision makers and defense industry executives as they explore more AI use cases at the Army and evaluate the technology’s impact on operational efficiency and readiness. Register here to join the conversation.
How Is the Army Using AI?
Mine Hunting
One way the service is exploring the use of AI is to protect soldiers and military assets from explosive hazards on the battlefield.
The Army Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, also known as the C5ISR Center, is testing a suite of hardware and advanced sensors, powered by AI-enabled software, under the Ground-based Multi-Mission Payload, or GMMP, project.
The system, mounted on a military vehicle or a robot dog, can automatically scan the ground and classify and report threats.
“The system incorporates a government-developed and -owned open AI architecture built by Army subject-matter experts,” Kendall Johnson, C5ISR Center physicist and the project’s technical lead, told Army.mil. “The Army can add the best algorithms from any source, at any time. The concept remains relevant into the future with the ability to incorporate new technologies as they emerge.”
The GMMP team plans to transition the technology from prototype to a cross-platform demonstrator. Further tests will be conducted to mature the technology and ensure that it can operate across a wide range of conditions, including extreme temperatures and humidity.
Cyberthreat Detection
Cyber has become a critical warfighting domain, and AI has become one of the Army’s main tools for defending and fighting on the digital frontlines.
The U.S. Army Cyber Command, which is responsible for shielding Army networks from threats and carrying out cyber operations to achieve information dominance, has combined NimbusAI, a workflow engine, and GuardianGPT’s conversational interface to enable analysts to make sense of the data generated by the Gabriel Nimbus big data platform.
“The friction we’ve encountered was making sense of the scale of data that Gabriel Nimbus provides at an operationally relevant speed,” Capt. Ryan Brown, platform and integration lead for ARCYBER Data Management & Analytics, explained to Army.mil.
He added that NimbusAI, an AI-native platform, closes the gap, allowing soldiers to shift their energy from finding threats to assessing how to best intercept already-identified threats.
Realistic & Adaptable Training
AI is helping create more realistic training scenarios to sharpen the skills and readiness of soldiers. In June, the U.S. Army Reserve’s B Company, 411th Civil Affairs Battalion navigated a simulated environment where the team had to interact with foreign communities and collect civil intelligence.
For the exercise, the Army Reserve utilized AI to generate realistic and highly adaptive interactions with the simulated populace.
“Today is to assess civil affairs teams, so our tactical level elements, ability to conduct their two main tactical tasks: civil reconnaissance and civil engagements,” Maj. William O’Neill, commander of B-Co., 411th CA Bn, said about the exercise.
The AI-enabled exercise also exposed Army Reserve soldiers to shadow trucking, a practice where an enemy force would conceal personnel, weapons and supplies in commercial transportation networks.
Faster Acquisition
The Army is also accelerating and streamlining the acquisition and delivery of new warfighting capabilities to soldiers through AI.
Personnel at the Army Contracting Command–Aberdeen Proving Ground and other contracting centers began testing AI prototypes designed to automate the development of Acquisition Requirement Packages, documents that explain what the government is buying and how existing regulations are met, Army.mil reported in February.
Patrick Colleran, director of acquisition management at U.S. Army Program Executive Office Enterprise, said crafting an ARP is the “single biggest muscle movement” in the pre-contract award process because personnel need to ensure that the hundreds of pages of requirements documents are consistent and do not contain duplicative or conflicting information.
The AI-enabled tools, according to the Army, can cut the time acquisition teams spend on working on ARPs from weeks to hours or even minutes.
“If the Army must fight tonight, we’re going to need a lot of stuff quickly. Prepositioned supplies and inventories will only go so far,” Colleran added. “A tool like this, which accelerates the path to contract award, is a critical event.”
Situational Awareness
The Army’s 4th Infantry Division has begun testing Rivet Industries’ AI-driven face computers, Axios reported in May. The company already delivered 70 Soldier Borne Mission Command, or SBMC, systems to the Army, and expects to manufacture more.
SBMC, a successor to the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, is expected to provide soldiers with an AI-enabled look at the battlefield.
Dave Marra, CEO of Rivet, told DefenseOne in 2025 that his company’s system will provide soldiers and logistics professionals, maintainers and other military personnel access to a range of AI capabilities.
“So you think, ‘I have to control robots, and I have to do it without significant training and learning. I want to recognize nouns on the battlefield that could be a target: that could be a good guy, a bad guy, or another noun on the factory floor. I want to identify anomalies, more importantly, correlate in these data sets,” he stated.
What to Expect From the 2026 Army Summit’s AI Panel
The From Data to Decision: How AI is Transforming the Army Today panel at the 2026 Army Summit will explore how the U.S. Army is leveraging data and AI to achieve decision dominance and support warfighting operations.
Speakers include:
- Retired Col. Joel Babbitt, former program executive officer for Special Operations Forces–Warrior Systems and current vice president for Army and Special Operations Command at Seekr
- CW4 Reginald Oliver, chief digital transformation officer for the Capability Program Executive Office Aviation
- Chip Daniels, executive program director at Exiger
The panel will also discuss:
- Lessons learned from Project Convergence experimentations
- Efforts to rapidly acquire and field AI
- Strategies for operationalizing AI on the tactical edge
The 2026 Army Summit will feature keynotes from top Army leaders, such as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller Marc Andersen, to explore the service’s planned capability investments as part of its transformation efforts. Tickets are limited, so sign up today!
