How Agentic AI Will Transform Army Operations
The Department of Defense is running a $200 million ChatGPT pilot with OpenAI that is expected to explore agentic AI.
Yet most of the government’s AI conversations remain centered on the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to refactor and modernize legacy coding languages such as COBOL to get off mainframes, says Joel Krooswyk, former federal CTO at GitLab.
AI agents are far more context-aware and will have a better idea than developers of which projects are impacting a particular app, allowing for better orchestration of refactoring.
DISCOVER: Artificial intelligence can help with hybrid cloud security challenges.
“That ‘keep the lights on’ stuff that’s eating 50% of our time?” Krooswyk asks. “We, for the first time ever, have a shot at actually getting rid of this stuff.”
Agentic AI will certainly be a buzzword at TechNet Augusta, and its longer-term impacts on Army operations will likely be discussed, such as eliminating the manual work around marking targets and clearing areas in war zones. That work currently takes a human hours or days to examine all possible routes for threats.
“Agentic AI can do it in minutes,” Demma says. “It still has to be validated, obviously, but agentic AI will do all of the background research for you very quickly.”
LEARN MORE: Agencies must be proactive in protecting data from artificial intelligence threats.
Realizing Next-Generation Command and Control
Other TechNet Augusta priorities for the Army include topics such as network resilience, survivability in contested environments and seamless data integration from the battlefield to mission command. Once the data is all in one place, AI can process it for digital overmatch on the battlefield. But that’s easier said than done.
“Right now, there are too many stovepipes and systems that don’t talk well,” Pasquesi says.
The Army needs application programming interfaces, apps, data and network layers seamlessly integrated to fully realize next-generation command and control, he says.
Also on the TechNet Augusta agenda are discussions about modernizing the Army enterprise to save money, incorporate AI into cyberthreat hunting and how to take advantage of automation.
“You’re down people. Your budgets have been cut. Nobody’s coming to save you and nobody cares,” Demma says. “The biggest thing right now is finding ways to help in lieu of all of the reduction and slimming down of resources.”
To learn more about TechNet Augusta, visit our conference page. You can also follow us on the social platform X at @FedTechMagazine to see behind-the-scenes moments.