Combatant commands to get new generative AI tech for operational planning, wargaming
The U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command and European Command are first in line to receive new generative artificial intelligence capabilities delivered by Scale AI and its industry partners via the Thunderforge initiative, the Defense Innovation Unit announced Wednesday.
DIU — a Silicon Valley-headquartered organization which has embedded personnel at Indo-Pacom and Eucom to help tackle some of the combatant commands’ tech-related challenges.
On Wednesday, DIU announced that Scale AI was awarded a prototype contract for the new Thunderforge capability, which will include the company’s agentic applications, Anduril’s Lattice software platform and Microsoft’s large language model technology.
“The Thunderforge technology solution will provide AI-assisted planning capabilities, decision support tools, and automated workflows, enabling military planners to navigate evolving operational environments. By leveraging advanced large language models (LLMs), AI-driven simulations, and interactive agent-based wargaming, Thunderforge will enhance how the U.S. military prepares for and executes operations,” the unit said in a release.
DIU issued a solicitation for the program last year via its commercial solutions opening contracting mechanism.
“The joint planning process is complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Planners and other staff members must synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources, consider multiple courses of action (COA), and produce detailed operational plans and orders – often under significant time pressure. As the operational environment becomes more complex and dynamic, there is a need to accelerate and enhance joint planning capabilities while maintaining rigor and human judgment,” the document stated.
In a statement Wednesday, Bryce Goodman, Thunderforge program lead and contractor with DIU, noted that current military planning processes rely on decades-old technology and methodologies.
The U.S. military wants new tech that can quickly ingest, process and summarize large volumes of information relevant to military planning; identify key insights, patterns and relationships; produce draft operations plans, concept plans and operations orders; and perform automated wargaming of courses of action and provide comparative analysis of advantages, disadvantages and risks.
“Our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense. Working together with DIU, Combatant Commands, and our industry partners, we will lead the Joint Force in integrating AI into operational decision-making. DIU’s enhanced speed will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage,” Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang said in a statement.
According to DIU, initial deployments of the system to Indo-Pacom and Eucom are expected to support “mission-critical” planning activities such as campaign development, theater-wide resource allocation and strategic assessment.
If the tech meets expectations, plans call for scaling the Thunderforge capability across the U.S. military’s combatant commands in the future.
