The Pentagon announced today that it is sunsetting its organization that developed, evaluated, recommended, and monitored generative AI capabilities across the Defense Department (DoD) – dubbed Task Force Lima – and is replacing it with a new AI Rapid Capabilities Cell (AI RCC).
The AI RCC will be focused on accelerating DoD adoption of next-generation AI, such as generative AI, and will be managed by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
The Pentagon said its new effort will focus on accelerating and scaling the deployment of cutting-edge AI-enabled tools, to include frontier models, across the defense landscape.
“DIU’s role is bringing the very best commercial tech to bear to meet critical warfighter problems with the focus, speed, and scale required to meet the strategic imperative,” said DIU Director Doug Beck.
“Our partnership with CDAO, and collaboration on the Rapid Capabilities Cell, will allow us to shape critical AI initiatives in a way that incorporates the standards, policy, and requirements from the beginning,” he said. “The result will help us scale the tech faster and more reliably, and will also help change the way the Department thinks about software development and delivery tempo for the future.”
“The US commercial sector is at the cutting edge when it comes to artificial intelligence, and digital solutions,” said Chief Digital and AI Officer Radha Plumb. “We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to accelerate development and deployment of these tools for the Department of Defense to responsibly harness the tremendous promise of AI in everything from financial management to logistics to operations planning to autonomous systems.”
According to the DoD, the AI RCC is leveraging the findings from Task Force Lima to accelerate and scale the deployment of cutting-edge AI-enabled tools across 15 use cases for generative AI covering warfighting and enterprise management.
Specific use cases include weapons development and testing, uncrewed and autonomous systems, and cyber operations, according to a new fact sheet on the AI RCC.
The AI RCC will initially be resourced with approximately $100 million in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 for pilot efforts that apply generative AI models to priority use cases, and investments in foundational AI infrastructure and tools.
The biggest chunk of this money – $40 million – will go towards new and emerging companies for solutions leveraging generative AI. Additionally, $35 million will go towards frontier AI pilots; $20 million will go towards compute and a sandbox for AI development; and $5 million will go towards rapid user-centric experimentation.
In partnership with other parts of the department, industry, and academia, DoD said the CDAO and DIU will take a rapid experimentation-based approach to the AI pilots.
DoD established Task Force Lima in August 2023. In a report out today that summarizes the work of the organization, the DoD said the deputy secretary of Defense recommended sunsetting Task Force Lima as an independent unit and federating generative AI adoption efforts across the Pentagon.
