Army Investing in Predictive Maintenance for Bradleys.

• Author: Jordan, Sonja

The Army is taking advantage of artificial intelligence to better predict when vehicles will break down or need parts replaced.

The service recently awarded AI company Uptake a $1 million contract facilitated by the Defense Innovation Unit to integrate the company's predictive maintenance software into Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

The Army plans to use it to anticipate component failures and reduce the amount of unplanned maintenance, said Matthew Lehner, a spokesperson for Uptake. "The end result is increasing the readiness of the fleet," he said.

Vehicles such as the Bradley must be ready at a moment's notice, said Ganesh Bell, president of the Chicago-based company. "Leveraging AI will provide the United States a strategic edge to keep our country secure and the warfighter safe," he said in a statement.

Data for the software is being gathered via sensors and telematics already installed on the vehicle. It will be collected and combined with Uptake's artificial intelligence software to give insight into when a part may need maintenance, Lehner said.

The military wants to increase readiness for commanders and individual troops, he said. The system will give them "an empirical sense of what is the health of that Bradley vehicle," he noted.

Travis Burton, a project manager at the Defense Innovation Unit, said predictive maintenance will also increase equipment availability. Burton compared predictive maintenance to the way a car is taken in for oil checks.

"What we're trying to do is go from a scheduled maintenance concept... [where] you bring your car in every 5,000 miles for an oil change, to a predictive [maintenance] noting which parts are most likely to fail on your car and when, based on a number of data sources," he said in an interview.

"That's where... the subset of artificial intelligence that is machine learning really comes in," he added. "That's what enables you to ingest vast amounts of data and be able to make those predictions."

The Pentagon recently stood up an organization called the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which aims to develop and integrate new AI and machine learning tools across the department.

James Marceau, an aerospace and defense expert at the consulting firm PA Aerospace and Defense, said predictive maintenance has the capability to reduce costs and improve effectiveness for combatant commanders.

"When you have the right contracts in place, the right intelligence and the right visibility and...