Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Keeps Branching Out.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

When the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center was stood up in 2018, it was established to bring together the Defense Department's various AI programs and projects. Two years later, JAIC is pivoting to new mission sets, expanding its portfolio and more closely working with industry.

The organization is currently working on 30 different projects across six different areas including joint warfighting operations, warfighter health, business process transformation, threat reduction and protection, joint logistics and joint information warfare.

The center is built "around getting a spark going or getting a prototype or making a market in some way, and then handing it off for transition and scaling right to a customer," said Nand Mulchandani, JAIC chief technology officer. "We're now starting to demonstrate great and exciting success across those products."

The joint warfighting mission initiative is the organization's flagship product and is looking at means to transform the way the United States will go to war, Mulchandani said during an exclusive interview with National Defense on his first day back as chief technology officer after serving as the acting head of JAIC.

In late September, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Michael Groen was confirmed by the Senate to serve as its director.

"Our early products... were really focused on kind of starter AI projects when it came to things like predictive maintenance and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief," Mulchandani said. "The algorithms were not that hard.... [However,] joint warfighting is the hardest problem at the DoD for us to take on."

The center is starting with technology such as human-machine teaming and decision support, Mulchandani said.

"There are different ways of displaying information, about communicating information, about absorbing information," he said. "We're spending time with our commanders, with training and education, etc., on how to absorb AI-enabled systems. And we want to do that in a very systematic, deliberate way where we start out with human-machine teaming, decision support, etc., and then work our way toward things like autonomy and others."

Joint warfighting will contribute to many Pentagon efforts such as joint alldomain command-and-control and the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System program, he said.

In May, the center awarded the joint warfighting operations initiative's prime contract to Booz Allen Hamilton. The contract has an $806 million...