AI is a key growth investment area for DoD, with nearly $1 billion allocated for 2020. Breaking Defense takes an in-depth look at what’s happening, and what’s ahead.

The massive Army Materiel Command needs to get a lot lighter on its feet for future conflicts, its four-star chief says.

“He said you’ve got tremendous people, you prototype pretty effectively, and you’re absolutely terrible — he had some more colorful words than that — for machine learning,” Gen. Thomas said. “It gave me a spark … and turned me into a zealot.”

“It’s not going to be just about , ’how do we get a lot of data?’” deputy undersecretary Lisa Porter told the House subcommittee. “It’s going to be about, how do we develop algorithms that don’t need as much data? How do we develop algorithms that we trust?”

Don’t think about the Terminator or Iron Man: Think about Sigourney Weaver’s power loader lifting crates in Aliens.

The Army needs to figure out how to support the forces it has more efficiently so they can maneuver more freely, with less frequent pit stops for maintenance or supply runs for repair parts. That’s where Uptake’s AI comes in.