Frontline innovators are key to making the technological breakthroughs that will enable warfighters to maintain the United States’ edge into the future, according to a senior defense technology official.  

Margaret Palmieri, the Defense Department’s deputy chief digital artificial intelligence officer, said the most pressing technology challenges facing the Pentagon must be solved with an approach that combines top-down guidance with expertise at the operational level.   

“There are principles that we as a Defense Department need to enforce in how our systems are architected and how we buy capability,” Palmieri said during a panel discussion on scaling software and artificial intelligence for DOD applications. The event, held last week, was hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology in Washington.   

“After that, capabilities really need to be driven by the operational problems,” she said.   

Palmieri noted the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps has made strides in integrating commercial technology with battlefield expertise to deliver software and AI solutions to key battlefield problems. 

The unit developed a comprehensive AI-based, decision-support system known as the Maven Smart System by bringing warfighters, developers and technicians together through its Scarlet Dragon exercise series.   

The MSS accesses sensor data and applies algorithms to assist frontline soldiers in identifying and striking military targets. It also assists in chain-of-command approval for strikes and serves as a repository for battle damage assessments after strikes are carried out.   

Palmieri said the unit’s success in developing the solution was driven by a culture of innovation that permeated all levels of the organization.   

“When you go down the XVIII Airborne, you just get this sense of something different is happening here,” she said. “And it’s not just because the leadership there is pushing something on their people …. You really do see a learning environment, one where their individual members are contributing in ways that you would never expect.” 

She said defense leaders must enable that same sense of buy-in across the department. That principle, she said, is at the forefront of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s approach.   

“In CDAO, we think a lot about not what can we deliver …, but, really, what can we deliver that enables innovation to happen across the department?” Palmieri said.   

“The answers are not going to all come from the Pentagon,” she said. “The good ones are going to come from the people that are closest to the problem, and you have to give them the tools and the data and the capabilities and the understanding to be able to pull that together in real time.”

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