Space Force, Air Force team up in AI sprint to sharpen mission edge

The Department of the Air Force has completed a two-week experiment in Las Vegas aimed at accelerating battlefield decision-making through artificial intelligence and human-machine teaming, bringing Space Force Guardians into the effort alongside Airmen for the first time. The Multi-Decision Advantage Sprint for Human-Machine Teaming, or MASH, took place at the Shadow Operations Center-Nellis and was led by the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System Cross-Functional Team in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, U.S. Space Force, and the 805th Combat Training Squadron. Officials said four allied nations observed the event as the services deepen work on integrated architectures and future interoperability.

Building on earlier single-function Decision Advantage Sprints (known as DASH), MASH combined an ensemble of AI and automation tools into a common battle management framework designed to link air, space, cyber, maritime, and ground domains. “The Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control Campaign Plan demands that we make better, timelier decisions,” said U.S. Air Force Col. John Ohlund, Advanced Battle Management System Cross-Functional Team director. “By incorporating AI into our battle management architecture, we are ensuring our operators can rapidly process vast amounts of data and deliver lethal effects faster than ever before.”

Organizers cast the Space Force’s active role as a key milestone, noting that Guardians worked side-by-side with developers and Air Force battle managers to shape software that spans contested domains. “Working with Air Force battle managers opened my eyes to how the air domain tackles these challenges. Their focus on tempo, synchronization and rapid Courses of Action iteration mirrors what Space Force needs, especially when dealing with contested electromagnetic environments,” said U.S. Space Force 1st Lt. Abby Warner, 16th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron deputy flight commander. “Turns out our decision-making headaches are similar across domains, and Transformational Model-based services adapt quickly to space ops.” U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Corey Ellsworth, the ABMS Cross-Functional Team integration lead, added, “There are parallels to decision advantage requirements between the air and space domains, especially during major combat operations where all domains are contested.”

U.S. Space Force Col. Teina Stallings-Lilly, the ABMS Cross-Functional Team deputy director for space operations integration, said the work is intended to bridge service-specific gaps and ensure operators can move beyond traditional decision-support tools toward capabilities that process information at machine speed. “As the operations integrator between the services, my goal is to bridge the gap between our domains,” Stallings-Lilly said. “By having our Guardians in the seat for this experiment, they are seeing the direct applicability of these AI tools and, in turn, are providing the expertise needed to build a truly integrated DAF Battle Network.”

The sprint followed AFRL’s WARTECH approach, which embeds warfighters with technologists, planners, and acquisition experts to co-create capabilities for rapid fielding. “The DASH to MASH series is really a textbook example of what WARTECH is intended to accomplish and right in line with the Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management strategy for agile, rapid and iterative fielding of software solutions to support immediate warfighter needs and long-term force modernization,” said Jeffrey Palumbo, AFRL C3BM Capability Area lead. “This approach of user-producer co-creation allows for proof of concept, energizes the industrial base, allows for early operator feedback to shape development, and sets us up to deliver chunks of decision advantage capability to the warfighter in a rapid and repeatable cycle.”

Six industry teams and a ShOC-N military software team were tasked to build tools around three core decision functions derived from the Air Force’s Transformational Model: identifying what actions are possible against a target, matching the right capabilities to achieve desired effects, and assembling full courses of action across an execution window. A central orchestrator tied disparate vendor tools together so they could share data and metadata in real time. “AFRL has done incredible work building an orchestrator that ensures these different companies can exchange data, ontologies and metadata seamlessly,” Ohlund said. “We are proving that a true plug-and-play, modular approach not only works, but it fosters continuous competition and allows the government to select the best-of-breed software services as they mature.”

Airmen and Guardians served as expert evaluators throughout, stress-testing AI logic and providing immediate feedback to developers seated behind them. “This is a true co-creation environment where software developers work directly with warfighters to ensure the tools meet their exact needs,” said Elizabeth Frost, AFRL MASH lead. “The teams are eager for feedback and implemented changes rapidly. This collaborative effort paid off during the second week of the sprint, as we saw a remarkable increase in the volume and quality of courses of action submitted.” On the operations floor, participants reported immediate productivity gains. “A week ago, it took my team and me 50 minutes to an hour to get one tasking done. With the help of the tool, we were able to get five or six taskings done,” said U.S. Air Force Capt. Adam Sochia, 552nd Operations Support Squadron ABM.

ShOC-N also fielded a military development team that coded alongside industry, applying operational experience to ensure machines handled data-intensive work while humans retained control of tactical decisions. “The synergy we are seeing here… is what has been lacking in previous attempts to accelerate delivery of warfighter capability,” said Lt. Col. Wesley Schultz, 805th CTS/ShOC-N commander. “Our mission at the ShOC-N is to remove barriers to creative problem-solving, allowing us to turn innovative concepts like human-machine teaming into tangible, lethal capabilities at speed.” Program leads said a common application programming interface and architecture underpinned a unified user interface so that, regardless of the vendor software in use, operators saw a consistent experience.

Officials framed the sprint as both a validation of the Transformational Model and a template for future multi-domain command and control. “The reason we challenge the software to solve multi-domain problems is because that’s the reality of the future fight,” said Ohlund. “An Air Force air battle manager doesn’t have the authority to execute a space or cyber effect, but like any good staff officer, it’s their job to prepare the information and package the options for the general. We want the computers to do that work, to ruminate over every possible multi-domain effect; that way we can present the highest quality menu of decisions to the right commander, faster than ever before.” He added, “By demonstrating that diverse, AI-enabled tools can integrate effectively within this model to accelerate the kill chain, the DAF has taken a critical step toward securing decision advantage for the Joint Force.”