How the Air Force Is Using AI to Fix Supply Chain Challenges

August 25, 2024

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, its Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) experienced a decline in its supplier community with a loss of 3,000 vendors , or about 22 percent of its total vendors between 2016-2022, resulting in supply delays and increased pricing. Some of the key factors that lead to that decline include clarity and understanding between different levels of the supply chain in sharing insights on lead times, parts availability, pricing, quality, and more.

In March 2024, the Air Force took a step toward addressing some of those supply chain issues by expanding its partnership with Spark Cognition Government Systems (SGS) under a contract awarded to them by the Ohio Aerospace Institute through the Digital, Research, Innovation and Experimentation (D.R.I.V.E.) Consortium. SGS is a subsidiary of SparkCognition, and describes itself as "the first artificial intelligence (AI) company devoted entirely to government and national defense."

The contract expands SGS’ partnership with the United States Air Force to deploy AI-powered solutions, in collaboration with Boeing. This aims to strengthen the Air Force’s supply chain health and create mitigation strategies for operational risks.

“Supply chain issues, like long lead times and information gaps, are undermining our military’s ability to be mission ready,” said Art Sellers, SGS President and General Manager. “With SGS’ AI-enabled solutions, actionable insights are generated to help the Air Force quickly identify and fix supply chain vulnerabilities and strengthen our national security posture.”

Sellers is the guest on this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast to explain how the Air Force is leveraging generative AI, large language models and other new technologies to increase warfighting readiness, reduce expense, and enhance industrial-base resilience.

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