U.S. Northern Command has asked Congress for an additional $29.8 million to buy information technology equipment and to optimize infrastructure for artificial intelligence and machine learning at its joint operations center with the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The upgrades would buttress efforts to ingest, process and aggregate data across the Department of Defense’s cloud-computing environment and share intel with forces across all domains, also known as the “information dominance enabling capability,” according to a fiscal year 2023 unfunded priority list obtained by Defense News.
Artificial intelligence is an area of growing importance at the Defense Department. Its 2018 AI strategy described the tech as world-altering, poised “to change the character of the future battlefield and the pace of threats we must face.”
The latest NORTHCOM and NORAD wish list also included funding requests for a cruise missile defense homeland kill chain demonstration, $50.87 million, and upgrades to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, $49.3 million.
Another ask from the pair — $5.05 million to digitize Alaska Long Range Radar sites — also involves the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning and the modernization of systems.
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