U.S. Air Force harnesses quantum computing, data analytics to enhance decision making, save money

AUSTIN, Texas. U.S. Air Force officials are expanding the organization’s exploitation of data by leveraging machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data mining technologies and techniques. Action gleaned from data resident across the Air Force is expected to speed and improve decision making and optimize operations, resource allocation, and situational prediction to grow efficiency and reduce costs.

Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in Cambridge, Mass., has selected SparkCognition in Austin, Texas, to help develop Stage 1 of Project Quantum, intended to harness quantum computing – using computational systems to extract and exploit value from data – to augment senior-level decisions quantitatively.

Via DIUx, the U.S. Air Force will leverage machine learning and similar methodologies to analyze and reveal latent relationships within data resident across the Air Force, applying it to the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process. The PPBE process is how the Department of Defense (DOD) allocates resources.

SparkCognition has provided artificial intelligence (AI) technology and business-critical solutions to the aerospace, defense, energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, finance, telecommunications, and security markets.

Quantum computing is expected to increase the speed and accuracy of budgetary decisions by an order of magnitude, which “will revolutionize how the Air Force, and potentially the DOD as a whole, conducts business," says General John Allen, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), and executive board member of SparkCognition. "We are honored to be serving the U.S. Air Force in a way that will have a substantial and positive impact on planning and process. The advantage here is that SparkCognition's solutions are universally applicable, and can be applied to other DoD service components as well as every department and agency within the U.S. Government."

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"We are customizing an AI engine for the Air Force to provide actionable insights and behavior predictions," says Tim Stefanick, director of federal operations at SparkCognition and a retired USMC infantry officer who served on multiple overseas deployments and has had assignments in the White House and the intelligence community. "Together, SparkCognition and DIUx will transform operations for a new era of efficiency and confidence."

DIUx and SparkCognition will utilize AI technology to derive higher-order patterns from existing operational conditions. Utilizing data from the USAF, SparkCognition's technology will conduct macro- and micro-level analysis of operations and previously observed outcomes to best simulate the impact of any single decision, or multiple decisions, made by an incumbent party. Subsequent phases of this project will be dedicated to further refining SparkCognition's model given additional data and testing scenarios; collaborating with the USAF on UI design; and integrating with Air Force enterprise relational databases.

"We're proud to be working with the U.S. Air Force through DIUx," Stefanick adds. "SparkCognition will apply cutting-edge technology that will benefit our troops and our national security. We have endless applications for this technology and it is gratifying to be applying it in support of the U.S. government."

SparkCognition's cognitive enterprise solutions are deployed to some of the world's largest aerospace, defense, OEM, utility, O&G, and finance organizations, officials say. The company's Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions have detected asset failure with days, weeks, and months advance notice in electronic submersible pumps, artificial lifts, boiler feed pumps, combustion turbines, wind turbine gearboxes, and other critical industrial equipment.

SparkCognition's platform will enable the Air Force to reduce operating costs through improved enterprise-level decision-making, resource allocation intelligence, situational prediction, and operational optimization.

DIUx accelerates commercial innovation for national defense.

SparkCognition provides cognitive computing analytics, developing AI-powered cyber-physical software for the safety, security, and reliability of IT, OT, and the IoT. The company's technology is capable of harnessing real-time sensor data and learning from it continuously, allowing for more accurate risk mitigation and prevention policies to intervene and avert disasters.

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