War Secretary Pete Hegseth, a 2025 Wash100 winner, has issued a new memorandum to establish a department-wide strategy to boost artificial intelligence adoption and experimentation.
How Will the Pentagon Accelerate AI Adoption in the Military?
The strategy aims to transform the Department of War into an AI-first warfighting force by identifying and eliminating bureaucratic barriers, expanding experimentations and investments in AI infrastructure, and shortening mission execution timelines, according to the memorandum published Friday.
“Speed defines victory in the AI era, and the War Department will match the velocity of America’s AI industry,” Emil Michael, under secretary of war for research and engineering, stated in a DOW press release. “We’re pulling in the best talent, the most cutting‑edge technology, and embedding the top frontier AI models into the workforce — all at a rapid wartime pace.”
Michael will deliver a keynote speech at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 29. The highly anticipated summit will also host a panel discussion on AI deployment to support missions featuring Matthew Redding from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency and Alex Fitzsimmons of the Department of Energy. Get your tickets today.
The strategy is aligned with America’s AI Action Plan, which President Donald Trump introduced in July to outline various policy actions that would help the United States achieve global dominance in AI.
What Are the War Department’s AI Pace-Setting Projects?
The strategy also lays out seven Pace-Setting Projects, or PSPs, to set new execution standards for the department. Each PSP will have a single accountable leader and aggressive timelines and will explore enhanced integration of AI across warfighting, intelligence and enterprise.
The seven PSPs are:
- Swarm Forge, a mechanism for iteratively identifying, testing and scaling ways to fight with or against AI-enabled capabilities.
- Agent Network, which involves the deployment of AI agents for battle management and decision support.
- Ender’s Foundry refers to AI-enabled simulation capabilities to stay ahead of adversaries.
- Open Arsenal, which would speed up weapons development from intelligence.
- Project Grant will turn deterrence from static postures to dynamic pressure
- GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s platform that provides department-wide access to AI models, including Google Gemini and xAI’s Grok.
- Enterprise Agents, which would create a playbook for the rapid and secure development and deployment of AI agents to support enterprise workflows.
