Enterprise AI Applications Ordered Under US MDA Production Agreement

C3 AI has secured three new orders from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to accelerate deployment of critical enterprise artificial intelligence capabilities across the MDA.

These orders are the first in C3 AI’s five-year, $500 million Production-Other Transaction Agreement from the US Department of Defense (DoD). 

The first order will support efforts to rapidly produce accurate representations of advanced threats using generative machine learning models. As MDA develops the next generation of missile defense interceptor systems, massive data sets are required to capture the total view of potential threats. These data sets can then be used for a variety of analyses and simulations. 

C3 AI hopes to provide an enterprise AI application enabling MDA users to:

• Unify large data sets across the agency from physics-model outputs and intelligence sources
• Manage machine learning generative model pipelines
• Accurately generate novel threat signatures in a fraction of the time of the agency’s current methods
• Export data in MDA standard or compressed formats compatible with a growing ecosystem of engineering applications

The second order will equip the agency’s test programs with an AI application to plan, analyze, and execute Missile Defense System flight/ground test events, such as pre- and post-test efforts including hardware-in-the-loop system tests and post-flight reconstruction. 

The solution, initially deployed to an Impact Level 6 (IL6) classified cloud environment, will be capable of:

• Integrating disparate flight and ground test data into a unified, federated data model
• Configuring pipelines to automatically generate test analyses
• Launching AI-backed exploration of new insights

The third order will further accelerate the agency’s Ground Test process by optimizing and automating key facets of the process, consolidating and unifying test requirements from multiple stakeholders, and ingesting, unifying, and analyzing engineering data at enterprise scale.

“An enterprise AI platform that allows for credible assessment of combined kinetic and non-kinetic effects across domains is critical to optimize and correctly evaluate missile defense mission effectiveness,” said Ed Abbo, C3 AI President and CTO. “We are thrilled to fulfill the MDA’s first three orders in our five-year partnership.”

“The insights extracted from large volumes of sensor, network, and weapon system test data are critical to analyzing the operational effectiveness, suitability, and survivability of the Missile Defense System,” said Dr. Shari Feth, MDA Innovation Science and Technology Director. “The deployment of an enterprise AI platform has allowed MDA to demonstrate robust end-to-end capabilities for collaborating on AI model development and rapidly deploying insights into new production applications.”