Space Force joins Air Force sprint on AI battle management

The Department of the Air Force’s Multi-Decision Advantage Sprint for Human-Machine Teaming, known as MASH, brought Space Force Guardians into a Las Vegas experiment with Air Force battle managers, software developers and research teams to test AI-enabled battle management tools. Led by the Advanced Battle Management System Cross-Functional Team with the Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Space Force and Shadow Operations Center-Nellis, the effort focused on faster decisions across air, space, cyber, maritime and ground domains.

Guardians moved beyond observer roles and worked directly in the experiment, shaping tools meant to support space operations and contested electromagnetic environments. The sprint integrated software services from prior DASH events and used a common architecture to let disparate vendor systems exchange data, ontologies and metadata while presenting operators with a unified interface.

Warfighters served as expert evaluators, stress-testing AI decision logic and giving immediate feedback to developers. A U.S. Air Force battle manager reported that work previously taking 50 minutes to an hour produced five or six taskings with the tool, showing immediate gains in course-of-action generation. Officials said the model keeps human operators in control while shifting data processing to machines, advancing the Department of the Air Force’s broader push for integrated battle network capabilities.