Space Force Advances AI Adoption After Strategic Pause
Feb. 26, 2025 | By Greg Hadley
Less than 18 months after cautioning Guardians against using emerging artificial intelligence tools, the Space Force is actively exploring and expanding its adoption of AI. Seth Whitworth, acting deputy to the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Cyber and Data, detailed the progress during Booz Allen’s Space + AI Summit in Arlington, Va., where industry speakers touted AI’s potential benefits for domain awareness and command and control.
The Space Force initially ordered its AI pause in September 2023. The reason was anxiety that Guardians were using unproven generative AI tools absent rigorous testing and proof of their safety and reliability. “There was a whole lot of unknowns, and we were championing ourselves as the innovation service,” Whitworth said. “There was fear that data would leak or we didn’t know those pieces, and so we said, ‘Take a strategic pause.’ We have done so much since that first memo went out.”
By June 2024, the Air Force Research Laboratory had already released its own generative AI chatbot, NIPRGPT, designed for Airmen and Guardians to experiment with. Whitworth noted that his team hosted a “generative AI challenge” to find more potential uses. “We learned a whole lot along the way,” Whitworth stated. “We were able to work with the Department of the Air Force and Department of Defense to re-establish some of those guidelines and ensure that we were moving forward in a secure way that didn’t hamper innovation.”
Guardians quickly embraced the tool, seeing AI chatbots and assistants as helpful for everyday, non-operational tasks such as writing performance reviews and other reports. Such back office functions have long been considered prime areas for automation, freeing operators to concentrate on more sophisticated, higher-level tasks.
However, the sheer volume of data generated by space-based sensors presents a compelling case for automation. Satellites continuously generate imagery, signals intelligence, orbital data, and other information. With thousands of satellites and tens of thousands pieces of debris traveling around Earth at 17,000 miles per hour, the need to collect, collate, and analyze data is increasing exponentially, experts explain.
“In the age of proliferation, especially with Guardians, one satellite to many [personnel] just doesn’t work,” explained Nate Hamet, CEO of Quindar, a satellite operations company. “As we proliferate, how many people can we actually assign to dozens, hundreds of satellites, or where satellites are actually sending us information about what’s wrong and moving more of the anomaly prediction on board, at the edge, onto the spacecraft.”
Whitworth envisions a single operator aided by AI controlling multiple satellites. “I think back to Lt. Whitworth, who operated a satellite, and it was me to one satellite, and my partner next to me to one satellite. We operated that satellite individually. And that made sense at the time, because DOD had the largest constellation on orbit, and we were doing just fine. That very quickly exponentially changed as more commercial providers started launching more equipment, and the DOD itself pivoted to more resilient and proliferated architectures. No longer can I have one Guardian flying one satellite. There’s going to just be too many satellites, not enough Guardians.”
The Space Force has already begun automated satellite operations through its Space Rapid Capabilities Office, which is buying software for its Rapid and Resilient Command and Control system and experimenting with it on test satellites in orbit, officials confirmed in December 2024.
Whitworth cautioned that discussions and analysis are ongoing regarding which satellite operations can be automated and what degree of trust can be placed in the technology. Building trust must be gradual, noted Dave Prakash, Booz Allen director of AI governance. “It’s not about moving fast and just hoping nothing goes wrong,” Parkash said. “It’s not about being paralyzed … so that Guardians are now burdened with ‘not only do I have to use AI, but I have to do the manual process and double check it.’ [If that’s the case], I’m not actually making any labor savings. It’s actually this third option, where AI is a seat belt, not a speed bump, to accelerate delivering of AI for mission critical applications.”
Despite these challenges, the challenges posed by increasing complexity and data volumes make AI an attractive solution for mastering information from space, observed Pat Biltgen, a Booz Allen executive. “I think there’s a possibility that this domain could be enhanced by AI,” Biltgen said. “I think there’s promises that if you combine generative AI technologies that are grounded in physics, they can help solve this one Guardian, one satellite problem.”
