Air Force Unveils AI, Data Strategies

The Department of the Air Force (DAF) released a data strategy and an artificial intelligence (AI) strategy to operationalize data and accelerate its transition to an AI-first force.

“In today’s complex global security environment, data and artificial intelligence are no longer support functions – they are the foundation of our strategic overmatch,” Susan Davenport, DAF’S chief data and AI officer, said in a statement. “Execution of these strategies ensure[s] the Department of the Air Force remains agile and decisively ahead of pacing threats.”

According to officials, the strategies “provide a strategic roadmap for the [Air Force] to become an AI-first force, operationalizing data and AI as decisive force multipliers and strategic assets to maintain air and space dominance from the boardroom to the battlefield.”

The AI strategy establishes AI priorities across multiple mission areas, ranging from training and readiness to multi-domain operations. The data strategy emphasizes treating data as a strategic asset, noting that “data is the ammunition of modern warfare.”

The AI strategy

The AI strategy outlines five strategic imperatives to guide the DAF’s the transition to an AI-first force. These include unleashing the power of data, accelerating an AI-first culture, building an enterprise-wide AI ecosystem, driving agile adoption and process reform, and modernizing cybersecurity and validation to address emerging AI-specific threats.

To support these imperatives, the Air Force identified five building blocks for implementation. These include strengthening data, technology, and infrastructure to enable secure and scalable AI; developing a workforce with baseline AI literacy and specialized expertise; and expanding partnerships with commercial and dual-use technology providers while reducing reliance on adversarial sources.

Additional efforts focus on change management and process redesign to support operational transformation, as well as updated governance structures. Under the governance effort, the DAF Data and AI Board will shift from a risk management posture to prioritizing the removal of barriers to innovation.

The data strategy

The data strategy centers on three pillars: streamlined data discovery and accessibility, enhanced data trust and interoperability, and increased data-centric decision-making.

The document also outlines four building blocks to operationalize these goals. Governance and responsibility measures will align priorities while guiding ethical data use and policy development. A data-centric workforce initiative will promote basic data awareness across personnel and advanced skills for data and analytics specialists.

The strategy also emphasizes data readiness, providing oversight to ensure compliance with standards and visibility into the condition of data assets. Additionally, the department plans to implement a data mesh environment, including a federated data catalog, search tools, application programming interface (API) management infrastructure for handling API requests, and identity and access management capabilities for secure data sharing.