Defense Department (DOD) officials said on Oct. 20 that they are working to make data more accessible, reliable, and ready for artificial intelligence (AI) applications that will support military supply-chain planning and help personnel make faster, more informed mission decisions.
Under the Trump administration, DOD was rebranded as the War Department.
Speaking at the Google Public Sector 2026 Summit in Washington, D.C., officials from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and DOD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) outlined efforts to improve data management across the department.
The scale of those efforts is substantial. DLA supports between $55 billion and $60 billion in annual supply-chain activity and handles roughly 13 billion transactions, while CDAO’s enterprise data efforts span 800 data sources and reach approximately 3 million users.
DLA focuses on AI-ready supply-chain data
DLA is working to establish authoritative data sources and prepare supply-chain information for analytics and AI applications.
“We’re singling up having a single authoritative source of data versus having to go to various systems; we’re actually making sure the data is SI-ready, SI-able,” said Adarryl Roberts, DLA’s chief information officer (CIO), referring to AI with the administration’s newly adopted term super intelligence, or SI.
Roberts emphasized that the effort goes beyond connecting disparate systems. DLA is also working to standardize processes and address inconsistent practices that have made it difficult to share and use information across the agency.
The work has implications for military readiness, particularly when it comes to anticipating supply-chain demands and avoiding delays in delivering critical equipment.
“Some parts on the weapon systems take us anywhere between two and five years to procure, produce, and get to the warfighter,” Roberts said.
By improving data quality and accessibility, DLA aims to use predictive analytics to identify supply-chain needs earlier and inform purchasing decisions before shortages become urgent.
CDAO pushes enterprise data access and AI adoption
At the departmentwide level, CDAO is working to connect data from across DOD and make it accessible to personnel through enterprise tools and AI capabilities.
Andrew Mapes, DOD’s principal deputy CDAO, said the effort depends on a departmentwide commitment to sharing data and making it available for operational decisions.
“The expectation from the top is that you are going to share your data, you’re going to expose your data, and the data is going to be used to inform decision-making,” Mapes said.
Mapes emphasized that CDAO cannot accomplish that work alone. Success requires collaboration across DOD components and with private-sector partners, as well as tools personnel can easily incorporate into their existing workflows.
“You have a user whose job is already hard enough. You’re not trying to layer on top of that,” Mapes said.
Mapes pointed to GenAI.mil as part of the effort to make AI easier to use. The platform was designed to bring AI models to existing data and help users uncover insights from repositories they previously could not effectively access.