Held at an unclassified location of the Shadow Operations Center-Nellis in downtown Las Vegas, the events — known as “DASH (Decision Advantage Sprint for Human-Machine Teaming)″ — set the stage for what the Air Force called “groundbreaking experiments.”
Those involved included personnel from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the 711th Human Performance Wing, which are based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as well as international partners from Canada and the United Kingdom.
Together, they “tested and refined AI’s potential to enhance decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen interoperability in the face of growing global security challenges,” the Air Force said in a recent account of the event.
These AI and human-machine teaming tools could be useful in battle sooner rather than later, some believe.
“I can’t speak to the larger Air Force, but the warfighters did comment at these events that they would love to have them tomorrow,” Dr. Elizabeth Frost, a research psychologist and JADPACT (Joint-All Domain Persistent Adaptive Collaborative Technologies) team lead with the 711th Human Performance Wing’s Human Effectiveness Directorate, told the Dayton Daily News in a recent interview.
“They’re not perfect,” Frost said of the tools.“But just within two weeks, we were able to show proof of concepts enough. They were like, this is better than the way I’m doing it now.”
One strength proponents and researchers believe AI offers is greater speed in making recommendations on the battlefield. Where it once took minutes to produce viable options, it can now take just seconds, the Air Force said.
“AI systems demonstrated the ability to generate multi-domain COAs (battle course of actions) considering risk, fuel, time constraints, force packaging, and geospatial routing in under one minute,” Col. John Ohlund, ABMS (Advanced Battle Management System) Cross Functional team lead, said in the Air Force’s release.
“These machine-generated recommendations were up to 90% faster than traditional methods, with the best in machine-class solutions showing 97% viability and tactical validity,” Ohlund said.
By comparison, the Air Force said human decisions on courses of action “typically took around 19 minutes, with only 48% of the options being considered viable and tactically valid.”
There were three DASH events last year, with the first taking place (also at Shadow Operations Center-Nellis) in June 2025, and the most recent in September.
Across the three DASHs, the first showed a sevenfold decrease in average decision-making time, Frost said. The second showed that machines generated 30 times more recommendations compared to humans only.
And the most recent DASH demonstrated a 90% speed improvement compared to traditional battle management methods, while still having offering valid recommendations, she said.
The suggested courses of actions are actually good suggestions, she added.
“In my opinion, it’s not that AI is actually going to replace the battle managers,” Frost said. “But what we showed is that it can augment them, allowing them to consider more options faster.”
Instead of spending time trying to solve problems in the heat of the moment, AI can help leaders “explore the problem space,” she said.
“The human-machine teams will be able to outperform any person or machine working independently,” she added.
About the Author
