Pentagon Budgets $13.4B for AI and Autonomy

- The funding is broken down by domain, with $9.4 billion for unmanned aerial vehicles, $1.7 billion for autonomous maritime systems, $734 million for underwater capabilities, $210 million for ground vehicles, and $1.2 billion for underlying software and cross-domain integration. - A significant portion of the Air Force's funding is for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to deploy autonomous "wingman" drones to fly alongside crewed fighter jets. - This investment is part of a broader strategy articulated by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks to counter potential adversaries by using mass quantities of "small, smart, cheap, and many" autonomous systems. - To accelerate generative AI adoption, the Pentagon has sunsetted its exploratory "Task Force Lima" and established a new "AI Rapid Capabilities Cell" (AI RCC) to speed up the delivery of frontier AI models, backed by an initial $100 million investment. - The Department of Defense is increasingly sourcing technology from startups, exemplified by its "Drone Dominance Program," which selected 25 companies to compete for a $1.1 billion effort to rapidly field hundreds of thousands of low-cost, one-way attack drones by 2027. - Beyond hardware, the budget supports offensive cyber capabilities, with U.S. Cyber Command awarding contracts to stealth startups like Twenty, which is developing AI agents for automated and scalable cyberattacks. - The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is the central organization overseeing the Pentagon's more than 685 AI-related projects and their integration with broader defense strategy.