Air Force Launches Super Intelligence Strategy Across 15 Areas

By Rebecca Stone

The Department of the Air Force is launching a “Super Intelligence” strategy across 15 mission areas, placing each under either a general-grade officer or a senior civilian executive. The 15 domains include intelligence, human resources and nuclear operations.

The department uses “Super Intelligence” as its preferred term for artificial intelligence (AI). The Air Force will embed AI tools across the force under that leadership structure.

Chief Data and AI Officer (CDAO) Susan Davenport presented the effort at the GovCIO AI Summit on Nov. 6 in Tysons, Virginia. She targeted the pilot-to-production gap, the path from proven pilots to routine operations, which often stalls adoption across the U.S. military.

Her stated measures include kill-chain time, the sequence from detection to engagement, time returned to the commander and decision advantage. Davenport said: “I always say [Super Intelligence] is an organizational design decision and return on investment is measured by the outcomes we were able to achieve—in other words, did we shorten the kill chain, or return time back to the commander, or did we create decision advantage?”

She said the department must redesign its use of data and AI before it can digitize operations.

What does the 15-domain structure require?

A domain principal, meaning the assigned mission-area leader, will track governance and data access. Each domain head will present progress reports to Davenport at quarterly showcases.

A department spokesperson said the CDAO has operationalized the data and AI strategies through those events. The showcases expose gaps, overlaps, risk and opportunities for collaboration, then mitigate them.

Every domain has defined mission outcomes, and its principal must highlight the roadmap for reaching them. At the next showcase in early 2027, the Air Force Research Laboratory and similar research organizations will present pilots and prototypes for possible adoption by mission-area leaders.

Principals may adopt those projects to fill identified gaps.

Will the blueprint be public?

The Air Force did not provide the blueprint after Air & Space Forces Magazine requested it. A spokesperson said the document is controlled unclassified information (CUI), meaning that it remains unclassified but carries specific controls on dissemination, handling and access requirements.

The department may release more details in the new year.

What changes in data management?

Davenport’s combined title links responsibility for AI and data, and the strategy makes both prerequisites for the department’s wider digitization effort across the Air Force. Her data priorities are protection, access and streamlined distribution.

The department previously relied on a centralized team to tag, cleanse and copy data. That process created a severe bottleneck and obscured which data source was authoritative, Davenport said.

It also left the service unable to build a team large enough to act at speed and scale. The replacement leaves data where it is produced and under the control of the people who produced it.

Davenport described the model as decentralized data management and said the strategy treats data as a product. She said the AI strategy accelerates Super Intelligence across every facet of the Air Force.

What operational gains are claimed?

Super Intelligence builds on several AI initiatives launched over the previous year. It also builds on Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) initiatives discussed by its commander, Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, before Congress in May.

Conley said an AFSOC-developed intelligence platform serves as a central hub for full-motion video processing across multiple services. He said trained intelligence professionals use it to transform raw data into actionable intelligence.

Conley told Congress: “By pairing [AI]-augmented workflows with trained humans, this system drastically accelerates targeting cycles—collapsing the time from detection to engagement from hours to seconds—increasing lethality and survivability.”

April also brought an aggressive Air Force effort to recruit, train and retain top-tier AI professionals.

How will personnel learn to use AI?

Davenport described AI as an exceptional resource and urged staff to redesign duties, processes and missions rather than make incremental changes. Her instruction was to improve processes exponentially and reject inefficient established paths.

The Air Force talent management plan introduces AI literacy at three levels:

• Level 100: Every Airman and Guardian.
• Level 200: Personnel building organizational workflows.
• Level 300: AI developers.

Air Education and Training Command (AETC) head Lt. Gen. Clark J. Quinn signed a directive on Aug. 17. The command blueprint covers both integrating AI into education and teaching troops to use AI in their work.

AETC spokesman Daniel Hawkins said in September that the command blueprint targets an average training-time reduction of up to 20 percent in targeted technical specialties. AI-augmented coursework can adjust the material to each Airman’s pace, Hawkins said.

Initial prototypes focus on highly technical skill sets with complex manuals or heavy digital-simulation components, Hawkins said.