Marine Corps initiates deployment of new ‘digital transformation teams’

The Marine Corps recently launched a pilot program that’s deploying “digital transformation teams” around the service to help personnel digitize processes, expand trustworthy data pipelines, identify vulnerabilities, and ultimately align and expedite AI-enabling applications for real-world operations, according to a top official involved.

During a keynote presentation and sideline conversations with DefenseScoop at the AITalks conference on Thursday, Marine Corps AI lead Capt. Christopher Clark shared new details about the push to enhance the service’s technological infrastructure and spark a meaningful digital transformation over the next three years.

“We are, as a small service with a limited budget, very interested in ensuring that AI implementation is effective and that it is needed, and that we’re not just employing and deploying on top of AI solutions that are just flashy and expensive, right? So to do that, we have the AI implementation plan, which we are expecting to have released here very soon,” Clark said. 

A new pilot initiative to establish three (and possibly more) digital transformation teams, or DTXs, within Marine Corps organizations to more strategically pave the way for AI at scale marks a major early component of that new plan, he announced.

“We stood up the first digital transformation team at [II Marine Expeditionary Force] … at the end of March. And then we are looking at Marine Corps Logistics Command as the second one. They already have most of this in place, we are just bringing it under a common umbrella,” Clark told DefenseScoop after his keynote. 

That command, he noted, previously assembled its own data and analytics office, and has an AI cell in the works. The second DTX is “expected to be stood up in May-June timeframe — so very soon,” Clark noted.

“And then [Marine Corps Forces, Pacific] will be the last of the pilot — to be stood up by the end of this fiscal year,” he said. 

In executing the new implementation plan, the Marines will conduct an infrastructure assessment this summer to determine all of the cloud and associated assets needed to completely realize their vision of scaling AI and machine learning platforms. The service is also going to produce relevant governance materials and guidance to inform emerging and existing AI deployments.

Further, Clark’s team is exploring the creation of a new Center for Digital Transformation, which would focus on accelerating emerging tech — beginning with AI. If it comes to fruition, the hub would be a venue for Marines to partner with universities and other entities to confront the most crucial AI problems. 

First, however, the Corps needs to ensure it wouldn’t be duplicative and that there’d be proper resourcing to back it.

“There’s no intent to compete within our own service. The intent of the AI strategy and [forthcoming] implementation plan is aligning those [elements of the ecosystem] and then instituting the right change,” Clark told DefenseScoop.