Shanahan has served as the first director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, an effort to accelerate the Pentagon’s adoption and integration of AI at scale, since December 2018.

Lt. Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesman for the center, confirmed the retirement in a Jan. 30 email and said a search for the next director is underway.

Shanahan previously oversaw the Pentagon’s algorithmic warfare cross-functional team, better known as Project Maven, a pathfinder effort to apply AI and machine learning in analyzing full-motion video.

Pentagon leaders created the JAIC after noting nearly 600 projects and programs across the department had come to touch on artificial intelligence in some way. Officials wanted a central hub to help facilitate progress. In late 2018, Dana Deasy, the Defense Department’s chief information officer, appointed Shanahan to lead the new center.

During his tenure, Shanahan served as a voice of reason on how artificial intelligence could be used by the military and avoided the often popular science fiction comparisons that accompany discussions of AI. In an interview with C4ISRNET last year, Shanahan said the center has focused on using artificial intelligence for predictive maintenance efforts and to improve humanitarian relief. He also advocated for a greater understanding of the subject.

“On one side of the emerging tech equation, we need far more national security professionals who understand what this technology can do or, equally important, what it cannot do,” Shanahan said during a talk at the Naval War College in December. “On the other side of the equation, we desperately need more people who grasp the societal implications of new technology, who are capable of looking at this new data-driven world through geopolitical, international relations, humanitarian and even philosophical lenses,” he said.

Lawmakers approved $183 million for the center in the fiscal year 2020 budget.

Shanahan also has been a vocal proponent for improving the department’s cloud capabilities and specifically the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, which is expected to provide the infrastructure the Pentagon needs to boost artificial intelligence.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Since taking over as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Gen. David Berger hasn’t been shy about saying the service must update its inventory and adapt its force structure to fight future conflicts.

But at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Dec. 7, Berger laid out his most detailed comments yet on what equipment he sees as winners and losers going forward, while promising that the Corps’ 2022 budget will look different from its 2020 request.

“We have to get rid of legacy things in the Marine Corps. We’ve got to go on a diet” he told reporters during the event, noting that a large-scale review of the service will be rolled out in roughly 60 days. “We’ve got to become expeditionary again, which we know how to do.”

Asked to highlight the type of equipment he thinks the Corps must dump, Berger called out “big, heavy things” such as manned counter-armor assets.

“Big, expensive things that we can’t either afford to buy or afford to maintain over the life of it. Things that don’t fit aboard ship, things that can’t fire hyper-velocity projectiles, things that can’t have, don’t have the range that we’re going to need, the precision, but are also mobile, expeditionary enough [that] we can operate from ship or ashore and move back and forth freely. Manned things, manned logistics vehicles, manned logistics aircraft — all those things we’re going to trim down.”

In an op-ed published Dec. 12, Berger outlined 11 areas where Marine Corps investments must improve, largely through high-end technologies that better match up with China. Those include lethal unmanned aerial, ground and amphibious vehicles, large undersea vessels, and loitering munitions.

Berger underlined that op-ed in his comments, once highlighting unmanned transports and unmanned logistics systems on the ground and in the air. Several times during his comments, the commandant stressed the need to focus on logistics enablers, at one point calling logistics “the area we’re farthest behind.”

“It’s not fun to talk about, but if you’re going to operate in this contested area, you’d better be able to sustain that force,” he said. “Think unmanned, think expeditionary, think very light. Think things that we can sustain forward without a huge logistical train.”

The commandant also described how unmanned investments could benefit Marines going forward: “Picture in your mind some kind of vehicle, unmanned, perhaps autonomous, but let’s just talk unmanned — moves from this point to that point, whatever, on its own. Inside it, it’s got more unmanned systems, ground or air. It’s launching and recovering them, bringing them back as a mothership, coming back, and you have these all over the place.”

“This is your Marine Corps. We are that forward force. We got to paint the picture. We are the Marines all over the place,” he explained. “In the area we got to operate in, the human beings will absolutely be there. I just don’t need them driving a truck delivering chow. If we can replace that with an unmanned [platform], why would we not do that?”

Beyond equipment, Berger promised that his larger review of the Marine Corps includes going after basic assumptions such as: “What does the squadron look like? What does a battalion look like? Every part of our air, ground team. That’s what will be finished and of course associated with that, the equipment, from individual equipment to crew-served to F-35s, and everything in between. Define the force and how it needs to fight as a naval force — that directly ties to all of our programs.”

The Congressional Record shows Dickinson has been nominated for a position but does not specify what that position is.

He will serve under Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond, who breezed through his confirmation hearing in June and was subsequently confirmed.

Dickinson has led Space and Missile Defense Command since 2017, directing the creation and implementation of the Army’s air & missile defense strategy, which was released in March. He’s also held senior roles at U.S. Strategic Command, the Missile Defense Agency and on the Army staff. He commanded two Army air and missile defense commands and is a 1985 graduate of Colorado State University.

In his current job, he wears two hats as the commander of Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, coordinating all missile defense planning and operations support around the world.

During his tenure at SMDC, he’s overseen a transformation in the Army’s missile defense forces, as the service is expanding their air and missile defense capacity, while adding new technology to the service’s arsenal.

During an August 6 speech at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, Dickinson led with a hefty dose of the Army’s role in space and how that mission is expanding. Typically, the Army is focused on its missile defense mission and outsiders are rarely aware of its space mission.

Dickinson highlighted the Army’s space capabilities such as missile warning, command, control and communications, friendly force tracking, situational awareness and position, navigation and timing.

He emphasized the Army’s space training kits that simulate a denied, degraded and disruptive space operational environment and the deployment around the globe of those serving in the 1st Space Brigade based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

But he also made a broader pitch in his speech, advocating for space-based missile defense sensors that would help defeat complex threats “from cradle to grave” and noted that the newly stood-up Space Development Agency would be dedicated to building a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation leveraging the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Black Jack program.

Dickinson pushed for a stronger focus on reallocating investment in ways to defeat missile threats before they even launch as well as non-kinetic means to defeat those threats. He said more attention should be paid to developing passive missile defense rather than active defense, which the services have focused on primarily in the past.