Christine Thropp
Booz Allen Hamilton officials Christopher Bogdan and Saurin Shah said artificial intelligence presents opportunities for the U.S. to enhance and safeguard its space missions and to maintain dominance in the said domain.
Bogdan, senior vice president in Booz Allen’s aerospace business, and Shah, AI leader in the company's national security business, wrote in an opinion piece SpaceNews published Friday that "increasingly sophisticated threats," rapidly evolving space environment and new space capabilities pose a challenge to the U.S. in defending space assets.
They said AI could help strengthen the resiliency of satellites and satellite networks by enabling operators to launch data scans to identify vulnerabilities. Automation of satellite health status monitoring and algorithm-backed reconnection of network nodes are some of the opportunities presented by AI, according to them.
Bogdan and Shah also opined that space domain awareness and command-and-control decision-making could also be enhanced by AI.
"To realize AI’s great promise, however, we must also make sure that AI systems are securely developed and maintained and that commanders and operators have the training and understanding required to trust this transformative technology," they wrote.
