Applied Hosts Delegation from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering

Nov 8, 2022

Applied Intuition proudly hosted a delegation from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD (R&E)) at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. OUSD (R&E) visited Applied to learn about commercial best practices for autonomy development and how those best practices could be applied to a range of autonomy programs within the Department of Defense (DOD).

The delegation from OUSD (R&E) included a number of senior decision-makers, including: 

  • Mr. Maynard Holliday, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Critical Technologies 
  • Dr. Kimberly Sablon, Principal Director for Trusted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomy
  • Dr. Dev Shenoy, Principal Director for Microelectronics 
  • Dr. Jaret C. Riddick, Director of Autonomy 
  • CAPT Thomas Eisenstatt, Military Assistant to the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Critical Technologies
Figure 1: Senior decision-makers from OUSD (R&E) visit Applied Intuition's Mountain View, California headquarters

“Building warfighter trust in autonomous systems is a key priority for OUSD (R&E),” said Maynard Holliday, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Critical Technologies. “Ongoing collaboration between the DOD and innovative commercial companies will prove essential to building trust and promoting principles of responsible AI. As the number of defense autonomy programs expands, the DOD must continue to harness commercial best practices for autonomy development and program design to ensure mission success.” 

The delegation received a presentation on commercially-proven best practices and program architecture for autonomous systems development, including ways in which DOD could incorporate those best practices into their defense autonomy programs to deliver innovative capabilities to the warfighter at speed and scale. Then, after receiving a demonstration of Applied Intuition’s end-to-end autonomy development toolchain, the delegation discussed a series of potential use cases for OUSD (R&E), including multi-domain autonomy and multi-agent mission planning, building warfighter trust by tracking testing progress against requirements, and more. 

Figure 2: OUSD (R&E) leaders participate in a lively discussion on best practices for autonomous system development

“I was honored to welcome the delegation from OUSD (R&E) to Applied Intuition’s headquarters,” said Colin Carroll, Head of Government at Applied Intuition. “We were grateful for the opportunity to share best practices for autonomous systems development based on our leadership in the commercial autonomy sector, as well as our growing team’s experiences from across the DOD. Commercial companies continue to take the lead in developing solutions for autonomous systems. It’s important that we share our lessons learned with leaders in the DOD to ensure that needed capabilities are delivered to warfighters when and where they need them.”

We would like to thank our guests for their continued efforts to bring commercial expertise to the DOD and are proud of our continued leadership in engaging decision-makers from across the national security community about the imperative for autonomy.