L3Harris Secures Deal to Support DOD AI Data Readiness Program

The Department of Defense has awarded L3Harris Technologies a five-year blanket purchase agreement focused on artificial intelligence data readiness.

L3Harris said it will support the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center’s Data Readiness for AI Development program, which is aimed at allowing the DOD to more effectively deploy the emerging technology.

The company explained that data needs to undergo a preparation process before it can be useful. JAIC’s new award calls for data management and analytic services to facilitate the preparation, L3Harris said Tuesday.

On its website, JAIC said that DRAID addresses the whole AI data preparation process, including ingestion, labeling and other steps prior to model training.

Ed Zoiss, president of space and airborne systems at L3Harris, said the company will provide the DOD an easy way to generate training data and build custom workflows.

“Massive volumes of data must be turned into actionable intelligence every day,” Zoiss added.

The other contractors under the DRAID program include Striveworks, MarkLogic, Alegion, SciTec and Paravision.

L3Harris is a major defense contractor and information technology service provider headquartered in Melbourne, Florida.

The company said it was recently also selected by JAIC to help the DOD develop ethical and responsible AI systems department-wide.

In 2020, the Pentagon chose L3Harris to develop AI tools that can help analysts extract actionable intelligence from large pools of data.