The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the United States Defense Department (DOD) is fielding commercial technology that will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into the tools military commanders use to make decisions and plan actions in the field.
The Thunderforge project is developing tools to accelerate decision-making, allowing military planners to rapidly synthesize vast information, generate multiple courses of action and conduct AI-powered wargaming to anticipate and respond to evolving threats, according to a DIU news release.
“Today’s military planning processes rely on decades-old technology and methodologies, creating a fundamental mismatch between the speed of modern warfare and our ability to respond,” said Bryce Goodman, Thunderforge’s program lead. “Thunderforge brings AI-powered analysis and automation to operational and strategic planning, allowing decision-makers to operate at the pace required for emerging conflicts.”
Thunderforge’s technology will leverage advanced large language models, AI-driven simulations and interactive agent-based wargaming. Developers aim to enable commanders to quickly decide where to position resources and determine positions of friendly and competitor assets.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) and U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) will initially deploy the system to support mission-critical planning, including campaign development, theater-wide resource allocation and strategic assessment. The tools’ integration across multiple security domains ensures that AI-driven planning capabilities will be securely embedded into real-world military operations.
Thunderforge builds on efforts made in the past year to digitize and enhance decision advantage through modernizing USEUCOM’s command and control systems, said Maj. Gen. Peter Andrysiak, USEUCOM chief of staff. “Our ability to consolidate, analyze and act on vast quantities of theater-wide data across the warfighting functions has never been greater. Thunderforge is a next step in this effort and will allow the U.S. to keep pushing the frontier forward in terms of leveraging emerging technologies to modernize organizational efficiency,” he said. “[USEUCOM] is eager to continue providing the operational context to inform these transformative changes.”
“DIU is INDOPACOM’s innovation arm, helping us meet immediate challenges by harnessing and adopting commercial best practices to iteratively develop, test, and ultimately field emerging technologies at speed and scale,” said USINDOPACOM Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo.
The DOD launched DIU in 2015 to accelerate the adoption of leading commercial technology to transform military capacity and capabilities. The unit works in seven technology sectors: AI, autonomy, cyber and telecom, emerging technology, energy, human systems, and space.
One recent DIU project is Replicator, an initiative to field thousands of scalable, attritive autonomous systems in the marine and air domains, aimed at countering the Chinese Communist Party’s munitions buildup. The DOD announced in March 2025 it is on track to deliver its first integrated autonomous systems under Replicator in August 2025.
Startup company Scale AI will work with Microsoft and Google AI tools to develop the Thunderforge prototype, which will be incorporated into weapons developer Anduril’s systems.
“We are proud to be helping to accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge commercial AI technologies across the DOD,” said Doug Beck, DIU’s director. “Thunderforge is the foundation for the next generation of AI-driven military decision-making, enhancing the joint force’s ability to plan, adapt, and respond to emerging challenges at machine speed — helping the warfighter to deter major conflict, or win if forced to fight.”