Accelerating Decision Advantage Through Innovation

The SEI partners with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to accelerate the acquisition of commercial technology across the Department of War (DoW). This partnership focuses on applying artificial intelligence (AI) more effectively to turn innovative ideas into practical tools that make a difference for the warfighter. In 2025, the SEI continued to advance the best AI and technological concepts to meet DIU’s mission. Three examples of this work include benchmarking advanced computing hardware, analyzing courses of action with AI, and improving computer vision models.

xView

To support the DoW’s need for better computer vision models in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance use cases, the SEI has supported DIU’s xView Challenge Series to benchmark machine learning algorithms and build better computer vision models using aerial and satellite imagery. In 2025, the SEI built new challenge workflows and an enterprise production web application to increase the scale and speed of computer vision data labeling. Working collaboratively, operational users can upload custom satellite imagery, label areas of interest, and fine-tune machine learning model adapters in minutes instead of days.

Thunderforge

The SEI supports the DIU’s Thunderforge program to modernize how U.S. combatant commands (CCMDs) generate and evaluate operational plans and available courses of action (COAs). Military planners interact with AI agents to quickly develop polished and feasible COAs. CCMDs can then test these potential COAs with modeling and simulation tools to quickly analyze probable outcomes across thousands of scenarios. The SEI provided DIU with AI expertise to help them evaluate and select commercial tool developers and ensure that they adhere to a framework of AI trustworthiness and transparency.

Komorebi

In project Komorebi, the SEI is working with DIU to benchmark machine learning model inferencing performance on commercial edge AI accelerators and classical hardware such as central processing units (CPUs) and data-center graphics processing unit (GPUs). This benchmarking provides independent, data-driven comparisons of metrics, such as size, weight, power, and cost. With this information, the DoW can make informed choices about hardware investments that optimize AI performance for high-stakes operational use cases.

We can take our expertise and cutting-edge research and help the acquisition community make better-informed decisions to best equip our warfighters using AI in the field.

Sumanyu Gupta

Commercial Innovation Team Lead, SEI Artificial Intelligence Division

Decision Advantage

These projects are just three examples of the SEI’s ongoing, eight-year partnership with DIU. Together, they aim to strengthen the nation’s operational advantage by applying AI to arm DoW decision-makers with the information they need when they need it. “We can take our expertise and cutting-edge research and help the acquisition community make better-informed decisions to best equip our warfighters using AI in the field,” said Sumanyu Gupta, Commercial Innovation Team Lead in the SEI’s AI Division.