Want Effective AI? It'll Take Contextualized Mission Data — Ep. 278

Want Effective AI? It'll Take Contextualized Mission Data — Ep. 278

From The Aerospace Advantage by The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

February 21, 2026 · 55 min · Season 6 · Episode 278

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of contextualized mission data for effective AI in military applications.

Episode Summary: Autonomy and artificial intelligence are going to have a massive impact upon aircraft, mission systems, weapons, battle management, and other command and control functions. But it isn’t enough to just write the algorithms for the autonomy and AI—we’ll need to train them to effectively coordinate with human teammates, rapidly adjust to a dynamic threat environment, adhere to commander’s intent, and afford sufficient insight for legal and reliability analysis. All of that involves capturing and curating data to promote warfighter context and relevant mission data. Lean more about this as Heather Penney chats with a team of AI experts and former warfighters, including Robert “Bobaloo” Rickard and Mark “Drifter” Valentine. Credits: Host: Heather "Lucky" Penney, Director of Research, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Producer: Shane Thin Executive Producer: Douglas Birkey Guest: Robert “Bobaloo” Rickard, Founder & CEO, RCG, Inc. Guest: Mark “Drifter” Valentine, Global Head of National Security Strategy, Skydio Links: Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3GbA5Of Website: https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/ Twitter…

People in this episode

Host: Heather "Lucky" Penney

Guests: Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard, Mark "Drifter" Valentine

Topics covered

  • AI
  • autonomy
  • military technology
  • data curation
  • mission systems

Keywords

  • AI
  • autonomy
  • military technology
  • data
  • mission systems
  • warfare
  • battle management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: RCG, Inc., Skydio, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

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