The USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) has become the first Navy destroyer to deploy with a program-of-record artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed to enhance maintenance capabilities.
The system aims to reduce surprise equipment casualties while ensuring that more of the fleet is available should an all-out war break out, requiring a surge of forces, News.az reports, citing TWZ.Known as Enterprise Remote Monitoring Version 4 (ERM v4), the system is the shipboard aspect of a Pentagon program called Condition Based Maintenance Plus, which in part aims to leverage machine learning to help ship crews, ashore commands, logistical nodes, and other units keep more assets ready to fight, Zac Staples, a retired Navy officer whose Austin-based company, Fathom5, created the system, told TWZ Wednesday. Staples spoke at the annual WEST conference in San Diego this week, which TWZ attended, about his company’s innovation before chatting with TWZ.
“Right now, you’ve got about a third of the Navy that is deployed, a third of the Navy that’s in some depot-level maintenance, very difficult for them to get put back together in surge, but that other third is in various stages of material and training readiness to deploy,” he said. “Anything, particularly AI, that tells us exactly what we need to do to keep a ship ready before its readiness dips directly contributes to having a much larger battle fleet ready to defend the interests of the nation.”
The AI system arrives in the fleet as the Navy continues to suffer severe maintenance delays and readiness issues, even as it races to prepare for a potential war with China. And while the sea service is experimenting with AI in a large variety of ways, Staples said ERM v4 is the first program-of-record platform deployed in such a fashion aboard a Navy ship. It intends to replace the legacy Integrated Condition Assessment System (ICAS), which has been in use since the 1990s, according to the Navy.
On the Arleigh Burke class USS Fitzgerald, ERM v4 evaluated about 10,000 sensor readings per second coming from the ship’s hull, mechanical and electrical (HME) systems, with AI algorithms making maintenance recommendations that directly feed into the ship’s maintenance planning system, he said.
