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Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · May 20, 2021
Artificial Intelligence for the Military Act of 2021
This bill requires the implementation of training and education related to emerging technologies and artificial intelligence for certain military personnel.
The bill requires expansion of the curriculum for military junior leader education to incorporate training material related to focuses that include problem definition and curation and a conceptual understanding of the artificial intelligence life cycle. Such training and education should include the use of existing artificial intelligence-enabled systems and tools.
Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.
The Department of Defense (DOD) must ensure that the curriculum for professional military education is revised in each of the military services to incorporate periodic courses on militarily significant emerging technologies.
DOD must establish a short course on emerging technologies for general and flag officers and senior executive-level civilian leaders. The course must be taught on an iterative, two-year cycle and address the most recent and relevant technologies and the application of these technologies to military and business outcomes in DOD.
DOD must ensure that the military services code appropriate billets to be filled by emerging technology-qualified officers and develop a process for qualification of officers in emerging technologies.
The process for qualifying officers for emerging technology-coded billets must be modeled on a streamlined version of the joint qualification process and may include credit for serving in emerging technology-focused (1) fellowships, (2) talent exchanges, (3) government positions, and (4) education courses.
People & committees
Sen. Portman, Rob [R-OH] · R–OH
Legislative record
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Read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services.
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
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No related bills are listed in this snapshot. This does not establish whether the proposal has appeared in earlier Congresses.
Source last updated: Jan 14, 2025. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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