U.S. Army Spc. Robert A. Ivey, assigned to the Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), operates a Skydio X2D drone on Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania, July 09, 2025. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Breanna Bradford)
WASHINGTON — As the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne division ingrains artificial intelligence into all staff sections, it’s finding the limits of what the emerging technology can do, according to its commander.
Col. Ryan Bell’s brigade has spent the last year ingraining AI into their planning processes. They took large language models and trained them on joint, Army and division doctrine, allowing each staff section in the brigade to have their own bots to better understand the operating environment and respond faster.
“We found it useful in a number of ways and we found areas we did not want to use it,” Bell told reporters today. “We didn’t use AI for course of action development. Large language models don’t really understand three-dimensional space. And so they’re not good for developing course of action. That’s where you need the expertise of a skilled staff to understand the art of war fighting to plan the operation.”
