The U.S. Department of Defense has joined the battle against the coronavirus by enlisting AI and machine learning to identify outbreak hotspots during the pandemic, as well as to prepare for possible future pandemics.

That’s according to an article at DoD News that gave an overview of the effort including an interview with Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Daniel O’Donohue, the Joint Staff’s director of joint staff development.

“We're learning as rapidly as we can in the application of this fight, but also any future one,” said O’Donohue. 

DoD has formed a team at the Pentagon as well as a crisis management team at the Joint Staff’s facility in Suffolk, Virginia, which receives the same information as the Pentagon as well as any conclusions that are drawn.

“They're there for redundancy, … but they're also the development team,” explained O’Donohue. “They're working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Both teams are using AI and data visualization models to look for patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic, while also looking for ways to protect the nation’s military forces while carrying out missions.

According to O’Donohue, the pandemic has highlighted the need for partnerships and alliances across the globe, as the coronavirus outbreak is at different stages in different parts of the world and countries have been able to learn from each other.

“We're learning from them, as militaries go through the same crisis. This crisis, as tragic as it so profoundly is, is exercising us in ways that are relevant, to include cross-learning across allies and partners,” said O’Donohue. “The management of relationships, the coordination and complex activity, the whole-of-government approach, decision and information tools, all will be things we need in any fight,” he added. “The focus is relevance now, and how do we learn and get better and exercise those things in the future that have relevance that endures beyond this crisis.”

By leveraging analytics tools and global collaborations, the Department of Defense will aim to reduce the impact of this pandemic and any new outbreaks in the future.

“We have a favorable position and relative advantage. One of our competitive advantages against any threat is the quality of the force we have, and educating them with the complexity of the environment that they're in,” O’Donohue noted. “Education is a key component of our strategic competitive advantage. Expediency [in response to COVID] got us out of the classroom. I think many of the things we've learned will be retained and take us where we need to go for the future fight.”