US Army trials advanced military planning platform to speed battlefield decisions

The US Army is testing an experimental AI platform designed to dramatically accelerate battlefield planning by reducing decision-making timelines from days or hours to just seconds. The system, known as the Course of Action Generative Pre-trained Transformer (COA-GPT), is intended to help military personnel rapidly develop and adapt operational plans while maintaining human oversight throughout the process. Developed by researchers at the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, the Army’s primary fundamental research institution, COA-GPT is being evaluated as part of Project Convergence Capstone 6, the service’s largest experimentation exercise, taking place at Fort Irwin, California. The trial will assess how AI can support faster, more adaptable decision-making in future battlefield environments. Tackling human-AI integration in military operations The COA-GPT is an experimental AI platform built to speed up mission planning while providing commanders and intelligence teams with a more flexible framework for operational decision-making. The system is designed to address one of the military’s biggest challenges in adopting AI: ensuring effective collaboration between soldiers and AI. By combining AI-generated recommendations with human judgment, COA-GPT aims to help military personnel plan and adapt operations more quickly without removing people from the decision-making process. According to Dr. Amar Marathe, program manager for COA-GPT at DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, the platform combines generative AI with decades of military expertise and established doctrine to help Army leaders and soldiers generate, compare and evaluate different operational planning options. He stressed that the goal is not to replace human decision-makers, but to enhance their capabilities. Instead, COA-GPT is designed to fit into existing military planning workflows, enabling personnel to work faster, improve efficiency and make more informed decisions during mission planning. Interface helps commanders guide autonomous systems One of the key scientific challenges behind COA-GPT is enabling machines to better understand human intent across teams of soldiers and AI-enabled systems, according to Marathe. Through a partnership with Hyssos Tech, the platform incorporates an advanced graphical interface that allows leaders at different levels of command to communicate with AI more naturally. Using tools such as shared maps and visual inputs, commanders can better guide agentic AI systems while reducing miscommunication, cognitive burden and operational friction among personnel. Marathe further explained that COA-GPT was developed with a flexible, plug-and-play architecture that allows researchers to replace individual components and experiment with new AI capabilities without rebuilding the entire system. This approach enables faster testing, adaptation and integration of emerging technologies as the platform continues to evolve. Moving forward, the Army will continue refining the COA-GPT testbed through additional soldier feedback and collaboration with industry partners. Researchers will examine how generative AI could reshape the role of Army planning teams, identify the cognitive skills future planners will need and improve workflows to ensure the technology helps maintain a strategic advantage on the battlefield.Recommended ArticlesGet the latest in engineering, tech, space & science - delivered daily to your inbox.Bojan Stojkovski is a freelance journalist based in Skopje, North Macedonia, covering foreign policy and technology for more than a decade. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, ZDNet, and Nature.