Science fiction has warned us about melding AI and nuclear command and control, but Pentagon leadership sees it as a critical tool for future deterrence.
While it has long been a world-ending threat in science fiction, U.S. Air Force and Space Force officials see artificial intelligence (AI) playing important, if not critical roles in the command and control enterprise at the heart of America’s nuclear deterrent capabilities.
AI has the potential to help speed up decision making cycles and ensure that orders get where they need to go as fast and securely as possible. It could also be used to assist personnel charged with other duties from intelligence processing to managing maintenance and logistics. The same officials stress that humans will always need to be in or at least on the loop, and that a machine alone will never be in a position to decide to employ nuclear weapons.
A group of officers from the Air Force and Space Force talked about how AI could be used to support what is formally called the Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) architecture during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Warfare Symposium, at which TWZ was in attendance. The current NC3 enterprise consists of a wide array of communications and other systems on the surface, in the air, and in space designed to ensure that a U.S. nuclear strike can be carried out at any time regardless of the circumstances.
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Reader comment:
Personally, I’m pretty uncomfortable with injecting AI into any aspect of our nuclear deterrent. By definition, AI is susceptible to hacking during its creation and during deployment. What happens when AI misleads the decision makers into a poor decision? I’m also not sure that we need faster decision making when it comes to launching nuclear weapons and ending life on earth as we know it. I’d rather slow things down before we do that. Do we really want to see a leader blame AI for accidentally launching nukes? I certainly hope other nuclear powers aren’t letting AI influence their launch decisions.
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