aviation plan<\/a> released in February, the Marine Corps said it is making AI central to helping combat those woes, in part by fostering a \u201cdata-enabled culture\u201d within its aircraft sustainment community and attempting a more proactive approach to fixes.<\/p>\nThe Corps\u2019 AI effort falls under Project Eagle, a \u201cstrategic blueprint\u201d for its Aviation Combat Element meant to balance crisis response with modernization. A significant shift in the service\u2019s aviation plan centered around AI, which was only briefly referenced in last year\u2019s tome.<\/p>\n
While the aviation plan emphasizes the new tech in comparison to previous years, it noted the AI and machine learning development effort for aviation sustainment was \u201cisolated and underfunded.\u201d Officials recently told reporters that is no longer the case and the service has prioritized the initiative.<\/p>\n
Though nascent in practice, the data part of this effort began years ago. In 2022, officials said, the Marine Corps began cataloguing repair parts and \u201cconsumables\u201d for the F-35 Lightning II after realizing the way the service approached maintenance and resupply was \u201coutdated,\u201d according to Col. Robert Petersen, head of the Corps\u2019 aviation sustainment branch.<\/p>\n
He said there were mountains of data \u201csiloed, sitting there, really unavailable for us to harvest and use in any meaningful way\u201d for the fighter jet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where we have our biggest problem currently, just because it\u2019s a global supply chain, we compete with all of our allies and partners in that,\u201d Petersen told DefenseScoop when asked why the service started with the F-35.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Years later, the service has logged \u201cevery consumable\u201d for the F-35 and recently created two \u201cnotional\u201d parts packages using the prototyped tools, he said. The Marine Corps has already started pulling data for the KC-130J to then feed into the AI system, according to Petersen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is new to us,\u201d Swan said last week, adding that the Corps is still building the algorithms for its AI tools. \u201cTypically, you take a part off when it\u2019s broken, you hand it in to supply or to the vendor to fix, and they run it on your test bench or whatever, and they go, \u2018Yep, it\u2019s broken. It\u2019s not working as advertised.\u2019 And then they fix it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, in a push to become less reactive to repair issues, the Corps is looking to turn those AI tools on predictive maintenance to get ahead of part replacement before equipment fails on its own. This system, dubbed the \u201cMaintenance Assessment Tool,\u201d aims to do just that, and will be handed to a unit at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be predictive,\u201d Swan said. With AI, the Marine Corps intends to use \u201cthe data that we have in our maintenance systems, to understand the reliability of the parts and what the environments are that we\u2019re going to operate, and figure out when those parts are going to break to a probability.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s 90% or so,\u201d he added, \u201cthat\u2019s good enough for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t![\"Drew](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Drew-Lawrence-headshot.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tWritten by Drew F. Lawrence
\n\t\t\tDrew F. Lawrence is a Reporter at DefenseScoop, where he covers defense technology, systems, policy and personnel. A graduate of the George Washington University\u2019s School of Media and Public Affairs, he has also been published in Military.com, CNN, The Washington Post, Task & Purpose and The War Horse. In 2022, he was named among the top ten military veteran journalists, and has earned awards in podcasting and national defense reporting. Originally from Massachusetts, he is a proud New England sports fan and an Army veteran.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Marine Corps is prototyping artificial intelligence tools to inventory aviation supplies and predict aircraft maintenance issues, officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,111,7484,7485,766,7486,7487,4411,7488],"class_list":{"0":"post-8721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","11":"tag-f-35","12":"tag-kc-130j","13":"tag-maintenance","14":"tag-marine-corps","15":"tag-marine-corps-aviation","16":"tag-predictive-maintenance","17":"tag-supply"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}