The United States Air Force Global Strike Command will deploy artificial intelligence technology in a bid to increase the reliability of its nuclear bombers and ICBMs as part of an expansion of its partnership with Virtualitics, a provider of AI and data exploration software and services.

From its headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, the Global Strike Command oversees the nation’s fleet of nuclear-capable strategic bombers, including the B-1B Lancer, B-2 Spirit, and the B-52 Stratofortress bombers, as well as three missile wings of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The Global Strike Command was created in 2008 as major command of the USAF, and the follow-on to the Strategic Air Command, following a pair of incidents in which nuclear warheads and vehicle assemblies were mistakenly loaded onto planes. Now the entirety of Air Force’s nuclear arsenal (which represents two-thirds of the U.S. military’s total nuclear arsenal) are handled through Global Strike Command.

Maintaining mission-readiness and the capability to project power is at the heart of all US military branches, and the Global Strike Command is no different. But with a fleet of aging and sophisticated aircraft and the need to manage nuclear materiel–not to mention the strategic nature of the mission–ensuring mission-readiness takes on a unique…