New Army Acting CIO Pushes AI From Enterprise to Tactical Edge

The Army’s new acting CIO, Gabe Chiulli, is bringing his experience advancing AI initiatives into one of the service’s top technology leadership roles. Following the retirement of former Army CIO Leonel Garciga, Chiulli is now helping shape how the Army scales AI from enterprise operations to the tactical edge.

Before stepping into the acting CIO role, Chiulli served as CTO of the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency, where he led efforts to deploy AI technologies across the service. Among the most ambitious initiatives was Project ARIA, the Army’s Rapid Implementation of Artificial Intelligence effort designed to modernize operations, strengthen logistics and expand AI capabilities for soldiers in the field.

Inside Project ARIA

Project ARIA aims to use AI to modernize Army operations and improve soldiers’ ability to execute missions. To address critical challenges, the Army partnered with leading technology firms to develop AI-based tools.

Chiulli described Project ARIA as “a moonshot effort” launched by the secretary of the Army. The initiative focuses on two primary areas: using AI to manage services from the enterprise level to the tactical edge, and applying AI to improve logistics operations.

Enterprise-level AI deployments are easier to execute because software-as-a-service providers can support and deploy major AI models, Chiulli told GovCIO Media & Research. He added the challenge is “getting that same experience or same capability down to the tactical edge.”

To reduce the technical burden on warfighters, the project developed the “Model Armory” concept, which allows soldiers to access tailored and secure AI models that can operate in contested or disconnected environments.

“All we want [the soldier] to have to do is go warfight, not worry about how to set up containers and doing all that technical stuff,” Chiulli said.

Project ARIA’s second major focus is Army logistics. The Army is using AI to create active inventories of equipment, allowing for more flexible operational planning.

“How much do we use? Are we able to be predictive about when a vehicle or a piece of equipment needs to be refreshed, where equipment needs to be or when parts need to be ordered for that equipment?” he said.

Expanding Agentic AI

The Army is also actively looking at deploying agentic AI. These tools and systems can potentially enhance a range of operations, from administrative office work to warfighting.

“I think the promise of agentic AI is going to be big,” Chiulli said. He added that Army leadership will have to be aware of risks when deploying agentic AI, and some of those determinations will be up to individual commanders.

“Let that person at that level make the determination of what that agentic AI is doing. Then at certain levels say, hey, there’s some stuff we’re just not going to automatically allow agentic AI be applied to. And we’re going to have governance behind those different pieces on how that agentic workflow gets applied,” he said.