Marissa Herron

This report presents some of the challenges that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) may face in fielding an artificial intelligence technology called reinforcement learning (RL) in DoD applications. RL has been credited with expanding the decisionmaking ability of machines beyond that of humans in playing complex games of strategy. RL-enabled systems can beat world experts in these games; can such systems outperform humans in DoD applications?

As outer space becomes more congested, contested, and competitive, the risks to space safety, security, and sustainability heighten. Against this backdrop, the authors used a review of relevant literature and official documents, as well as interviews and workshops with subject-matter experts, to identify lessons from past approaches to international traffic management and offer recommendations to make progress in space traffic management.