国防情报局的机器辅助分析快速储存系统 （MARS） 将于 2026 年全面投入使用，将为太空提供军事情报。
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) Machine-assisted Analytic Rapid-repository System (MARS), which provides publicly available information up to top-level classified information across all the intelligence community agencies, will also include an ability to track objects in space.
The DIA is a Department of Defense combat support agency that produces, analyzes and disseminates military intelligence for combat and noncombat military missions, and MARS is a central piece of the agency’s modernization effort. MARS is a cloud computing-based system that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically sift through reams of data, performing mundane analysis and freeing up intelligence analysts to perform more complex tasks. It is designed to be the go-to system for foreign military intelligence.
“MARS, as its name implies, provides analysts with the ability to do a lot of more efficient research across many repositories. For example, let’s take it back to my life as an analyst, where it was kind of a hunter-gatherer approach. If you wanted to know about something, you would need to know every different database that existed that might have some of that information,” Kathy Bukolt, who leads the MARS program management office, explained in a SIGNAL Media interview.
Analysts already are able to use the system as it is being further developed. “Today, with MARS, we are now at IOC, so we achieved initial operational capability in March of this year. With that, analysts are able to really have information at their fingertips. Whatever they want to know about something is just one or two clicks away,” Bukolt added.
The system includes three components: the MARS Infrastructure module, the Order of Battle module and the data environment that makes existing data ready for artificial intelligence and machine learning and provides a foundation for additional modules.
The MARS program office is also adding an ability to provide intelligence data on space objects. “The big, big change is moving towards having the ability to do not just tracking of terrestrial static information, but also being able to look at order of battle in space. That’s what MARS is able to do now. This is a really complex area, and the technology allows us to be able to move at a greater speed than we could with a more static approach that we had in a database like MIDB,” Bukolt said, using the initials for the Military Intelligence Integrated Database, which MARS will ultimately replace.
She emphasized the role MARS plays in the DIA mission. “All of these efforts that we do to support the department really rely on having an understanding of that foundational foreign military intelligence to inform planners, acquisition decision-makers, policymakers. It really is a cornerstone of what we do at DIA.”
MARS is a classified system, so DIA officials are limited in how many questions they can answer, but Bukolt indicated the need for space intelligence became apparent during the agile development process, which saves time and allows greater flexibility and more rapid updates than conventional military acquisition processes. “That agile development process includes working with stakeholders throughout and making up updates as we find things, so that was something that we worked. It is not part of our MARS core, which is order of battle and infrastructure, but that capability is under development, and it is an advanced capability.”
MARS is expected to be fully operational in 2026, which will allow the agency to essentially pull the plug on the older, MIDB system, which was designed in the 1990s. “It’s fairly old technology, and it’s very text-heavy. So, it’s really classic, kind of like looking at a spreadsheet,” Bukolt said of MIDB.
MARS, though, not only saves time for analysts but also allows greater intelligence accuracy. “It makes our records more accurate. This is one of the main things that we’re trying to achieve with making this move to MARS, which is leveraging what is available today from technology and all the innovation that’s taking place and really incorporating that into the tool to support analysts and military operations.”
She cited a recent example in which MARS—because it presents intelligence from a variety of sources in an easy-to-digest format—allowed analysts to identify and quickly correct widespread but inaccurate information. “In this instance, we had some information that was not consistent across two different facilities, and we found that there was an error in some of the data sourcing, and this expanded over hundreds of records,” she revealed. “They found that this error in the data source had been carried forward. The analysts, once they were able to see this a little bit more clearly in MARS … they were able to go into the MARS data environment and update hundreds of records 21 hours faster than they could using MIDB because all of the information was available to them in a much more efficient way.”
The MARS automation saved the day. “If you find out that, for example, a source may not be reliable, then you have to go back and remove that. Having an automated way to do that is really critical,” Bukolt offered.
She was unable to say how the faulty information was added to MIDB or how long it had been there. “You know, it’s a very manual process, and so I don’t know exactly how that happened, but I think there was a data source that turned out to be problematic. And this happens, right? As an all-source analyst, one of the things that we have to constantly do is go back and review sourcing and make sure that it’s still valid and find when there are errors in that sourcing.”
Any remaining challenges to achieving full operational capability (FOC) for MARS should be relatively routine. “As with any agile development process, there are the unknown things that pop up. In many cases, you don’t know them until you start trying to build in interoperability and things of that nature. But right now, we are on track for FOC in 2026, and we’re just dealing with those challenges as they arise,” Bukolt said. “We will continue to add capabilities over time so that in 2026, analysts will be able to do all of their work in MARS, and we will be able to sunset MIDB.”