The Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool, commonly abbreviated to DART, is an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

program used by the U.S. military to optimize and schedule the transportation of supplies or personnel and solve other logistical problems. DART uses

intelligent agent In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is anything which perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or may use knowledge. They may be simple or ...

s to aid decision support systems located at the U.S.

Transportation Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

and European Commands. It integrates a set of intelligent data processing agents and database management systems to give planners the ability to rapidly evaluate plans for logistical feasibility. By automating evaluation of these processes DART decreases the cost and time required to implement decisions. DART achieved logistical solutions that surprised many military planners. Introduced in 1991, DART had by 1995 offset the monetary equivalent of all funds

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the A ...

had channeled into AI research for the previous 30 years combined.

Development and introduction

DARPA funded the MITRE Corporation and

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

to analyze the feasibility of several intelligent planning systems. In November 1989, a demonstration named ''The Proud Eagle Exercise'' indicated many inadequacies and bottlenecks within military support systems. In July, DART was previewed to the military by BBN Systems and Technologies and the ISX Corporation (now part of

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) is a department of Lockheed Martin headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, that specializes in applied research and development. Additional facilities are located in Eagan, Minnesota, Kennesa ...

) in conjunction with the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

Rome Laboratory. It was proposed in November 1990, with the military immediately demanding that a prototype be developed for testing. A rapid development cycle allowed for a prototype to be developed in eight weeks, which was introduced in 1991 to the

USTRANSCOM The United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) is one of eleven unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense. The command is located at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, and was established in 1987. The USTRANSCO ...

at the beginning of

Operation Desert Storm Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...

during the

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

Impact

Directly following its launch, DART solved several logistical nightmares, saving the military millions of dollars. Military planners were aware of the tremendous obstacles facing moving military assets from bases in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

to prepared bases in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

, in preparation for

Desert Storm The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases ...

. DART quickly proved its value by improving upon existing plans of the U.S. military. What surprised many observers was DART's ability to adapt plans rapidly in a crisis environment. DART's success led to the development of other military planning agents such as: *RDA - Resource Description and Access system *DRPI - Knowledge-Based Planning and Scheduling Initiative, a successor of DART

References

{{reflist Military logistics of the United States Automated planning and scheduling Common Lisp (programming language) software Mitre Corporation

Development and introduction

Impact

See also

References