Artificial intelligence is set to play a bigger role in how the US Space Force prepares for potential conflicts in orbit under a new $69.2 million contract awarded to Slingshot Aerospace.
The four-and-a-half-year contract will fund development of MENTAT, an AI-powered mission rehearsal platform that allows Guardians to train for complex space operations, test potential courses of action, and sharpen operational decision-making before missions unfold.
Preparing for Orbit
At the core of MENTAT is TALOS, Slingshot’s AI agent that models spacecraft behavior, processes orbital data, and simulates evolving space operations to identify threats and coordinate responses.
Built for an increasingly congested and contested orbital environment, the platform provides continuous AI-enabled training while helping Guardians analyze large volumes of operational data more efficiently.
MENTAT expands on Slingshot’s Digital Space Twin, a virtual model of the space domain that combines live orbital data, astrodynamics, mission context, and AI-driven analytics to create realistic training scenarios.
“TALOS gives Guardians the ability to train against realistic orbital scenarios and rehearse complex missions with a level of speed, scale, and accessibility that simply hasn’t existed before,” said Slingshot chief executive Tim Solms.
“MENTAT represents a major advancement in operational space readiness, putting AI-enabled mission rehearsal directly into the environments where Guardians prepare for and execute their missions.”
Pentagon’s AI Expansion
The award, the largest in Slingshot Aerospace’s history, supports the US Space Force’s Operational Test and Training Infrastructure program and builds on an earlier Strategic Funding Increase contract that helped develop the company’s Digital Space Twin.
It also reflects the Pentagon’s broader push to integrate AI into military operations. Recent initiatives include the Department of the Navy’s AI-first strategy to accelerate data-driven decision-making and the Defense Department’s efforts to deploy frontier AI models on classified military networks.
