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The Readiness Challenge: Can AI Help? — Ep. 308
19 September 2026

The Readiness Challenge: Can AI Help? — Ep. 308

The Aerospace Advantage

About

Episode Summary:


Readiness is one of the biggest challenges facing the Air Force as Airmen strive to meet surging demand with an aircraft inventory that is old and small. Service leaders have prioritized boosting readiness, which involves buying more spare parts, qualifying more suppliers, retaining more seasoned maintainers, and continue to buy new aircraft. To be truly successful, we also need to master the various readiness data sets so that we can better understand when, how, and why aircraft are facing issues…while also gaining better insights about what fixes will deliver the best results. We chat with Melissa Sutherland, executive vice president and airpower market lead at Booz Allen, to learn more about how AI might help crack this challenge.


Credits:


Host: Heather "Lucky" Penney, Director of Research, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies


Producer: Shane Thin


Executive Producer: Douglas Birkey


Guest: John "JV" Venable, Senior Resident Fellow, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies


Guest: Melissa Sutherland, Executive Vice President, Air Power Market Lead, Booz Allen Hamilton



















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