- Pentagon staff create over 100000 AI agents using low-code tools
- Autonomous agents now handle about 25000 daily Pentagon workflow sessions
- Routine administrative tasks increasingly automated across unclassified Defense Department networks
Pentagon personnel are rapidly embracing vibe coding to create autonomous AI agents at a pace that now exceeds 20,000 new tools each week across unclassified Defense Department networks.
More than 103,000 semi-autonomous agents have been built in less than five weeks using a version of Google Gemini’s Agent Designer available through the GenAI.mil platform.
Usage is climbing just as quickly, with those agents collectively running about 180,000 sessions each week, which works out to around 25,000 daily uses across the system.
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Low-code or no-code systems
Each session represents a single use of an agent by a user, meaning widely adopted tools can be triggered thousands of times while more specialized ones run only occasionally.
Many of the most widely used agents handle repetitive staff duties such as drafting after-action reports, assembling formal staff estimates, analyzing imagery, and reviewing financial or strategy documents.
Personnel are building their own tools directly on the network, creating agents that automate routine digital work without requiring traditional programming knowledge.
“It’s a very exciting time,” said Robert Malpass, the Pentagon’s Deputy Chief Digital & AI Officer for Intelligence, speaking at the INSA Spring Symposium.
“[Now] anybody across the Department can start to build out and work with advanced AI in their own context, [customizing] the specific way that they need that information processed, displayed, and built out into an operational workflow,” he added.
Officials say the system holds Authorization to Operate at Impact Level 5, allowing the agents to function on unclassified networks while remaining within defined security and oversight boundaries.
Some observers remain wary of how quickly automated tools are spreading, pointing to incidents outside the Pentagon where poorly controlled agents deleted systems, disrupted services, or acted without clear human approval.
Defense leaders argue speed is becoming unavoidable as technology cycles continue to compress and development timelines shrink.
“The cycles are just getting shorter and shorter and shorter … as things go faster, as AI itself allows the speed of technology to increase,” said Andrew Mapes, the Pentagon’s acting principal deputy Chief Digital & AI Officer, speaking at the INSA event.
“It’s incumbent on us … to make sure that it doesn’t take five to 10 years to bring something new in into the military. We just don’t have the luxury of taking a such a deliberate approach,” he concluded.
Via Breaking Defense
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