CDAO Foreign Language AI Initiative Delivers Real-World Impact: Commercial Industry Partnership Accelerates Mission at WHINSEC

This release is being issued by LILT, Inc. in cooperation with CDAO and WHINSEC.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Earlier this month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth directed the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to identify and implement AI-first reconceptions of legacy warfighting and business practices. Secretary Hegseth specified that these organizations should integrate commercial AI technologies that make American warfighters more lethal and efficient, while also aggressively eliminating bureaucratic barriers that block deeper AI adoption across the joint force.

In line with that strategic direction, CDAO and DIU recently launched a project to deliver specialized, AI-enabled language translation technologies across all military services and commands. They have partnered with LILT, a San Francisco, California-based tech company, to deploy LILT’s AI-driven translation platform worldwide across the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force to close critical language and communication gaps.

CDAO awarded LILT a flexible Other Transaction (OT) contract to expand its platform — developed initially under a DIU prototype — to support domain-specific vocabularies relevant to the Department of War. The platform enables rapid and accurate translation of text, video, and audio content into or out of English. This specialized, unique AI platform supports U.S. military missions that span from understanding foreign technical documentation and training materials to facilitating foreign partner exercises and supporting direct action missions.

Accelerating the Mission at WHINSEC
One of the first military components experiencing the results of this program is the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Historically, it took WHINSEC personnel a full year to translate materials for the institute’s Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC). The course lasts 11 months, is entirely in Spanish, and provides instruction to students from a dozen Latin American and Caribbean partner nations. In 2025, beyond experiencing unanticipated resource constraints, WHINSEC was given a “short fuse” to prepare CGSOC materials instead of the typical yearlong lead-in period. WHINSEC needed a solution, and CDAO rapidly offered one: LILT was deployed to close this gap.

Leveraging LILT, WHINSEC successfully translated the entire current-year CGSOC curriculum in just a few weeks – this was orders of magnitude faster than WHINSEC has ever accomplished the task. This ensured partner nation students received up-to-date materials in Spanish, the course language. Not only was the velocity of the translation a “first” for WHINSEC, but using LILT’s AI platform to translate CGSOC’s significant volume of materials generated substantial cost savings compared to past years when a third-party company was contracted to provide linguist support. It also dramatically improved translation accuracy – on everything from technical military terminology to sub-regional colloquialisms that appeared in some of the course articles and texts, which had previously been a stumbling block for partner nation students. This had a predictably positive effect on WHINSEC’s quality of instruction and CGSOC students’ experience.

The highest levels of WHINSEC leadership succinctly captured the mission impact:

“LILT AI Translation has catapulted WHINSEC into the future of AI and its nexus with security cooperation and professional military education across the Western Hemisphere. We can now rapidly integrate international forces from countries that partner with the U.S. at all echelons: in the classrooms, during multinational exercises, and foreseeably in coalition combat outposts. That’s what we train for at CGSOC.”
-U.S Army Colonel Eldridge Singleton, 9th WHINSEC Commandant

Feedback from WHINSEC’s operational echelon similarly provided insight into the unique mission acceleration LILT provides for foreign language missions:

“One of the features we value most is the system’s ability to learn context-specific terminology and apply it correctly. In our world, words often have meanings that don’t translate literally – for example, ‘fires’ in a military context refers to a warfighting function, not an actual fire. Traditional translation tools struggle with this and often render it incorrectly. The ability to train the system to recognize these distinctions dramatically improves accuracy and saves our team significant time – while ensuring our foreign students, who come from partner nations across Latin America and the Caribbean, get a 100% accurate understanding of the material.”
-U.S. Army MAJ Martinez, Director of WHINSEC’s Maneuver Captain’s Career Course (MCCC)

“Aside from the precision in translations from LILT’s LLM, there is also the capacity for the model to learn as the Army changes. LILT is the only translation tool that learns as it is used. As the doctrine and terminology change, so does the model. I cannot underscore enough how quickly LILT allows us to move our curriculum from production to instruction. Without LILT, we would not be able to accomplish the mission with the required accuracy and speed. LILT puts the power of a professional translator in the hands of any capable soldier.”
-U.S. Army LTC Michael Hill, Director of WHINSEC Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC)

Scaling Innovation Across the DoD

This partnership exemplifies Secretary Hegseth’s vision for CDAO and DIU: moving proven commercial AI technologies that make warfighters more effective and efficient into full-scale operational use across the Department of War.

CDAO’s ongoing collaboration with DIU further underscores the Department of War’s commitment to accelerating the adoption of frontier AI capabilities and the consistent efficiency gains CDAO is delivering to U.S Armed Forces. The collaboration with WHINSEC proves that AI, when strategically deployed for security cooperation and professional military education, can directly advance national security outcomes.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cdao-foreign-language-ai-initiative-delivers-real-world-impact-commercial-industry-partnership-accelerates-mission-at-whinsec-302677823.html

SOURCE LILT