Lockheed Martin Hosts First AI Fight Club Event

Lockheed Martin recently hosted two companies with AI solutions in the inaugural AI Fight Club event, which is billed as a large-scale AI-ready synthetic environment for national security. AI Fight Club's collaborative environment allows for AI agent testing inside large-scale global simulation.

At Lockheed Martin's Center for Innovation 'Lighthouse' in Virginia, the Lockheed Martin AI Center (LAIC) and Skunk Works collaborated with teams from Ansys Government Initiatives (AGI) and ATG to execute a series of virtual 4 versus 4, aerial mission scenarios. The AI Fight Club team pitted AI agents in live head-to-head contests to evaluate how AI agents can carry out the mission with minimal losses.

"The agents demonstrated exceptional potential in meeting the rigorous standards of the Department of War," says Irene Helley, vice president of applied AI at Lockheed Martin. "Everything we learned together during AI Fight Club will be crucial in informing the development of future AI systems that support our nation's warfighters."

The AI Fight Club initiative, announced in June 2025, is a testing ground to simulate and visualize how AI systems perform in air, land, sea, and space domains. The environment is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of AI technologies that meet the standards of the Department of War.

"Modern defense operations demand faster, more informed decisions across increasingly complex and contested environments. This exercise shows how combining trusted mission-level simulation with AI-driven insight provides the ability to explore scenarios, anticipate outcomes and validate operational plans before forces are ever deployed," says Mike Pedaci, vice president and general manager of Ansys Government Initiatives.

"The AI Fight Club event was a glimpse at how defense autonomy development should work. Large-scale, simulation-first and collaborative. It can be a real force multiplier for development. ATG is proud to have been part of the inaugural event," says Scott MacDonald, director of Operations, ATG, Inc.

Participants in the event tested AI agents in a head-to-head series of scenarios using 4th-gen aircraft. Teams focused on deploying and testing the best of their AI and advanced simulation capabilities in this scenario in this collaborative landscape.

Why It Matters

In one month of testing inside the simulation environment, the Lockheed Martin AI Fight Club team: ran 114 years' worth of tests at an estimated cost of $540T+; and would have expended 18M aircraft.

The AI Fight Club synthetic environment makes complex testing possible, according to Lockheed Martin. This scale of testing would not be feasible in the real world until actual AI agent deployment. In the synthetic environment, testing is unlimited. The data gathered from these simulations can help enhance speed, accuracy and decision making for military operations, Lockheed Martin adds.

This allows Lockheed Martin and our collaborators to deploy their AI technologies and to give the warfighter verified, validated solutions.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.