In the fall of 2024, thieves broke into four Tennessee National Guard armories within a seven week span. One Air Force veteran believes he has a solution that could have prevented the robberies and stop more from happening in the future.
Herman DeBoard created Airez, an AI security system, with the military in mind. DeBoard spent four years on active duty in the Air Force as a crew chief and aircraft mechanic, then four years in the Air Force Reserve before becoming a government employee working in information technology at what is now Schriever Space Force Base.
“Schriever was an interesting base,” he said. “I’m watching all of the systems that we had in place, and they’re still somewhat antiquated.”
DeBoard realized that AI would be the perfect way to update security systems, both at Schriever and at military installations across the country.
“The cameras that are currently in existence are meant for investigative purposes,” said DeBoard. “They understand that there was a robbery. They found it on video. But it’s all in the past. We make you more proactive.”
The first step in the company’s development was building a video recon sensor, after which they acquired a fiber optic technology that could be used as an audio sensor. DeBoard then employed engineers who had been using AI technology to analyze data for the NBA, and tasked them with developing Airez to process the input from those sensors.
“They built it,” he said, “but the happy accident was that we were able to plug any sensor into it.”
Airez is now an AI system that turns a physical structure into an aware cognitive system. “It can see, hear, smell gas, feel vibration,” DeBoard explained.
But unlike standard security systems, Airez is able to provide a contextual analysis of the data it detects.
“So if a vehicle is driving around a parking lot, someone may or may not recognize that’s their sixth trip through the parking lot, and they’re actually scoping out vulnerabilities,” said DeBoard. “With our system, it would immediately pick up that that’s not right, that’s not normal.
Airez is currently in use in multiple casinos, but DeBoard has had discussions with both the Army and the State Department about incorporating it into their physical structures. The armory break-ins, in his mind, demonstrated exactly where the AI could be implemented.
“From an Army perspective, I think this would have been a very, very simple use case for us that could have easily accounted for everything that was happening.”
The next step for Airez is moving from cognitive AI to reactive AI, allowing the system to utilize physical systems such as drones and androids to respond to the collected data in real time. But DeBoard doesn’t see this trajectory affecting the need of armories to employ human personnel in conjunction with what Airez can do.
“It’s not that we need AI to replace us in any way,” he said. “It’s what kind of AI systems can you build that make humans more efficient, that make our lives a little bit better.”
