Accepted to RAITE 2025 Program

Fire Mountain Labs Selected for NSWC Crane RAITE 2025

Advancing Resilient and Secure AI for National Defense

Chris Ward | Founder and CEO, Fire Mountain Labs

May 15th, 2025

Fire Mountain Labs is excited to announce our acceptance into the Department of Defense’s Robust Artificial Intelligence Test and Evaluation (RAITE) 2025 initiative, led by the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane Division. Fire Mountain Labs joins an elite cohort of over 50 organizations selected to put advanced AI and autonomy solutions through their paces in mission-critical, operationally realistic scenarios.

About RAITE 2025

RAITE is the Department of Defense’s premier testbed for AI and autonomous systems, drawing leading talent from industry, academia, and the public sector. Backed by major national security stakeholders—including the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), DARPA, and DIU—RAITE is designed to rigorously test and evaluate artificial intelligence under the types of complex, high-consequence conditions where it matters most.

Participants will face operational scenarios spanning multimodal data analysis (computer vision, sensor fusion, radar), cyber-enabled AI networks, unmanned systems collaboration (UxV), and environmental interaction. RAITE’s structure includes hands-on red and blue team exercises that challenge each participant to demonstrate real-world resilience, adaptability, and security in their AI-enabled solutions.

Fire Mountain Labs: Bringing Assurance to Operational AI

At Fire Mountain Labs, our mission is to help government and industry leaders deploy AI that’s robust, secure, and ready for real-world challenges. Our participation in RAITE is a natural extension of our work in operationalizing AI security, moving beyond theory to put frameworks, playbooks, and tools directly in the hands of those building and defending the nation’s most important systems.

We’re bringing our AI Security and Assurance Framework to RAITE 2025, which integrates best practices and controls from NIST AI Risk Management Framework (NIST AI RMF), CRISP-ML(Q), OWASP for AI, and MITRE ATLAS. This framework enables organizations to evaluate AI systems under threat, identify critical vulnerabilities, and map adversarial tactics to practical mitigations.

What we bring to RAITE:

Red and Blue Team Exercises: Fire Mountain Labs will support both offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) scenarios, applying our expertise in threat modeling, adversarial testing, and incident response for AI systems.
AI Tabletop Exercises (TTX): We deliver customized tabletop exercises designed to reveal weaknesses and system vulnerabilities through structured injects, scenario planning, and collaborative threat analysis.
Threat Modeling: We guide teams in mapping observed threats and system behaviors to the MITRE ATLAS knowledge base, translating red team findings into actionable security improvements.

Why RAITE Matters

AI is transforming the battlespace and the enterprise, but operational adoption brings new attack surfaces and failure modes. Events like RAITE are crucial: they bring together the best minds to stress-test AI solutions, benchmark resilience, and accelerate security innovation where it counts.

“There’s real momentum when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with people committed to getting AI right. Programs like RAITE move the whole field forward,” said Chris Ward, Founder and CEO of Fire Mountain Labs. “We’re honored to bring our expertise in AI security and to support the mission of strengthening the resilience of operational AI systems.”

What’s Next

Fire Mountain Labs will attend the RAITE 2025 kickoff later this month, with scenario-based exercises and evaluations scheduled for late October in New Mexico. We look forward to collaborating with mission-driven peers and government stakeholders in both live and virtual formats. As AI continues to reshape defense, security, and industry, we are committed to building and securing the next generation of AI-enabled capabilities, delivering trusted solutions that can stand up to real-world threats.

Fire Mountain Labs is a veteran-owned consultancy specializing in AI security, assurance, and operational risk management. We help organizations deploy, test, and defend AI systems by providing frameworks, training, and hands-on expertise for mission assurance in high-stakes environments.

At Fire Mountain Labs, we help business leaders transform AI uncertainty into safe and impactful outcomes.

Explore our services to lean more.

Chris Ward is the CEO of Fire Mountain Labs, where he leads the company’s mission to advance safe and assured AI. Under his direction, Fire Mountain Labs delivers pioneering AI assurance solutions to enterprise and government clients, ensuring AI systems are deployed with security, integrity, and accountability.

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