“Combatant commands, in particular, have increased their use of MSS to command and control dynamic operations and activities in their theaters. In response to this growing demand, the [Chief Digital and AI Office] and Army increased capacity to support emerging combatant command operations and other DOD component needs,” a defense official said Thursday.

Questions linger, however, regarding the MSS deployment plan — and who is part of the expanded user base set to gain additional software licenses through this huge contract increase in the near term.

The Pentagon originally launched Project Maven in 2017 to pave the way for wider use of AI-enabled technologies that can autonomously detect, tag and track objects or humans of interest from still images or videos captured by surveillance aircraft, satellites and other means.

In 2022, Project Maven matured into Maven via the start of a major transition. At that time, responsibilities for most of the program’s elements were split between the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office, while sending certain duties to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. 

All three organizations running the program have been largely tight-lipped about Maven — and the associated industry-made MSS capabilities — since the transition. 

The Defense Department inked the initial $480 million, five-year IDIQ contract with Palantir for the program in May 2024. The Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground was listed as the awarding agency, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the funding agency. Around that time, executives at Palantir told reporters that the work under that contract would initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command. The tech was also expected to be deployed as part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE).

In a one-paragraph announcement on Wednesday, DOD revealed its decision to increase that contract ceiling for Palantir’s MSS to nearly $1.3 billion through 2029.

A Pentagon spokesperson referred DefenseScoop’s questions about the move to the Army.

“We raised the ceiling of the contract in anticipation of future demand to support Army readiness. Having the groundwork for the contract in place ahead of time, increases efficiencies and decreases timelines to get the licenses. No acquisition decisions have been made,” an Army official said.

That official referred questions regarding the operational use of MSS — and specifically, which Army units or combatant commands would be front of line to gain new licenses — back to the Pentagon. 

Defense officials did not share further details after follow-up inquiries on Friday. A Palantir spokesperson also declined DefenseScoop’s request for comment.

NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth confirmed this week that there are currently more than 20,000 active Maven users across more than 35 military service and combatant command software tools in three security domains — and that the user base has more than doubled since January. 

Palantir also recently signed a deal with NATO for a version of the technology — Maven Smart System NATO — that will support the transatlantic military organization’s Allied Command Operations strategic command.

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Through the contract, which was finalized March 25, the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) plans to use a version of the AI system — Maven Smart System NATO — to support the transatlantic military organization’s Allied Command Operations strategic command.

NATO plans to use the system to provide “a common data-enabled warfighting capability to the Alliance, through a wide range of AI applications — from large language models (LLMs) to generative and machine learning,” it said in a release, ultimately enhancing “intelligence fusion and targeting, battlespace awareness and planning, and accelerated decision-making.”

Neither party commented on the terms of the deal, but it was enough to drum up market confidence in Palantir, whose stock rose about 8% Monday morning. NATO, however, said the contract “was one of the most expeditious in [its] history, taking only six months from outlining the requirement to acquiring the system.”

Ludwig Decamps, NCIA general manager, said in a statement that the deal with Palantir is focused on “providing customized state-of-the-art AI capabilities to the Alliance, and empowering our forces with the tools required on the modern battlefield to operate effectively and decisively.”

Palantir’s commercialized Maven Smart System plays into the growing need for an interconnected digital battlespace in modern conflict powered by AI. The data-fusion platform served as a core element of the Pentagon’s infamous Project Maven. However, NATO warned in its release that it shouldn’t be confused with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Maven program, though the company’s AI is a component of the greater NGA program’s infrastructure

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command Control (CJADC2) attempts to do this by connecting disparate systems operated by the U.S. military and international partners under a single network to enable rapid data transfer between all warfighting domains. Palantir has already inked a $480 million deal with the Pentagon to support those efforts with Maven. Last September, the company also scored a nearly $100 million contract with the Army Research Lab to support each of the U.S. military services with Maven Smart System.

Meanwhile, the contract with the U.S.-based Palantir comes as NATO has become one of the recent targets of President Donald Trump’s ire because he believes other members of the alliance aren’t committing enough of their spending to the organization’s collective defense, saying in March: “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”

NATO’s Allied Command Operations will begin using Maven within the next 30 days, the organization said Monday, adding that it hopes that using it will accelerate further adoption of emerging AI capabilities.

“ACO is at the forefront of adopting technologies that make NATO more agile, adaptable, and responsive to emerging threats. Innovation is core to our warfighting ability,” said German Army Gen. Markus Laubenthal, chief of staff of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, the military headquarters of ACO. “Maven Smart System NATO enables the Alliance to leverage complex data, accelerate decision-making, and by doing so, adds a true operational value.”

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The teaming initiative, which the companies are calling a “consortium,” is emerging as the firms separately continue to rack up big contract wins with the Pentagon.

For example, just this week, the Defense Department announced that its Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) awarded Anduril a $100 million other transaction agreement to scale its “edge data integration services capabilities” for the DOD. The company is also heavily involved in the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which aims to field thousands of drones and counter-drone systems to counter China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific.

Earlier this year, Palantir landed a $480 million contract award for its Maven Smart System, which is expected to give U.S. military combatant commands expanded access to data integration and artificial intelligence tools to aid battlespace awareness and targeting. The company also won a $178 million deal with the Army for the next phase of its Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground station program, which has been touted as the “first AI-defined vehicle.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit in April announced that it awarded deals to Anduril and Palantir to develop software system integration architectures that could aid the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle program.

Looking ahead, by pairing some of their respective capabilities via their new partnership announced Friday, the contractors aim to address two key challenges for the U.S. military: data readiness and processing data at scale, according to a joint press release.

“Our goal is to deliver the technological infrastructure, from the edge to the enterprise, that can enable our government and industry partners to transform America’s world-leading AI advancements into next-generation military and national security capabilities,” the firms stated in the release.

“Most useful national security data — government data that are collected and created by sensors, vehicles, weapons, and robots at the tactical edge — are not retained for AI training and algorithm development. Exabytes of defense data, indispensable for AI training and inferencing, are currently evaporating,” company officials wrote. “Even with national security data that are retained, no secure enterprise pipeline exists to turn that data into AI capabilities. U.S. companies are developing world-leading models but struggling to deploy them at scale with government partners for defense applications.”

To tackle these issues, executives plan to combine Anduril’s Lattice software platform and Menace family of expeditionary command, control, communications and computing (C4) platforms with Palantir capabilities such as its AI Platform (AIP) and Maven Smart System.

“Lattice connects directly with third-party defense systems at the edge, delivers autonomy to machine operations, securely distributes their information across a large-scale data mesh, and backhauls all tactical data into government enclaves for the purposes of AI training and inferencing. Menace devices are also purpose-built for the tactical edge, customized down to the silicon level for the unique requirements of national security operations in tactical environments — including, soon, next-generation encryption,” according to the release.

Integrating Palantir’s AIP with Anduril’s “edge capabilities” is being touted as a means of boosting the delivery of cloud-based data management and the development of artificial intelligence tools.

Migration to the cloud is a key component of the Pentagon’s IT modernization plans, as officials look to improve data-sharing, storage, handling and other tasks. The U.S. military also needs to leverage data to train its artificial intelligence systems.

Palantir’s AIP technologies will “enable the structuring, labeling, and preparation of defense data for AI training and development at all levels of classification, including Secure Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Access Programs (SAP),” and help AI developers conduct “imitation and reinforcement learning,” according to the release issued Friday.

Via Palantir’s Maven Smart System, Pentagon officials aim to significantly grow the user base of technology that will enable the department to achieve a future warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), with a goal of better connecting the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners to improve decision-making, operational effectiveness and efficiencies.

The Maven Smart System “provides an enterprise mission command platform that integrates large-scale operational data and utilizes AI-based capabilities to improve and accelerate human decision-making across joint missions, such as intelligence and fires,” per Friday’s release. “Similarly, Anduril’s Lattice software platform provides an edge-based mission autonomy platform that integrates directly with robotic systems and utilizes AI-based capabilities to automate and orchestrate their conduct of joint missions, such as air defense and reconnaissance. Anduril and Palantir are joining these complementary systems together, providing a seamless operational capability from the edge to the enterprise that serves as a deployment platform for new AI applications that anyone can build. This platform is already in place and in use by Anduril and Palantir for their own corporate purposes and with government contracts that enables this work to begin immediately.”

Other industry partners may be invited to join the consortium in the future, the document noted.

Meanwhile, the forthcoming inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance next month could be a further boon for Palantir and Anduril, especially if it leads to an increase in defense spending for military modernization efforts.

“My big league support for Donald Trump is no secret,” Anduril founder Palmer Luckey wrote in a post on X in May.

Peter Thiel, who co-founded Palantir, has ties with JD Vance.

“The growth of our business is accelerating, and our financial performance is exceeding expectations as we meet an unwavering demand for the most advanced artificial intelligence technologies from our U.S. government and commercial customers,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote in a letter to shareholders published Nov. 4, the day before the presidential election.

As of the morning of Dec. 6, Palantir’s stock has shot up more than 30% over the past month in the wake of Trump’s victory, according to Forbes.

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Several active-duty components, defense agencies and the National Guard are aiding in the relief efforts as requested by the states affected under what’s known as “defense support to civil authorities,” which allow the military to be employed domestically when asked.

The Maven Smart System — an AI-enabled platform for geospatial visualization of data that was designed for use by combatant commands and other units to facilitate battlespace awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires and targeting workflows — is being deployed to aid in the relief efforts.

While common operational tools and data systems have been used for disaster relief in the past, this marks the first time the Maven capability has been used for a hurricane.

“We’re not unfamiliar with getting in data, aggregating data, putting data together in support of our defense support of civil authorities mission … It’s not the first time that we’ve done this before, it’s not our first rodeo,” a defense official told reporters on a call earlier this week. “But certainly every time we go through one of these events, there’s more to learn, more data to go after and there’s always a new data source, there’s always a new problem set within this environment … What we’re trying to do now is we’re trying to make this endurable so that our data connections and relationships with the interagency, the National Guard, XVIII Airborne Corps, are all more endurable over time.”

While the officials who briefed reporters declined to lay out specific metrics for success for using Maven in these relief efforts, they noted the significance of the deployment is developing the enduring capability and relationships with others, which eventually, with more practice, will garner concrete metrics for success in these types of operations.

“Our job right now is just to identify and bring in authoritative data from multiple different sensors and systems to help create a better understanding of that environment to more precisely apply the resources that we have in support of the dual status commander and the National Guard,” the defense official said.

The military is working to feed the data it is gathering directly to FEMA and other first responders. That includes general mapping data and data from various sensors that provide insights into things like road closures, communications, force movements, and which areas have yet to be serviced.

The system can also help with logistics by bringing in that data so that in near real-time, based on the point of need and survey data from FEMA, food, water, medical supplies or other goods can be reallocated to the best locations to serve citizens.

“One of the benefits of this platform [is] being able to be able to take in different data sources and be able to visualize those in a way that makes sense for decision makers,” a second defense official told reporters.

As part of the relief efforts, the military is trying to use publicly available data to the fullest extent possible, eschewing anything that might be DOD or battlefield specific.

“We’re looking at different unique capabilities that we will only have in a military use case that are not necessarily specific to us, but that can get data out of some of these environments that have little to no communications capabilities back into the FEMA dashboard so they understand where to redistribute supplies and things,” the second defense official told reporters. “I think being able to bring together this unified single pane of glass common operating picture with the team here is really given us a better situational awareness and being able to respond faster to hopefully facilitate FEMA getting support and supplies out quicker.”

Part of the power of the system is providing a four-dimensional picture for those on the ground. Officials described that overhead aerial imagery only offers a two-dimensional picture. But when that is combined with force movements on the ground and timing, it paints a much more detailed understanding of the environment for where to apply people and resources.

The goal is to shorten the path from data collection to data visualization so that first responders and others can make decisions faster.

Officials explained that Maven helps aid that speed to decision-making because individuals no longer have to sit in a room and manually upload information — such as what goods are going where — into spreadsheets. Now, the data is provided through Maven, enabling individuals to analyze it, provide context and send that to the decision makers. It also places all the data in a single place as opposed to having to look across several different spreadsheets.

While officials on the call with reporters declined to offer how the use of Maven for the relief efforts could help tune the system for operational use on the battlefield, one of them explained that supporting the relief efforts has provided an opportunity to look at an environment a little outside of the active-duty military’s typical operating scenarios, in a supporting role to facilitate data aggregation into a single viewing platform.

“As we go through these different reps and sets and iterations and something where we’re outside of our comfort zone, that will naturally enable us to be more effective no matter where we go,” the second official said.

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The move, which the mission commander of the U.S. military’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE) previewed in a discussion with DefenseScoop last month, comes on the heels of an award to Palantir for its Maven Smart System and the launch of the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) effort.

According to an announcement released Thursday evening, contractors interested in participating in the new challenge — which will support those initiatives — can submit their proposals in the form of a 5-minute “pitch video” via the online Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, addressing the tasks and subtasks laid out in the formal call for submissions.

Vendors whose proposed solutions fit the bill may be integrated into upcoming events known as GIDE 12 and 13 starting this fall.

Global logistics and sustainment challenges present hurdles that the U.S. military is trying to overcome with better data management solutions, including through the use of artificial intelligence. Concern is growing as the department’s logistics networks are expected to be at greater risk in future conflicts if they’re targeted by adversaries’ advanced weapon systems.

“While logisticians from the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, and Service Components excel at developing these dynamic logistics plans, they require manual curation of data into often-static products in an analog workflow that varies across organizations. The lack of a common, enterprise-level data ontology for logistics and sustainment leads to sub-optimal decisions from stovepiped and static data — challenging the Joint Force’s ability to provide quick, dynamic, and predictive logistics and sustainment plans. These challenges are compounded in a contested environment,” the Tradewinds post notes.

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) oversees the GIDE series in partnership with the combatant commands and the Joint Staff.

The newly launched challenge will support an innovative acquisition process, according to a release.

“The initiative has the potential to impact every Combatant Command, and warfighters will witness industry solutions applied immediately to their problem sets in a common CJADC2 global integration decision platform. Warfighters will rapidly share feedback in an iterative fashion, while executing the mission,” per the release.

The call for proposals on Tradewinds notes that the Pentagon needs a common data ontology, digitized workflows, access to live data, and insights derived from that information.

The inaugural GIDE challenge “is intended to develop the global logistics data ontology in [Maven Smart System] while enriching current ontology and workflows with existing government logistics data,” the document states, noting that the initiative will give new industry partners the opportunity to provide live logistics and sustainment data, “curated digital insights,” and integrated applications “containerized” and integrated into the Maven Smart System at Impact Level 5 as part of the broader Open DAGIR effort.

Submissions are due Sept. 6.

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Wednesday evening the Pentagon announced that Palantir landed a deal for its Maven Smart System led by the Army. On Thursday, company executives said the effort will significantly grow the user base and help the department’s Chief Digital and AI Office proliferate the technology to warfighters and pursue its vision for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which aims to better connect the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners to improve decision-making, operational effectiveness and efficiency.

The IDIQ contract will help the combatant commands and the Joint Staff do CJADC2-related work, Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir, told reporters.

The tech is expected to facilitate battlespace awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires and targeting workflows.

“This is taking what has been built in prototype and experimentation and bringing this [Maven system] to production,” Clark said. “The prototype began in 2021, we fielded that to a small set of users at each of these combatant commands. Now this is offering an enterprise capability with essentially no user limit at these combatant commands. So any individual that is focused on some of the workflows that [the technology is designed to aid] … will have access to the platform. That’s one of the things we’re so excited about, frankly, is because this means that an intel analyst or a user that’s doing work in the field has access to this platform, as do the combatant commanders themselves.”

Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command. The tech will also continue to be deployed as part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), according to Clark.

“Users are going to span everyone from intel analysts and operators in, you know, some of the remote island chains across the world to leadership at the Pentagon. It’s going to reach thousands of users across the globe,” Clark said.

The company will be working with other vendors and U.S. government partners to integrate their technologies with Maven.

“We will be partnering with them to help integrate other AI capabilities, not just what Palantir brings to the table. So they will be able to build on all the data integrations that Palantir is doing, build on the pipelines and the applications within the platform or other platforms through open APIs and our ontology software development kits,” Clark said. “We want to be able to integrate with any data system, any new AI capability that the government procures and wants to be part of this ecosystem. So, you know, should tomorrow a new sensor come online, should … a new AI capability come online, we want to be able to integrate with that.”

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office also awarded Palantir a $33 million prototype other transaction agreement “to rapidly and securely” onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into a government-owned, Palantir-operated data environment, according to a CDAO release that went out Thursday afternoon.

The Maven system and the data environment will support the Defense Department’s plans for the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) initiative that was announced Thursday.

The first task order under the $480 million Maven contract is worth $153 million. The funding will go toward licenses to deploy the company’s software, according to Clark.

“This task order kicks off on June 1 … Those licenses will be made available immediately to all those users,” she told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters. “That’s the beauty of commercial software. The beauty of the product that we built is that we can get it up and running in days and weeks, not months and years.”

The Maven tech can integrate data from a variety of reporting systems — such as satellite imagery, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence, human intelligence, or other sources — across multiple domains to provide users with better situational awareness of friendly and adversary forces. That info can be displayed for commanders and other personnel via easy-to-use maps and dashboards, Andrew Locke, DOD enterprise lead at Palantir, told reporters.

The system can also “layer in” AI capabilities, such as computer vision models that scan imagery and look for objects of interest.

“For the user, they can go immediately from kind of that tip and cue that something of interest is there and actually nominate, you know, targets from the platform. So, you know, when we think about the integration of AI into these workflows, it is very much like humans involved in the process … They’re providing their unique subject matter expertise to verify that, you know, what AI maybe suggested is there is actually there. And then go from that into what you know the next stage of a process might be,” Locke said.

That could include what he called a “targeting nomination workflow.”

“In this case, you can either nominate a single target or multiple targets. We help to augment the user where we take all the metadata associated with those detections and kind of package that in the … format that they’re familiar with as part of the target nomination. As they do that, that would then transition to a separate capability that we’re providing across target management where nominated targets would then pop up right into a board … And for a staff, they can really optimize a process, take like their standard operating procedures that are unique to that organization and then code that in software,” he explained.

Data from social media could also be integrated into workflows if the U.S. government asked for that, he suggested.

“On our side, [we’re] really agnostic, you know, to the data sources. And really no technical limitation,” he told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters.

Palantir will defer to the Pentagon in terms of providing specifics on the actual social media sites or programs that they might want to pull from, he noted.

“But basically … if the government were to be using a sort of AI to initially run off of social media, whether that’s computer vision against images or videos that are in posts, or some type of like geolocation or, you know, natural language processing, you know, over keywords … then we would provide, like, the integration of whatever those social media sources potentially look like. And then … move that into classified networks, and then provide that sort of information in conjunction with the other data sources that we’ve integrated on the government’s behalf,” Locke said.

Updated on May 30, 2024, at 5:20 PM. This story has been updated to include information about an other transaction agreement awarded to Palantir and the Pentagon’s Open DIGAR initiative.

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The U.S. military has recently been using this type of artificial intelligence technology in the Central Command area of responsibility in the Middle East, according to a February news release from the Kentucky National Guard.

“The MAVEN Smart System (MSS) by Palantir along with National Geospatial Agency (NGA) Broad Area Search – Targeting (BAS-T) uses AI generated algorithms and memory learning capabilities to scan and identify enemy systems in the Area of Responsibility (AOR). MAVEN fuses data from various Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR) systems to identify areas of interests,” according to the release.

“Positive target identification (PID) is at the forefront of the targeting process. The speed at which a hostile target can be detected is crucial to the remaining steps of the targeting cycle (Decide, Detect, Deliver, Assess). AI is able to assist by filtering specific user defined parameters, sifting through large amounts of data, extracting what is relevant, and providing analysts … with near-real time data that is used by the operations community for validation against the commander’s objective. Once confirmed, the information can be interfaced with existing Army Mission Command Systems like the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) to generate fire missions,” it added.

The Pentagon wants to use artificial intelligence tools like Maven to enable its Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) warfighting construct, which aims to better connect the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners under a more unified network. Defense officials intend to leverage AI to help commanders and other personnel make faster and better decisions and improve operational effectiveness and efficiency.

The $480 million deal with Palantir’s USG subsidiary that was announced Wednesday is a firm-fixed price contract.

“One bid was solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of May 28, 2029,” according to the DOD announcement.

Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company was recently awarded another AI-related deal by the Army for the next phase of the service’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground station program, which aims to provide soldiers with next-generation data fusion and deep-sensing capabilities via artificial intelligence and other tools. That other transaction agreement was worth $178 million.

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