GoKawiilThe Pentagon intends to designate Palantir's Maven Smart System as an official program of record, locking in multi-year funding for the AI-enabled targeting platform that is already deployed across every U.S. combatant command, according to a policy memo first reported by Reuters on March 20. Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg signed the memo on March 9, stating that program-of-record status "will provide the stable funding and resourcing necessary" for Maven's continued development, integration, and use by commanders in combat operations, Bloomberg reported.
The designation enters Maven into the Future Years Defense Program as a protected line item, giving it visibility and stability across budget cycles that experimental programs lack. The U.S. Army will manage all Maven contracts going forward, and oversight will transfer from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to the Chief Digital and AI Officer within 30 days, with program-of-record status expected before the close of fiscal year 2026 on September 30.
What is Maven?
Maven started under Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work in April 2017 as an effort to apply machine learning to drone surveillance footage. Google was the original technology partner, but withdrew in 2018 after employee protests.
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Palantir took over and built a full command-and-control platform that ingests data from more than 150 sources, according to Palantir's public demonstrations: satellite imagery, drone video, radar, infrared sensors, signals intelligence, and geolocation data. Computer vision algorithms trained on millions of labeled images automatically detect and classify battlefield objects, with yellow-outlined boxes marking potential targets, blue outlines flagging friendly forces and no-strike zones, and an ‘AI Asset Tasking Recommender’ proposing which weapons platforms and munitions should be assigned to each target.
NGA Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth stated at Palantir's AIPCON 9 conference in March that Maven can generate 1,000 targeting recommendations per hour, as reported by The Register, with the 18th Airborne Corps reportedly achieving comparable targeting output to the 2,000-person cell used during Operation Iraqi Freedom with roughly 20 people. Maven now has more than 20,000 active users, a figure that has quadrupled since March 2024. The platform was used during the 2021 Kabul airlift, to supply target coordinates to Ukrainian forces in 2022, and most recently during Operation Epic Fury against Iran in 2026, where it reportedly enabled processing of 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours, according to SpaceNews. NATO acquired a version in March 2025.
$480 million to $10 billion in 14 months
An initial $480 million Maven contract was awarded in May 2024, with the ceiling raised to $1.3 billion in May 2025, alongside a $10 billion Army enterprise framework agreement signed in July 2025 that consolidated 75 existing Palantir contracts.
Meanwhile, the FY2026 defense budget reached $1.01 trillion, representing a 13% increase over FY2025, and for the first time included a dedicated AI and autonomy budget line of $13.4 billion, according to MeriTalk's analysis of the Pentagon budget request. That allocation covers unmanned aerial vehicles ($9.4 billion), maritime autonomous systems ($1.7 billion), and supporting AI software ($1.2 billion). The Pentagon now oversees more than 685 AI-related projects tied to weapons systems, per Congressional Research Service tracking.
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