The 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.
From Washington: 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. The designation, expected to take effect by the end of the fiscal year in September, transforms what was a pilot programme into permanent defence infrastructure.
What this means in practical terms is significant. A program of record designation is the Department of Defense's way of saying a technology is no longer on trial. It locks the system into the official defense budget cycle, meaning Congress appropriates funding for it year after year as part of the baseline defense budget.
The scale of Maven's expansion is striking. 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. Combined with broader Pentagon AI spending, 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.
Maven is not a theoretical system. 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.
The system operates as a command-and-control platform that digests battlefield data from multiple sources. Maven is a command-and-control software platform that uses AI to process large volumes of battlefield data from satellites, radars, drones, sensors and intelligence reports. The platform identifies potential threats and targets, including military vehicles, buildings and weapons stockpiles, and supports faster operational decision-making.
Yet the Pentagon's move raises questions about institutional priorities and technological dependencies. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently designated the AI startup Anthropic as a supply-chain risk after the company sought assurances its models would not be used for autonomous weapons deployment or mass surveillance of American citizens. The contrast is stark: one company asking for ethical guardrails was flagged as a liability; another whose platform is embedded in live targeting operations was handed a permanent institutional role.
The complication is practical, not just philosophical. Anthropic's Claude AI models were also integrated into Maven through Palantir's platform and received Impact Level 6 accreditation for classified environments. Extracting Claude from classified networks could take months, according to defence analysts, creating a supply chain vulnerability the Pentagon identified yet has proceeded to institutionalise.
Palantir's position within the Pentagon is now unassailable. 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.
For Australia and AUKUS partners, the formal adoption of Maven as US military infrastructure raises both capability and dependency questions. As Washington embeds AI deeper into operational decision-making, allied nations must consider their own technological ecosystems and what integration into American systems means for strategic autonomy and interoperability.