Pentagon Requests $2.3 Billion for Maven Smart System as AI Moves Into Core Warfighting Role

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes a dedicated $2.3 billion line for the Maven Smart System and Joint Fires Network within a broader push for military artificial intelligence and battlefield networking, a sign that a once-experimental AI effort is being treated as a core warfighting program.

The budget request, released April 21, says the Defense Department is seeking a “$58.5 billion investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).” Within that package, the department specifically requests “$2.3 billion for the Maven Smart System (MSS) and Joint Fires Network (JFN) to deliver CJADC2 to the Department’s joint warfighting capabilities.”

That line item stands out because it gives named funding to a battlefield AI system the Pentagon recently elevated to program-of-record status, a procurement milestone that typically gives a program a more durable place in planning and budgeting. In Pentagon terms, CJADC2 refers to the effort to connect sensors, commanders and weapons across the military services so forces can share data and act faster.

Reuters reported March 20 that a March 9 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg designated the Maven Smart System as a program of record. According to Reuters, the memo also shifted oversight of Maven from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes imagery and geospatial intelligence, to the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and assigned future contracting work to the Army.

Reuters and other outlets have identified Palantir as the company associated with Maven, though Palantir is not named in the budget overview itself. Reuters also reported that Feinberg wrote the system would equip warfighters “with the latest tools necessary to detect, deter, and dominate our adversaries in all domains.”

The funding request and the earlier memo together mark a notable transition for Maven from an AI initiative tied to experimentation and analysis toward a system the Pentagon wants embedded in its operational command-and-control architecture.

Maven grew out of Project Maven, launched in 2017 as a Pentagon effort to use machine learning to analyze military imagery and drone or surveillance video. The current Maven Smart System is the more institutionalized successor to that work, reflecting the department’s push to move AI from pilot projects into everyday military operations.

The Pentagon’s budget document does not present the $2.3 billion request as a standalone AI bet divorced from the larger command-and-control buildout. Instead, it links Maven and the Joint Fires Network directly to CJADC2, the Defense Department’s umbrella concept for connecting forces across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. That framing suggests Maven is being positioned not simply as an analytic tool, but as part of the infrastructure the Pentagon wants to use to direct joint operations.

Congress still must approve the fiscal 2027 request, and the figures are not enacted funding. InsideDefense has reported that much of the broader $58.5 billion AI/CJADC2 package is tied to proposed mandatory, or reconciliation, funding, meaning the full amount is not guaranteed even if the administration submits the request as proposed.

The Pentagon’s AI push is also unfolding amid active debate in Congress over limits on military uses of the technology. In March, Sen. Elissa Slotkin introduced the AI Guardrails Act, which would restrict some Pentagon uses of AI, including autonomous lethal force without human authorization.