Maven Smart System Explained
A guide to understanding the Flagship Software Platform of AI-Enabled Warfare
One of the two final pieces I worked on while I was at CSIS came out today. It’s a guide to understanding Maven Smart System (MSS), which is arguably the most important AI capability in the U.S. military and intelligence community today. It’s got a lot of information that is not publicly available elsewhere. I highly recommend reading it for anyone interested in the intersection of AI and military technology. In a Q&A format, the piece addresses six questions:
Q1: What is Maven Smart System?
Q2: What problems is MSS designed to address?
Q3: What capabilities do large language models (LLMs) provide in MSS?
Q4: What is Anthropic’s role in Maven Smart System?
Q5: What is Anthropic’s future with Maven Smart System?
Q6: What future does the Pentagon envision for Maven Smart System?
Full article available here. Excerpt below.
What Is Maven Smart System, and What Does It Do?
The Flagship Software Platform of AI-Enabled Warfare, Explained
by Matt Mande and Gregory C. Allen
June 2, 2026
During the first 24 hours of the war in Iran, the United States used Maven Smart System (MSS) to help strike more than 1,000 targets, a tenfold increase over what was possible in the pre-MSS era. However, few outside the government and contractor ecosystem involved in creating and using MSS are familiar with what it is, how it works, and the capabilities enabling a revolution in military intelligence and targeting.
Fortunately, a combination of old and newly available public and unclassified information sources allows for a much more complete understanding of MSS. Government and industry partners are sharing more than ever before about the platform, including through video demonstrations of its capabilities. At the same time, Katrina Manson’s recently published book Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare includes interviews with critical stakeholders, many of whom were, until recently, remarkably tight-lipped. Reporting by various news outlets on the war in Iran has also revealed new details.
The following analysis consolidates and organizes this information to answer six key questions about Maven Smart System and its future in the Department of Defense (DOD).
Q1: What is Maven Smart System?
A1: MSS is an output of Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative founded in 2017 to bring AI capabilities to warfighters. Project Maven had a turbulent early history: Google was an early technology partner but withdrew in 2018 following employee protests over the company’s involvement in military AI development. Palantir, a data integration and analytics company, stepped in shortly after and has remained Project Maven’s primary industry partner. The company’s DOD contract ceiling for Maven surpassed $1 billion in May 2025, with MSS work added to that specific contract in fall 2025.
Thus, “Maven” refers to the current DOD program, which includes many other lines of effort and AI activities—such as AI-enabled Automated Target Recognition (ATR)—beyond just MSS. “MSS” refers to DOD’s flagship AI-enabled software platform, which draws from many data feeds, including Maven ATR. Palantir is the prime software integrator for MSS and stated in unpublished documentation reviewed by CSIS that “MSS is powered by the Palantir Platform.”
MSS is already used by the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, and various elements throughout the DOD and Intelligence Community, as well as NATO allies. Palantir claims that MSS’s user base has doubled every six months for more than two years. In May 2025, MSS reportedly had more than 20,000 users, implying a current user base of roughly 80,000.
MSS provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for military intelligence and targeting purposes as well as a growing list of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) functions. As described in the unpublished Palantir documentation, “MSS interfaces share a live, synchronized view of the Battlespace to imbue Warfighters and decisionmakers with real-time understanding in support of the overall CJADC2 mission.” The MSS user interface also allows for user tasking and human validation of AI labeling done by other Maven AI systems. In practical terms, this means that the use of MSS can speed up targeting decisions without sacrificing analytical rigor or judgment quality.
The platform aggregates, organizes, and visualizes vast streams of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data. According to Manson’s reporting, CENTCOM’s deployment of MSS drew from 179 distinct data sources in 2024, a figure that industry sources told CSIS has increased significantly since. AI models, including those from other Maven data feeds, identify patterns in this data, which MSS visually displays. For example, computer-vision models find and label potential targets in live satellite or drone video feeds, which then appear within a yellow box on a user’s screen.
MSS also embeds workflows directly into that interface, allowing operators to move from observation to action without switching systems. The DOD’s public demonstrations show that in a targeting scenario, a user can select an AI-detected target, evaluate available strike assets in the vicinity, and compare options using operational constraints such as time to strike, distance, and fuel requirements. Once an asset is selected, the user can order the strike and subsequently monitor its effects using ISR feeds.
Palantir’s documentation of MSS provides a nonexhaustive list of six specific baseline capabilities:
Battlespace management
Target management
AI-enabled deliberate planning and execution
Computer-vision detections
Machine-assisted disclosure
Generative AI
Oversight of Project Maven and MSS has shifted locations within the Pentagon several times over the past decade. Project Maven originally sat within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security before the Biden administration split responsibilities between the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) in 2022. Under this configuration, the CDAO paid MSS’s licenses and managed its text-based functions, while the NGA handled geospatial-intelligence work, including the production of computer-vision models. In March 2026, a memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg ordered oversight of MSS to be fully relocated to the CDAO, a decision that this article discusses in greater depth in Q6.
Read the rest of the rest of the article at CSIS.org