Department of Defense users consumed 20 billion tokens a day through Palantir's Maven Smart System during Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon's AI chief confirmed. The system was "leveraged" for planning and coordinating the campaign of 13,000 airstrikes on Iran, according to officials.
The surge reflects what the Pentagon described as an "insatiable appetite" for AI-driven targeting and battle management. Maven's role in such a large-scale operation signals a deepening integration of machine learning into real-time combat decision-making.
Allied forces operating alongside the U.S. reportedly gained shared access to Maven's intelligence feeds, accelerating coordination across strike packages. Iran's air defense networks and command infrastructure were primary targets, though no adversary response to the AI tool itself has been noted.
The cost basis for the operation's AI usage was not disclosed. However, Maven Smart System contracts have historically run into the hundreds of millions annually under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability framework.
Analysts caution that reliance on commercial AI platforms like Palantir's introduces single-point-of-failure risks and ethical questions around algorithmic targeting. The Pentagon maintains that all strikes remain under human command-and-control chains.