By 
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Boeing’s [BA] $25 billion defense and space business has signed up Palantir Technologies [PLTR] to provide its Foundry data analytics software that will provide artificial intelligence tools to improve company operations and platforms.
The partnership announced Tuesday levels up a year-old relationship between the companies and will result in “standardized data analytics and insights” across military aircraft, spacecraft, missile and weapon production lines throughout the country, Steve Parker, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said at the partnership signing.
“We will apply AI driven data analytics to advance and streamline how our defense production and information technology environments operate,” he said at the Air Force Association’s Air Space Cyber Conference. “We will also apply Palantir software to select classified and proprietary programs supporting our global military customers.”
Foundry is already being applied to “proprietary classified” work and some of the company’s sites, including Mesa, Ariz., where Boeing builds the Army’s Apache helicopters, Parker said. The result is “it allows us to make decisions, not in weeks, but in days and hours. So, this is really the AI synthesizing data, allowing us to make decisions.”
The data analytics will improve processes from the factory floor to the supply chain, Parker said.
Mike Gallagher, head of defense for Palantir, said that bolstering production strengthens deterrence, which the partnership with Boeing will further.
A slews of defense startups are using Palantir’s technology to improve their operations as is L3Harris Technologies [LHX].
