The U.S. Air Force is planning to integrate Project Maven into a test of the service’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) next month.
The Air Force has requested $3.3 billion for ABMS over five years, including $302.3 million in fiscal 2021.
ABMS, which the Air Force describes as the air and space “military Internet of Things,” is part of Joint All-Domain Command-and Control (JADC2), an effort to build a cross-service digital architecture for multi-domain operations.
“We have connected the [Project] Maven team with our Advanced Battle Management System team that’s getting ready to do their next on-ramp in September in a mega event with all services participating and assets coming from space, air, land and sea, including space launch,” Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper told reporters on Aug. 7.
“We are bringing Maven capabilities into the developing tech stack for ABMS,” he said. “We are leveraging Cloud One and Platform One that are being used broadly across our development enterprise, including important programs like Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and effectively by taking Cloud One/Platform One and using them as a hosting environment for Maven, we’re turning a developmental system into a warfighting system. Expect this is a trend that is not going to go backwards, but accelerate increasingly forwards.”
“There is no distinction between development systems and warfighting systems anymore on IT,” Roper said. Development and warfighting are effectively the same thing, and ABMS and Maven are going to start blurring that line in September.”
Officially launched by U.S. defense officials in 2017, Project Maven has looked to develop an AI tool to process data from full-motion video collected by unmanned aircraft and decrease the workload of intelligence analysts.
Google [GOOGL] was the prime contractor for Project Maven but dropped out in 2018 after receiving pushback from employees about the company’s tools being used for an AI drone imaging effort. California-based big data analytics company, Palantir Technologies, co-founded and chaired by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, has assumed Google’s role, Business Insider has reported.