DOD wants more than $2B in fiscal 2027 to move beyond ‘fragmented’ CJADC2 deployments
Tucked into the Pentagon’s budget materials for fiscal 2027 is a request for more than $2 billion to purchase command-and-control technology licenses and engineering support for the U.S. combatant commands, Joint Staff and National Guard Bureau.
That total includes more than $1.5 billion to expand defense users’ access to Palantir’s Maven Smart System in support of the Defense Department’s “Joint Force AI-Enabled Headquarters initiative” and $60 million for the “Virtual Joint Operations Center (VJOC) initiative.”
Little has been disclosed publicly about those two efforts to date, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to share more information about them with DefenseScoop this week.
However, the budget documents indicate that the department is looking to swiftly consolidate “software-centric C2 onto a single pane of glass” over the next fiscal year.
“Funding will expand enterprise access to Joint C2 capabilities to Services across echelon and provide deliberate, sustained development and enterprise-wide integration. Funding will streamline acquisition, establish rigorous testing and evaluation standards, and create clear lines of accountability for performance and management,” officials wrote regarding their near-term plans. “Finally, funding will advance [a] globally interconnected environment for operations, planning, and intelligence workflows supported by shared access to real time data on the battlespace.”
The DOD’s foundational concept for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which broadly involves breaking down long-standing boundaries between the military services to enable a unified network where all sensors and shooters can seamlessly connect, started to take clear shape in the early 2020s.
According to the budget documents, the department’s Mission Command Applications program “funds licenses for Joint Force and Services on multiple networks, engineering support to integrate new data sources and digitize workflows, maintenance of a DevSecOps pipeline to allow third party vendors to develop and field applications on MSS, funding for those third party vendors to close CJADC2 gaps, and cloud compute costs needed to run applications and workflows.”
DOD planned to spend more than $103 million for activities associated with that program in fiscal 2025, more than $240 million in fiscal 2026, and is proposing more than $2 billion for fiscal 2027.
The Pentagon is also planning to request more than $1.9 billion each year for Mission Command Applications in fiscal years 2028 through 2031.
“FY 2027 increase reflects transition of Joint C2 from rapidly deployed product to program of record for the Department’s enterprise joint warfighting capability,” officials wrote. “Funding will enable maturation of [the] capability from fragmented deployments to Joint enterprise tooling fully supported across all domains.”
The Maven Smart System is a platform that is increasingly at the heart of the military’s CJADC2 plans.
DOD inked the initial $480 million, five-year IDIQ contract with Palantir for Maven in May 2024. A year later, the department revealed its decision to increase that contract ceiling for MSS to nearly $1.3 billion through 2029 — a move that officials said was made in anticipation of future demand.
In a March 9 memorandum, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg elevated MSS to an official Pentagon program of record.
In the budget plan for fiscal 2027, officials wrote that “MSS is a cloud-based mission command application that aggregates thousands of discrete data streams into AI-enabled workflows, securing decision advantage across all domains.”
They further noted that the proposed increase of more than $1.5 billion would expand access to MSS “across the Joint Force and Services in support of the Department’s Joint Force AI-Enabled Headquarters initiative.”
The fiscal 2027 budget request also includes $60 million for the Virtual Joint Operations Center initiative.
Officials wrote that the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office will “leverage VJOC to provide a browser-based virtual command center for real-time situational awareness for low-connectivity users at the tactical edge,” which will augment “cloud-based mission command applications, including Maven Smart System, with low-connectivity, tactical-edge functionality.”
