PARIS – France plans to test an artificial intelligence-powered battlefield command system with allies during a NATO interoperability exercise this month as a replacement for the Maven Smart system developed by Palantir Technologies, said Gen. Patrick Justel, deputy chief of staff of the French Army.
The French have developed systems with local companies including: Mistral AI, Saffron.AI, Thales and airbusJustel said at a media briefing on Thursday. The French Army has already tested the system, called Arcadia, in exercises such as Daqui Enfort in Romania and Orion 26 in France.
NATO military personnel training has started In August 2025, we partnered with Palantir’s Maven Smart System, making it the Alliance’s first AI-enabled command and control software. The platform is derived from the Department of Defense’s Project Maven, which combines massive amounts of battlefield data with AI analysis to help commanders identify targets and make decisions faster.
Arcadia “is our response to Maven,” Justel said. He said NATO’s use of Maven raises questions of digital sovereignty, “so the question arises: should we blindly adopt Maven or should we look for other solutions?”
The French military, the General Staff and the Defense Digital Committee are “considering what other solutions might be,” Justel said. France will deploy Arcadia during NATO’s Combined Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) live exercise to be held in Poland from June 8th to 26th.
Justel said several NATO countries, including France, have raised questions about interoperability with the Palantir system. The Army Vice Chief of Staff said the Arcadia was designed to comply with NATO regulations. federated mission networking He contrasted it with Maven, which does not integrate FMN requirements.
In an emailed response to a request for comment, Palantir said the Maven Smart system is “compliant with FMN principles” and is working with NATO toward official certification. The company added that the platform has been certified to comply with two NATO data security standards, which are “critical components” of FMN.
“NATO’s Maven Smart Systems are compatible and enable interoperability, but of course each country is free to choose which system to use,” Allied High Command spokesman Martin O’Donnell said in an emailed response to questions.
The Palantir system has already been integrated with more than 10 NATO systems and is on the verge of declaring full operational capability, according to U.S. Army Col. Arnel David, SHAPE’s Maven Task Force director, who said his team is “focused on securing final certification across all FMN milestones.”
France plans to offer the Arcadia to its European partners, and many countries have expressed interest, as has NATO, and they are organizing demonstrations, the general said. “When we talk to our European partners, we get the same response: ‘Well, we decided to go with Maven because we had no other choice, but if European countries can build an alternative, we’ll go with it.'”
Palantir said it “welcomes the opportunity to integrate with Arcadia and other national systems.”
Arcadia builds on previous research by the Department of the Armed Forces. artemis project Launched in 2022, it uses AI to process large amounts of defense data. Justel said the French Army is developing use cases for Arcadia both internally and in collaboration with industry partners.
Justel said the UK is also working on a similar AI-enabled command and control system and is also in discussions about how to work with Maven.
Based on discussions with the British side, “the British concept is well established, but the technical components are not yet in place,” Col. Frederic Vora, director of the Army’s Office of Planning and Capability Development, told a press conference.
Palantir is developing a version of Maven used by NATO, but the system is not the same as the one used by the United States, with different databases and features, and “certainly not the same performance,” Justel said.
The French system is considered a more resilient alternative to Maven because it is “highly distributed” rather than a centralized system, with all command posts connected to servers deployed in the field in a mesh network architecture rather than a far-flung central cloud. The French Army already has a network of data hubs and is acquiring more, Justel said.
“Firstly, it decentralizes the data and allows what remains to maintain autonomy even if the connection is broken or lost. Second, it is easy to implement,” Justel said.
The system has an open architecture, and the French military has invited “all the main players in artificial intelligence” and is open to collaborating with others, Justel said. “We don’t want to go into the logic that we’ve known for years, where you give a system to a manufacturer and everything goes through that manufacturer, everything is closed, and the manufacturer owns all the data,” Justel said. “We want an open system where any manufacturer can connect, there is no concept of exclusive ownership, and all data can be shared by everyone.”
As part of its command and control AI efforts, the French Army has developed its own large language model for the staff called Berthier, named after Napoleon’s chief of staff, and Justel said the model is being used to integrate information, capture operational data and support the planning of proposed courses of action while leaving decisions to commanders.
Rudy Ruitenberg is Defense News’ European correspondent. He began his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets, and politics.
