PARIS – France will test its 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, French vice chief of staff Gen. Patrick Justel said.
The French are developing this system in collaboration with local companies including Mistral AI, Safran.A.I, Thales And AirbusJustel said at a media briefing on Thursday. The French military has already tested the system, known as Arcadia, in exercises including Dacian Fall in Romania and Orion 26 in France.
NATO military personnel Training started August 2025 with Palanir’s Maven Smart System, the alliance’s first application of AI-enabled command and control software. The platform is derived from the Pentagon’s Project Maven and brings together massive amounts of battlefield data and AI analytics to help commanders identify targets and make decisions quickly.
Arcadia is “our answer to Maven,” Justel said. He said NATO’s use of Maven raises issues of digital sovereignty, “so the question arises whether we should blindly accept Maven or look for other solutions.”
France’s military, civil servants and defense digital commission are “working on what other solutions might look like,” Justel said. France will deploy the Arcadia during NATO’s Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise, or CWIX, a live exercise in Poland from June 8-26.
Several NATO countries, including France, have raised questions about interoperability with the Palandir system, Justel said. Arcadia is designed to be compatible with NATO, said the Vice Chief of Army Staff Federation Mission Networking Standards, or FMN, and was compared to Maven, who he said did not integrate FMN requirements.
Balandir said in an emailed response to a request for comment that the Maven Smart System “complies with FMN’s principles” and is receiving official certification with NATO. The company added that the site has demonstrated compliance with two NATO data-protection standards that are “key building blocks” of FMN.
“The NATO Maven smart system is compatible and allows for interoperability, but of course countries are free to choose the systems they use,” said Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, in an emailed response to questions.
The Palantir system is already integrated with more than 10 NATO systems, according to US Army Col. Arnell David, director of Task Force Maven at SHAPE, whose team is “focused on securing final certification across all FMN milestones.”
France plans to propose Arcadia to its European partners, several countries are expressing interest, and has organized demonstrations for NATO, which is of interest, the general said. “When we talk to our European partners, we get the same reaction, ‘Well, we’ve gone with Maven because there’s no other choice, but if we can build an alternative in countries in Europe, we’ll go for it.’
“We welcome the opportunity to integrate with Arcadia or any other national organization,” Balandir said.
Arcadia builds on previous work as part of the Ministry of the Armed Forces Project Artemis Launched in 2022, it uses AI to process massive amounts of security data. According to Justel, the French military is developing use cases for the Arcadia both internally and in collaboration with industry partners.
The United Kingdom is working on a similar AI-enabled command and control system, and is in discussions about how to interface with Maven, according to Justel.
Based on discussions with the British, “Their concept is well established, but they don’t have all the technical building blocks yet,” explained Colonel Frederick Volla, chief of the Army General Staff’s Office of Planning and Capability Development.
Although Palantir is behind the version of Maven used by NATO, the system is not the same as the one used by the US, with different databases and functions and “definitely not the same performance,” according to Justel.
The French system is considered a more flexible alternative to Maven because it is “more decentralized” than a centralized system, with all command posts connected to servers deployed in the field in a mesh-network structure rather than a distant central cloud. The French military already has a network of data centers and is acquiring more, Justel said.
“First, it distributes the data, and in case of destruction or loss of connectivity, it allows to maintain the autonomy of what is left, and second, it is easy to implement,” Justel said.
According to Justel, the system has an open structure, with the French armed forces inviting “all the main players in artificial intelligence” and willing to work with others. “We don’t want to get into the logic that we’ve known for years, where we give a system to a manufacturer and then everything goes through them, everything is closed, they own all the data,” Justel said. “We want an open system that any manufacturer can plug in and everyone can share all the data without any notion of exclusivity.”
As part of its work on AI for command and control, the French military has developed its own large language model, called Perthier, named after Napoleon’s chief of staff, and said it will be used to integrate information, retrieve operational data and support the drafting of proposed actions.
Rudy Ruitenberg is Defense News’ Europe correspondent. He began his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
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