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U.S. Navy Hires Palantir to Reorganize Shipbuilding Supply Chain With AI

Electric Boat
GD Electric Boat will be among the participants in the program (Courtesy USN)

Published Dec 10, 2025 7:20 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The U.S. Navy has awarded a contract worth nearly $450 million to the technology company Palantir to reorganize the submarine supply chain with advanced AI tools. 

Palantir is a leading defense tech contractor with tools for analyzing and organizing manufacturing activity, sorting through intelligence, and aiding the process of targeting. It built the mission command platform for U.S. Special Operations Command,  and it has carried out countless sensor integration and data projects for the U.S. Army. For the Navy, it will be building Ship OS, a system to organize parts ordering and delivery for the nuclear sub prime contractors (Huntington Ingalls and GD Electric Boat) and three public shipyards that conduct submarine repairs. More than 100 suppliers will be hooked up to the company's inventory management system in the initial rollout. 

"This investment provides the resources our shipbuilders, shipyards, and suppliers need to modernize their operations," Navy Secretary John Phelan said. "By enabling industry to adopt AI and autonomy tools at scale, we're helping the shipbuilding industry improve schedules, increase capacity, and reduce costs."

The rollout builds on early trials funded by the BlueForge Alliance at GD Electric Boat and HII Newport News, initially dubbed "Warp Speed for Warships" and based on Palantir's Foundry product. The Navy said that these testbed applications yielded hundreds of hours in labor savings for production scheduling and material reviews. 

The Ship OS program will be overseen by the Navy's Maritime Industrial Base (MIB) program, a government initiative to support, subsidize and reorganize private industry in support of Navy needs. The most pressing need is in the overstressed submarine supply chain, and MIB hopes that Palantir's help will yield cost and efficiency savings that will offset the expense of the initial investment. More importantly, it hopes to shave critical months off of the delayed production timetable for submarine programs and help get manufacturing and repair work back on schedule - a key consideration for national security. Once proven in the sub supply chain, Ship OS will be rolled out for surface ship programs as well. 

Last year, the Navy also announced plans to award Palantir a $920 million, five-year IDIQ contract for a variety of software, hardware and consulting services.