The Army published its new space vision in January, doubling down on the importance of the service’s ability to conduct its own space ops and the need to grow its formations. The document emphasized the need for land-centric, expeditionary equipment designed for large-scale multidimensional operations for space missions.

But with an eye on executing the vision by 2030, the organization is working through challenges in meeting demands for new capabilities and more space soldiers.

“As I look at the priorities within the command as we move forward, probably our top priority is how do we deliver that capability responsive to the warfighter?” SMDC commander Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey said this week during a panel at the annual AUSA conference. “How do we continue to get after more tactical solutions that allow our soldiers to maneuver around on the battlefield at different areas, different times [with] smaller weight platforms? … How do we build the expertise within our soldiers so that we’re not borrowing manpower?”

Developing space soldiers

Over the last 25 years, the Army has maintained a functional area of 40 space operations officers, while also borrowing enlisted troops from other military occupational specialties. Given new demands to add and maintain experienced space soldiers, the service is reconsidering that resourcing model, Col. Donald Brooks, commandant of SMDC’s Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence, said.

“Given the increasing dependency on space capabilities of the Army of the future, we realize that this is not enough and it’s insufficient,” Brooks said. “So, this ‘temporary space soldier’ … has proven not able or capable to meet current and future operational demands, and negatively impacts our ability to sufficiently answer the call in today’s operational environment.”

As part of the Army’s larger ongoing force structure transformation, the service plans to grow its space warfighting formations to include nine companies and 27 platoons. Those units will be the 1st Space Brigade, additional multidomain task forces (MDTFs) and new theater-level formations called theater strike effects groups (TSEGs).

Soldiers in the new formations will focus on providing space capabilities — such as satellite communications, missile warning, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — in support of ground forces operating at the tactical edge, according to Col. Peter Atkinson, principal space advisor at SMDC.

“What we’re seeing now is our formations requiring more of those low-density, high-demand skill sets. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain because they’re highly specialized,” Atkinson said in an interview with DefenseScoop on the sidelines of AUSA. “The training timelines for those are great. And so, when you’re looking at the human resources aspects of it, that piece is challenging.”

The Army has already established three MDTFs — two in the Pacific and one in Europe — and plans to activate two more over the next few years. According to the space vision, the MDTFs will be responsible for “employing Army space interdiction forces alongside cyber operations and electronic warfare enablers,” allowing them to destroy adversary space systems.

The service has already sent a provisional TSEG unit to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to integrate into exercises and inform how SMDC will ultimately field the formation in 2027. The group was recently at Joint Warfighting Assessment 24 in Europe, during which the Army evaluated how the unit can augment the MDTF, Brooks said. 

“One of the great things with the TSEG is the counter surveillance [and] reconnaissance capabilities that are bringing navigation warfare, along with the high-altitude assets that it can bring to the fight,” he said. “And it really does build that, not only capacity, but build additional capabilities to shape and influence.”

SMDC is also “aggressively pursuing” the establishment of a military occupational specialty for non-commissioned officers specific to space careers, as well as an Army space operations branch comprising the enlisted cohort, its current functional area officers and a potential warrant officer cohort, Brooks noted. 

“We need an Army space operations career field and branch to produce and sustain the specialized, highly experienced and talented non-commissioned officer corps and officer cohort capable of integrating space across all warfighting functions and converging effects in support of maneuver operations,” he said.

Demand for new capabilities

As it grows the number of space personnel, the Army is also adding capabilities and equipment in alignment to the two new mission areas outlined in the space vision: integration with joint, coalition and commercial space capabilities, and interdiction against adversary space operations.

Atkinson told DefenseScoop it is imperative that the capability development and fielding is in line with the Army’s near-term growth plan for formations.

“Our goal is to make sure that they receive equipment as part of their activation, as part of their establishment,” he said. “So that alignment is what we’re focusing on right now, to make sure that we don’t have equipment on the shelf that could be waiting for a unit to be established, and then we don’t have units that are established without equipment.”

The service’s integration mission will include providing assured position, navigation and timing (PNT), deep sensing and reliable satellite communications, among others. While it keeps an eye on emerging technologies it can incorporate in the future, there are several prototypes for the integration mission the Army will field in the next few years, Atkinson noted.

A key challenge, however, will be scaling new space-based capabilities at relatively high volumes across the service. In many cases, the Army will require individual systems that can be fielded in the thousands — such as terminals needed for satellite communications, he added.

“The Army’s challenge with terminals is that we have too many, and it’s really hard to scale,” Atkinson said. “You’re talking about tens of thousands of individual terminals, each one unique to that satellite, that specific constellation — whether it’s military SATCOM, whether it’s commercial SATCOM.”

To mitigate delays in soldiers receiving new SATCOM capabilities, the Army is pursuing a hybrid terminal that can access multiple satellite constellations across orbital regimes. The service is hoping to leverage both military and commercial systems, Atkinson noted.

But for the Army’s new PNT capability, Atkinson said the fielding process is likely to be long. Developed by Collins Aerospace, the Mounted Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing System (MAPS) and the dismounted variant known as DAPS are designed to give soldiers assured PNT in GPS-contested environments.

The department started initial fielding of the capability during fiscal 2024, and plans to begin scaling the system across the service in fiscal 2025, according to Atkinson.

“That is a long fielding process. That’s hundreds of thousands of individual items that the Army continues to upgrade to make sure that we have sound PNT,” he said.

Atkinson also highlighted the Army’s prototyping efforts for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), a ground station that will integrate data from multiple platforms across all domains to assist commanders in making sense of the battlefield.

The service awarded Palantir a $178.4 million other transaction agreement for TITAN in March, under which the company will deliver five “basic” and five “advanced” variants of the ground station over a two-year period.

For the Army’s space modernization efforts, the platform will give soldiers immediate access to space-based ISR at remote locations, Atkinson said.

“There is a tremendous amount of innovation happening with space-based ISR. We’re seeing it in commercial, we’re seeing it in industry and we’re seeing it across the [intelligence community],” he said. “So being able to harness that is going to be critical for the Army.”

The department has been more tight-lipped about specific systems it is developing for its interdiction mission, but they are considered offensive space control capabilities designed to deny adversaries the ability to use space for hostile purposes “by delivering necessary fires and effects at echelon to protect friendly forces from observation and targeting by counter-satellite communications, counter-surveillance and reconnaissance, and navigation warfare operations,” according to the space vision.

Atkinson said the service is trying to outpace emerging threats from China and Russia’s recent growth in the space domain. Although space control isn’t a new requirement, the threat is now pushing the Army to scale more tactical interdiction systems.

“The threat landscape has evolved significantly coming out of [counterinsurgency] and transitioning to great-power competition,” he said. “We have not been focused on a conflict with Russia and China, and when you look at their use of space capabilities, it really threatens our way of life, our way of war and our abilities.”

As the Army carves out its new role in the space domain, it’s working closely with the Space Force and others across the Pentagon to ensure there is no duplication of effort and that each service’s space capabilities complement each other.

“The Army’s not doing space for space,” Atkinson said. “There’s a direct requirement for the Army to protect its forces, to ensure that we can enable our moving maneuver and basic functions. And right now we can’t strip out all the requirements for space and cyberspace.”

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Much is still to be determined regarding the final Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) — to include how it will be employed and by whom — which will be shaped by upcoming experimentation. But officials know for certain that it won’t be pure fleeting, or giving the same system to all types of units across all theaters, a trend seen across many different capability portfolios for the Army.

“The one-size-fits-all approach, which we’ve done for years, does not work. We are going to provide the Army with modular open systems that are tailorable depending on what a commander needs,” Col. Chris Anderson, project manager for intelligence systems and analytics at program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in an interview at the annual AUSA conference. “I know going in that not every commander wants a 5-ton truck with a giant antenna farm towed along with it. They want something lighter or they want something that’s not truck based at all. Light units want smaller than a JLTV [Joint Light Tactical Vehicle]. We’re really going to leverage this prototyping period and the authorities that we have to do prototyping to give the Army options and really inform requirements. I think that’s one of the big benefits of doing prototyping.”

The TITAN program began with pre-protypes delivered to the Pacific and Europe around 2022 to help inform the final effort. The platform is essentially a truck aimed at collecting and disseminating intelligence to the battlefield from national and joint assets in once place. It will be manned by intelligence analysts from various disciplines, with data collected and processed by the system provided to other command-and-control systems for targeting and situational awareness.

The system comes in an advanced variant designed for division and above, providing direct access to more sensor data at higher classification levels, and a basic variant designed for division and below, prioritizing survivability, mobility and enabling secure but unclassified-encrypted communications.

In March, Palantir — primarily a software company — won the prime contract for the program with a team of Anduril, Northrop Grumman — which provided the pre-prototypes and is helping with platform integration — and Pacific Defense. The first Palantir prototype was delivered to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, in July for the Multi-Domain Task Force, where troops will begin training with it.

One of the recent examples for why a single system shouldn’t be fielded across all units and theaters, comes from when the system was deployed in the Middle East, then sent to the Philippines and the humidity of the Pacific created problems that the Army hadn’t necessarily foreseen or experienced in the desert.

The service plans to use various experimentation efforts to help inform the future of the program — such as production — and concepts to include where it will reside on the battlefield.

“From a PM perspective, we’re learning about the capabilities and what it can and can’t do. If we shrink an antenna, how does that affect performance? Then we’re informing commanders and decision makers,” Anderson said. “The value of prototyping [is] we’re really zeroing in on how many of these the Army needs and what do they need to look like, who’s going to use them where? That’s — it’s really beyond materiel developer, it’s really up to the Army to figure out.”

The service released a request for information in August to ask for industry input regarding future production. The notice asked for advice on recommended hardware configurations for both variants, software development approaches, Modular Open Systems Approach compliance, how companies would approach systems integration and software intellectual property strategies, among others.

Anderson said it will be a mix of industry input and experimentation that will inform the way ahead.

“We were trying to keep a very modular approach to this. Antenna technology … advances every day. We just want to make sure we’re not locking ourselves into a design too prematurely. We want to get the best available compute and antenna technology and radios, whatever the latest and greatest is,” he said. “Again, it goes to, I don’t think we’re going to have a pure fleet of TITANs. They’re all going to look a little bit different, just because they’re going to get tailored to whatever that unit is doing. That’s okay and it’s uncomfortable for the Army because that’s not how we’ve done things.”

While Anderson said it’s probably pretty settled that the advanced variant will be mounted to the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles with a tow array of antennas for the theater and maybe corps, what’s less clear is what below corps and divisions need. Maybe a capability at the brigade level will be necessary.

For example, U.S. Army Special Operations Command is interested in what Anderson called a “lunchbox TITAN,” where troops could have a laptop-based capability with a satellite uplink. That isn’t necessarily in the offing just yet, Anderson said, but he predicts there will be Humvee or infantry fighting vehicle variants that are smaller than the current JLTV basic design.

While the first prototype at Lewis-McChord will be employed by the Multi-Domain Task Force, Anderson said it’s important to get the system to other units to test out and provide more data for how it’ll be used.

The Army has quarterly decision cycles for what the TITAN prototype priorities are.

“We need a really broad mix of units. We need light units, heavy units, focused on different regions. We’re being very deliberate, the Army is being very deliberate about … where we place each prototype, just based on what we need to learn out of that,” he said. “It’s a deliberate three-star-level decision on, okay, where is the next one going and why, and what are our learning demand?”

He noted there should be a decision next month on where the second prototype will go, but the Army isn’t trying to plan too far in advance given how quickly things change.  

The program office is gearing up for an operational test toward the end of fiscal 2026 that will support a production decision. Leading up to that test, the Army’s Requirements Oversight Council will approve the final requirements for the system.

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The Deep-Sensing and Targeting (DSaT) capability is a multi-domain tool that’s integrated into a civilian aircraft for intelligence collection beyond the visual line of sight.

The system was put through its paces at the Army’s Vanguard 24, an annual capstone event testing various technologies and prototypes to integrate them into intelligence system architectures for evaluation and to inform decisions about whether they’ll become future Army programs of record.

Northrop is trying to help the Army address some of the challenges associated with its long-range precision fires mission.

“What we were identifying on our side is that they have challenges with over-the-horizon capabilities,” Brent Swift, director of Northrop Grumman’s mission exploitation operating unit, said in an interview. “If you think about the ability for a multi-domain conflict, you’re not constrained by terrestrial ground, sea or space. In this instance, we’re particularly exploiting an airborne-type capability. If you think about the ability to extend your capabilities over the constraints that you deal with from a sea or terrestrial perspective, DSaT and being airborne is a game changer for the Army that typically focuses on terrestrial or ground-based capability. That’s the difference maker that I think DSaT has.”

The contractor provided the Army’s pre-prototypes for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) system, before the official program of record, leveraging that ground work to mount DSaT on a jet aircraft.

“DSaT is really taking a ground station, putting it on an airborne platform and really processing that intelligence data, moving the needle from a multi-domain perspective and then getting the warfighter the data faster than they’ve ever had it before,” Swift said. “It’s designed to pull down commercial and military data from space-based capabilities. Basically, we’re putting it in a form factor that will integrate into commercial aircraft versus what we typically have from a large, robust ground site.”

A jet provides the advantage of seeing over the horizon and increasing the range. “That’s really what puts the decision data in the hands of the shooter for their target nominations,” he said.

“You’re kind of limited on a terrestrial ground site by the line of sight that you have. And putting it airborne into that aircraft gets you over that horizon, visual line of sight, and then you’re able to exploit the sensors that are on that aircraft,” Swift added.

While he declined to comment on the acquisition and program of record for the Army’s High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) system — the service’s business jet program to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — Swift suggested the capabilities that DSaT provides would aid that program.

“When you think about some of the [military’s] areas of responsibility and how they execute their missions, we saw a need for where they were going with their HADES program and how we could potentially help them move the needle from having an airborne-type direct downlink capability,” he said. “When we think about the types of missions HADES would support and perform, we identify that it could potentially leverage our capabilities. We’ll certainly propose the ability to leverage that capability, but ultimately, the customer has a decision on how they acquire and how they close the loop on that mission it’s going to support.”

While not officially on contract for a program for DSaT, Northrop has been awarded prototyping money to continue testing the system.

The work at Vanguard 24 built upon prior work the company did at the Army’s EDGE experiment last year.

Swift said the organization used surrogate jets to fly DSaT at Vanguard and tested communications with the intelligence data on the aircraft, then disseminated it to the exercise operators.

He declined to offer more specific details regarding what the system did at the exercise but noted the company delivered on objectives, leveraging space-based data to deliver targeting nominations, took line of sight and beyond-line-of-sight capabilities to ensure they could continuously communicate, and then demonstrated how to insert and integrate AI technologies.

Swift added that during this go-round they used artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities “that directly improved efficiency, accuracy, speed to deliver data into the hands of the operator.”

Following Vanguard, Northrop anticipates follow-on DSaT activity for more engineering.

“We want to continue to put what’s within the possibility in front of the decision makers to help them understand how they can close the kill chain,” he said.

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The Army awarded Palantir a $178.4 million other transaction agreement in March for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN). The system is a critical modernization component for the service’s multi-domain operations concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms — such as space, high-altitude aerial and terrestrial — to help commanders make sense of a fast-moving and complex battlefield. The effort is unique in that it’s one of the first major programs steeped in artificial intelligence, with a software vendor acting as the prime. In fact, Project Linchpin, the Army’s first program-of-record AI operations pipeline, will first be focusing on the TITAN system.

While Palantir is working on building and delivering prototypes — the first of which was delivered to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, in July — the Army is conducting market research to better understand how production and fielding of the system would work for possible future contract opportunities.

For that effort, the Army is estimating a production run from fiscal 2026-2031 and an investment of $1-1.5 billion dollars, according to a spokesperson from the program office.

The request for information posted by the Army lists the possibility of 94 total TITAN systems for production divided between approximately 36 advanced and 58 basic variants. The program spokesperson added that these numbers are potential quantities and the fielding plan to identify what units receive which variants is still in development.

Under its contract, Palantir is to deliver 10 prototypes over 24 months, consisting of five advanced and five basic variants.

The advanced variants are designed for division and above, providing direct access to more sensor data at higher classification levels. The basic variants are designed for division and below, prioritizing survivability, mobility and enabling secure but unclassified-encrypted communications.

Areas where the Army is looking for industry input regarding future production include recommended hardware configurations for both variants, software development approaches, Modular Open Systems Approach compliance, how companies would approach systems integration and software intellectual property strategies, among others.

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Palantir’s USG subsidiary was awarded a $178.4 million other transaction agreement, which calls for the delivery of 10 prototypes, the company announced Wednesday.

TITAN is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations (MDO) concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of a fast-moving and complex battlefield.

Under the new agreement, which has a 24-month period of performance, Palantir will deliver five “basic” and five “advanced” variants of the ground station.

“Overall, it’s a software-defined solution, so it’s designed to be modular, flexible, adaptable, configurable. But currently, as envisioned, there’s two different variants — the advanced variant that is at higher echelon, and a more tactical version, which is the basic variant,” Bryant Choung, Palantir’s senior vice president for defense technology, told DefenseScoop.

The advanced variant has a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) form factor. “It’s a larger truck-based platform, incorporates a data center, more or less on the back, as well as a shelter that allows soldiers to be in there operating on multiple classified networks,” he explained.

The basic variant has a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) form factor that’s “designed to be more tactically suited, more on the move, that allows them to do more of the capabilities from their seats within the JLTV,” Choung said.

In a statement, Palantir USG President Akash Jain described the TITAN system as the Army’s “first AI-defined vehicle.”

Choung noted that it’s a software-centric program.

“We’ve designed the software and the hardware solution for this. And we’ve also designed this to be modular. So we’re incorporating the best of breed from both our software capability and our AI capability, as well as incorporating government/GOTS, open source and other commercial software technologies into the platform, as well, too. And so overall, we’re going to be providing that integrated technology solution that’s both hardware and software. But really, we’re defining the AI and the software workflows that will be the part of the TITAN vehicle,” he told DefenseScoop.

TITAN is intended to fuse data from space-, air- and terrestrial-based sensors, and integrate systems and technologies from Northrop Grumman, Anduril Industries, L3Harris Technologies, Pacific Defense, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Strategic Technology Consulting, and World Wide Technology, according to a release.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are expected to help process that information and provide “real-time actionable intelligence.”

“I think it really is going to be demonstrating for the first time what it means to incorporate AI into the decision-making in a platform like this for the Army. Specifically, we’re hoping that the software and the AI is going to be increasing the capability, allowing the soldiers to see farther and shoot farther. And while we’re increasing that capability, also reducing the complexity. So making it so that there’s less swivel chair integration, making it so that the soldiers can get to a decision faster, ultimately affecting the timeline. Right? So in the next fight, really where timelines are going to be key, allowing the soldiers to be more modular in their workflows, allowing them to reconfigure their systems, and then ultimately making allowing them to operate more quickly on the battlefield. These are the key differentiators that AI and software are going to help define for this and any other future platform that’s out there,” Choung said.

Palantir is working with its partners on the program to provide the appropriate compute, power, shelter, assembly, and capabilities, in addition to the AI and the software functions, he noted.

“We are thrilled to move into the next phase to deliver these revolutionary capabilities to our warfighters,” Col. Chris Anderson, the Army’s project manager for intelligence systems and analytics at program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in an Army release about the award. “TITAN provides game changing technologies on how we collect, process and disseminate intelligence across the battlefield, providing us a decisive edge in supporting Multi-Domain Operations.”

Palantir won the downselect for TITAN after a competitive prototyping process that also included Raytheon Technologies (which is now RTX). Both companies were awarded $36 million deals for the previous phase of the program, which included various soldier touch points, or test events in which companies put their system through its paces in operational scenarios while users get to offer their feedback on how it works and what tweaks need to be made.

Additional soldier touch points will also be part of the next phase of evaluation of Palantir’s systems, which is being dubbed a “prototype maturation” effort.

“Going forward in the next 24 months … the five basic and the five advanced units will be delivered to soldiers. They will be getting [them], they will be providing feedback to us — the Army and the vendor. And we will continue to iterate with them to understand how we can continue to upgrade, enhance and make these platforms better as we look towards the final production contract,” Choung said.

The capability will be issued to designated units to allow them to refine the tactics, techniques and procedures for employing these tools, Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, the Army’s program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told reporters during a media call in December.

“What the Army has to do at this point is we’re going to a lot of different exercises from a network standpoint and understanding where things are going to go at echelon and what that means for our existing modernization efforts,” Barker said. “You can see an instance where capabilities are pushed up, so you might need fewer of an advanced or fewer of a basic” variant.

Choung told DefenseScoop that he would defer to the Army with regard to when particular units will get their hands on the systems for the prototype maturation phase.

“I defer to the Army specifically on, again, all the wickets that they’ll have to do from a statutory perspective for the program of record, and all the milestone decisions that they’ll have to make. But specifically as envisioned, you know, the Army is taking a rapid prototyping, iterative approach to first designing the systems, prototyping them, getting feedback from the soldiers. And then after this next phase, they are contemplating the production ramp-up for the TITAN systems,” he said.

Mark Pomerleau contributed reporting.

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The Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations (MDO) concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of a fast-moving and complex battlefield.

Raytheon Technologies and Palantir were each awarded $36 million last year to compete for the final phase of the contract (in July, Raytheon Technologies, now RTX, had an internal realignment and TITAN now falls under Collins, a RTX business), through rapid prototyping efforts. Both companies concluded various soldier touch points, or test events in which companies put their system through its paces in operational scenarios while users get to offer their feedback on how it works and what tweaks need to be made for the next event.

“In second quarter of ’24, what we anticipate is the selection and award to one of those vendors to move forward into what we’re calling a prototype maturation phase, so PMP, which is the next phase of that rapid prototyping … [at which point] the selected vendor will further mature their prototype through more soldier touch points. And then we intend to have some [of] this capability issued to designated units to allow them to refine the feedback and the [tactics, techniques and procedures] in which it would be employed,” Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told reporters during a media call Tuesday.

In that next phase, the Army is planning on having a basic, more expeditionary variant and an advanced variant.

The key difference between the two, Barker explained, is the advanced system will have access to national space assets. As part of the development of TITAN, Northrop Grumman had developed what the Army referred to as a pre-prototype.

Access to that capability will reduce the time cycle to discover data and targets gathered from these sensitive sources. The basic version will have to access that through normal channels, which can take a bit longer as opposed to having a direct link.

“What the Army has to do at this point is we’re going to a lot of different exercises from a network standpoint and understanding where things are going to go at echelon and what that means for our existing modernization efforts,” Barker said. “You can see an instance where capabilities are pushed up, so you might need fewer of an advanced or fewer of a basic.”

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“We can expect some form of up-select decision later this year” for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told DefenseScoop during an interview at the TechNet Augusta conference.

TITAN is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations (MDO) concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of a fast-moving and complex battlefield.

Raytheon Technologies and Palantir were each awarded $36 million last year to compete for the final phase of the contract (in July, Raytheon Technologies, now RTX, had an internal realignment and TITAN now falls under Collins, a RTX business).

Both recently concluded what the Army calls soldier touchpoints, or test events in which companies put their system through its paces in operational scenarios while users get to offer their feedback on how it works and what tweaks need to be made for the next event.

There were eight soldier touchpoints in all and the Army is now in the assessment phase.

Barker said an award, which will be expected by the end of the calendar year, could take many forms, meaning it might not be just one company.

“It could take the form of one vendor moving forward, both vendors moving forward, or some combination of the two. It just depends,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the [other transaction authority agreement] — we can pick and choose the best of both and move that forward or we can have them both move forward based on the available resource and to continue to prototype.”

According to Bryant Choung, senior vice president for federal defense solutions at Palantir, the Army had the vendors build the advanced variant of the system.

“You can think of this as a superset of the capability that will exist at lower echelon,” he told DefenseScoop in an August interview. “For this capability … we were testing the space tier, the aerial tier and the ground tier all together.”

Choung added that the Army has selected the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles as the base platform and participants integrated a shelter onto that, including everything from compute to communications to software.

Both competitors essentially had the same challenge sets to present, albeit at separate times.

“We’re connecting to live assets and real assets. The way that they had to coordinate this was to do them sequentially. But it’s the same problem set each time,” Choung said.

The data generated during these events is critical for the Defense Department when it has to make its decision, and it’s important for the companies to get feedback from the users to make potential tweaks along the way.

“The government is going to get a really good rich data set in terms of the usability, the capability and just like the speed to delivery, in terms of how the two systems performed,” Choung said.

For RTX’s part, their system sought to reduce the cognitive burden on soldiers.

“RTX’s TITAN solution is designed to reduce operator load, decrease decision-making time and provide key information in a rapid, digestible method so connecting directly with potential users as the company iterates a solution was a great opportunity,” Scott McGleish, executive director and general manager, Converged Solutions at Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, told DefenseScoop via email. “RTX listened closely in these sessions, walking users through the solution and taking their feedback directly. RTX is developing the system to be user friendly, and we did hear feedback from senior leaders that our development choices were in aligned with their mission needs and requirements.”

Choung noted that the soldier touchpoints are key, especially on a software-centric program like TITAN.

“We’ve integrated the radio, the comms, the computer, etc. But really being able to use that software advantage of understanding, okay, what’s actually beneficial to the individual warfighter, how can you reduce the sensor to shooter timeline, how do we increase usability while also increasing capability,” he said. “That’s really going to be driven through the software. This series of eight soldier touchpoints provided us valuable feedback from the soldiers in terms of how we accomplish that mission.”

Those touchpoints included mission profiles of understanding the different types of capabilities soldiers would want TITAN to have, he added, noting some took place in a lab environment, but all included real-world data.

“This includes real-world troubleshooting. Again, it’s a complex environment up there,” Choung said. “They’re connecting to different [signals intelligence] systems, [image intelligence] systems are connecting to aerial tier, satellite tier, or space tier. How do you allow the soldiers to connect to those easily — and then in the case that they need to either adjust mission or adjust something on the system, how do they do that easily while reducing cognitive burden?”

McGleish described the process as iterative.

“We took each lesson learned and applied it to the next software update to ensure each new STP had the latest upgrade for review and comment,” he said. “Because we’re building this with immediate feedback from the Army customer, we’ve been able to take feedback and build new features or edit existing ones into the solution in near real-time.”

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TITAN, a next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) ground station that will process sensor data from space, aerial and terrestrial systems, is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations concept and Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) because it will integrate various types of data from a variety of platforms to help commanders make sense of an increasingly dynamic and complex battlefield.

AI and ML are expected to be key enablers for that capability.

“The TITAN program … is our ability to ingest sensor data and service that sensor data to a customer, whether that’s a sensor to shooter thread, or whether that’s intelligence preparation — any sensing, any sensor delivered to a customer. And so you can imagine that’s a very difficult task, right? How do I take all this sensing information and deliver something meaningful?” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors (IEW&S), said at this week’s AUSA convention in Washington.

New technology is needed to help overburdened analysts find what they’re looking for in a sea of data. Kitz highlighted two initiatives that his office is focusing on to deliver that.

“We are taking AI and ML algorithms very seriously. So seriously that I’m establishing …  a separate, dedicated program, focused on sensor data and the software specific to how we process and deliver answers to questions around that sensor data,” he said.

Those capabilities will feed into the TITAN initiative. Kitz told DefenseScoop that the new program will kick off in fiscal 2024.

“The ability for us to process this sensor data is a core foundational element to us seeing far and sensing far and assessing that information that we see and sense,” he said. “So, first initiative is establishing an AI/ML pipeline specific to our sensor data.”

During her keynote address at the AUSA convention, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth highlighted TITAN as a key capability that will help the service “sense more, farther, and more persistently than our enemies.”

In June, the Army announced that it had awarded Other Transaction agreements to Palantir and Raytheon Technologies for development and integration of the platform. The companies are expected to develop competing systems that will be evaluated at a demonstration to inform the selection of a single vendor. A down-select is expected in fiscal 2023, an Army spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Kitz said software is key and the Army is looking for help from vendors in this area.

“That’s really important to understand, because the TITAN program offers more opportunities to industry than just delivering a truck that has a bunch of antennas that ingest sensor [data]. No, this is a software program that has opportunities for industry around the many different modalities of sensor technologies,” he said. So, “the second initiative is to ensure that this TITAN program remains a software program so as we’re delivering this capability, we don’t sit back and say we’ve answered the question of sensor data.”

Kitz told DefenseScoop that the new algorithm-focused program to be launched in 2024 will continue indefinitely so that the technology supporting TITAN remains up to date.

“Our sensor data and our future environments are so dynamic that we’ve got to continue investing and delivering a TITAN program for the future,” he said. “That is a challenge for both me as a PEO and industry writ large, is how do we continue to see far as our environment changes extremely dynamically over months, years, and getting out to the Army of 2030? It’s gonna look very, very different tomorrow than it does today.”

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At the end of the Cold War, the Army divested much of its EW inventory. During the counterinsurgency fights of the last 20 years, the Army used blunt jamming tools to thwart improvised explosive devices, which, in turn, inadvertently jammed friendly systems.

The service still does not have a program of record for jamming equipment, relying on so-called quick reaction capabilities to address urgent commander needs.

“The glaring question for electronic warfare in the Army [is] how do we modernize a force that has no current EW programs [of] record? Because we don’t. There is no programs [of] record currently in the U.S. Army,” Jeffrey Gagnon, deputy Army capabilities manager for electronic warfare within the Cyber Capabilities Development Integration Directorate of the Cyber Center of Excellence, said during a presentation at the TechNet Augusta conference last week.

Other officials noted that while the service is trying to modernize capabilities, it is simultaneously developing force structure, doctrine and training — which compounds the challenge.

Now, as the service is looking to outfit its soldiers with new systems, it’s looking at what the battlefields of the coming decades might look like to anticipate what equipment and tools will be needed.

“What does the [high level concept] look like on the Battlefield of 2030 and 2040? That’s really the answers we’re trying to think through within our shop,” Col. Gary Brock, director, Army Capability Manager Electronic Warfare, said during a presentation at TechNet Augusta.

“When I say programs, these are large requirements, not necessarily tied to a platform, not necessarily tied to a payload, but tied to a requirement for a capability. What do we bring the commanders to the fight? And we’re going to be very commander centric. When we look at the battlefield to 2030, we’re going to division-as-unit action, which is a fundamental shift from the last 21 years where we have fought as brigades,” he added.

Capabilities will be developed to be operated at echelon, modular to adapt to different threats and areas of operation, and able to work in concert between ground and air platforms at various altitudes.

“How do we think through what is that EW arsenal or set the theater by echelon, by capability?” Brock said. “As we think through a lot of these capabilities, we have to remain almost payload agnostic. How do we leave that flexible enough where we can innovate and strive as we move down the road [to] 2030, 2040 and beyond?”

The Army’s requirements developers are working on answering three key questions for commanders as they think about new capabilities. One, can a unit see itself in the electromagnetic spectrum and manage that signature? Two, can a unit see the adversary in the electromagnetic spectrum at much longer distances than in the recent past?

What this echelon approach means is the service is now going to have to contend with joint requirements — especially when it comes to these higher echelons such as division, corps and theater Army — while units further down the chain might rely on technology designed to address Army-specific requirements.

The Army is grappling with the confluence of Army-specific versus joint requirements.

“We think about the EW of the future, we’re thinking about joint Army requirements. Good news is there’s no joint requirements. Bad news is there’s no joint requirements,” Brock said.

The issue of echeloning these effects ties directly into the third question: how does the Army generate those effects?

“Those effects are going to come at echelon. What a corps commander looks for effects and the corps deep fight is different than divisions looking and their deep fight,” Brock said. “The theater Army, much different as well. The theater Army might leverage joint requirements, the corps and division may level Army requirements. How do those mutually support? How do we get into the shaping of the terrain, the battlespace so that we can do our joint mission?”

These types of capabilities fall into three main buckets:

• Ground-launched effects, which could be effects launched from an unmanned system or a portable tube.
• Air-launched effects, which the Army is still developing and experimenting with the concept for, but involves dropping effects from a manned or unmanned airborne asset that is either recoverable or expendable.
• Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large, a pod capable of serving as the first brigade-organic airborne electronic attack asset and providing limited cyberattack capabilities, which until recently was slated to be outfitted to an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone. But the Army is now updating that requirement to potentially other aircraft. In fact, Brock referenced the pod as a capability in and of itself, alluding to the fact it could be outfitted to a number of systems depending on the need.

Layering these capabilities and platforms requires an architecture approach. For example, while one of the key capabilities for multi-function EW is electronic intelligence, U.S. forces will have to deconflict this capability with those being developed to operate at higher altitudes and across the services.

“When an [RC-135 Rivet Joint] or a Compass Call or something like that’s flying, we need to be able to tip and cue to get geolocation accuracy and other things,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told FedScoop in an interview at TechNet Augusta. “When you look at electronic warfare as attack and sensing, there are different layers of electronic warfare in that. Are you trying to deliver [an] effect; are [you] trying to sense the environment; and then who are you delivering that information to, is kind of the architecture that we’re focused on investing in and understanding how that sensor data will get to the end user in an effective way.”

Kitz said the Army has been experimenting with this architecture at Project Convergence the last two years.

“If I’m sensing something in commercial [systems], if I’m sensing something from a joint service, how do I get that information in a meaningful way to either a warfighter or to a shooter and then make an assessment very quickly on what that sensor is sensing?” he said, noting Project Convergence 22 will include several prototypes such as the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) — a jet that is part of the Army’s overall plan to modernize aerial intelligence systems.

Key to this architecture and the ability to tip and cue capabilities will be the Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program, Kitz said.

TITAN is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of an increasingly dynamic and complex battlefield.

“I think our answer is we’ve got to deliver a TITAN capability that ingests all that sensor data and delivers that effect in a meaningful way,” Kitz said. “We see that as our core foundational capability. There will certainly [be] the other investments, but for the Army, sensor to shooter, sensor to customer, not just sensor to shooter, but sensor to end user — that’ll be our TITAN program.”

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The Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) is considered a critical modernization component for the Army’s multi-domain operations (MDO) concept because it will integrate various types of data from numerous platforms to help commanders make sense of a fast-moving and complex battlefield. The Army recently awarded Raytheon Technologies and Palantir $36 million each to compete for the final phase of the contract, at which point there will be a downselect to one company.

There will be four opportunities for the companies to present their capabilities to soldiers during that 14-month process, company officials said, with troops providing critical feedback to further build upon.

“What’s different this time is that the Army is very engaged in a sense that from a teaming perspective, which is great, that when we go through these review demos every quarter that we’re going in together on this. And it’s more about developing and improving,” Scott McGleish, Raytheon Intelligence and Space’s lead on TITAN, told FedScoop in an interview. “I think you have to have that operational view as well … It’s very good the way it’s being done this way. We’re really happy with how the Army’s agreed to and moving forward.”

A senior engineer with Palantir, who was not authorized to speak on the record, indicated similar sentiments, noting the input from soldiers will help provide the Army something that will be ready to go for low-rate production and quick fielding at the end of the 14-month period.

To date, these soldier touchpoints have been both in lab-based environments — where the soldiers can see the laptops, interfaces and feeds — and exercises where they have the opportunity to validate the technology in an operational context.

In this final phase, McGleish said Raytheon will be working to mature the user interface, which ingests data and intelligence from various sensors across the Army and Department of Defense.

Palantir wants its system to be as modular as possible so the capability can evolve.

“We’re trying to make it as modular of an approach as possible and also to make sure that the system and the platform overall can mature alongside with the Army as advances in AI occur,” the engineer said. “It’s going to be very different considering what the fight might be in 2028 and what the current state of technology might be in 2028 or 2030, when the Army hopes to be MDO capable or MDO ready. We want to make sure that we’re going to be building this modularly as we go along.”

The next phase will also focus on further ingraining artificial intelligence and machine learning. This will help narrow down the right feeds of data from various systems and sensors at the right time for the processing, exploitation and dissemination of intelligence.

“You’re talking about, like six or seven ELINT [electronic intelligence], GEOINT [geospatial intelligence], SIGINT [signals intelligence], etc., and coming from space down to ground. All that — those feeds coming in and all the all the data that comes in on those — are labeled differently,” McGleish said. “The artificial intelligence and machine learning is going to help narrow that down, process it better so you don’t need an army of intel analysts. You need a few intel analysts in there. So this is what this is about. It speeds up the OODA [decision-making] loop and so the commander can make a decision to put some kind of effect” on targets.

Both Raytheon and Palantir officials explained the need to have open systems and work with others to ingest that data given the Army doesn’t own it.

“The Army again, has done a great job of communicating the overall concept of operations with our mission partners, then also supporting the technical exchange meetings or the TEMs with the partners as well too, so that they can keep tabs on the development of our program as it moves along,” the Palantir engineer said.

TITAN will also aid in the Army’s pursuit of long-range precision fires, which could also include electronic warfare or cyber weapons, McGleish said. In order to fire across thousands of miles, the Army needs to see across thousands of miles.

“You got to think about the peer-to-peer threats and the thousands of targets you’re going to have to deal with,” he said.

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