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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Three senior defense officials provided the latest update on that nascent effort to a small group of reporters during a media roundtable at the Pentagon on Monday.

Details they shared suggest the Army is evolving its approach to known and unknown dangers associated with deploying AI, via Project Linchpin. And in parallel, officials are also producing a new “AI risk reduction framework” to inform all future pursuits.

“[This is] in line with a lot of the work that the White House has pushed out with AI, and that the DOD has pushed out about responsible AI with Task Force Lima and all those types of things. We’re definitely embedded with all those things, but we’re also looking at what are the second- and third-order impacts of things that we’re going to have to address earlier, from an obstacle standpoint,” Young Bang, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, explained.

First conceptualized in 2022, Linchpin is ultimately aimed at generating a safe mechanism to continuously integrate government- and industry-made AI and machine learning capabilities into Army programs. 

“Think of Project Linchpin as our path to delivering trusted AI,” Bharat Patel, product lead for Project Linchpin at the Army’s program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told reporters.

“If I can leave you with something right up front — it’s literally all the boring parts of AI. It’s your infrastructure, it’s your standards, it’s your governance, it’s your process. All of those areas are things that we’re taking on, because that’s how you can tap into the AI ecosystem and that’s how you deliver capabilities at scale,” Patel said.

The Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program, which encompasses its next-generation ground system to capture and dispense sensor data for sensor-to-shooter kill chains, marks the first program that officials seek to enable with algorithms affiliated with Project Linchpin.

“I would say we’re, right now, just collecting AI use cases. TITAN is expected to support a certain theater. We’re working with that theater and that program to determine everything — kind of the left and right limits, and how would we deploy — all that is happening now. But if you think about it, for classic computer vision problems, each theater is different. You can’t think a model for [European Command] is going to work out of the box for [Indo-Pacific Command]. The trees are different, the biosphere is different, all that is different. That’s why it’s super important to get after the use case and where that [area of responsibility] is specifically at. So, we are looking at that very closely because we want to make sure we tailor the model to support the customer,” Patel told DefenseScoop during the roundtable.

Bang, Patel and their team have been conducting what they called “a ton of market research” as part of standing up this new program. Since Nov. 2022, they’ve released four requests for information on Project Linchpin, collected “well over” 500 data points, and met individually with more than 250 companies. 

Momentum will continue to build in those aspects in the near term — and possibly also through budget bumps, according to Matt Willis, the director of Army prize competitions and the small business innovation research (SBIR) program.

“In [fiscal 2025], in the next year or so, we’re predicting a significant investment in our SBIR program towards AI in particular — again, strategically aligned with Project Linchpin, [that’s] potentially up to or more than $150 million. So, that’s about 40% of the program, and this really demonstrates our commitment to innovation, to AI and how small businesses across the country can certainly contribute to the Army,” he said.

At the roundtable, the officials also repeatedly emphasized their intent to confront ethical and security risks associated with AI and machine learning with Project Linchpin as it continues to mature. 

In that sense, Army officials are also crafting an “AI risk reduction framework” that Bang noted will be designed to get at Army-specific “obstacles” that accompany deploying the emerging technology.

“It’s really a way to identify the risks and mitigate some of those risks — to include data poisoning, injections, and adversarial text attacks. Now, specifically, are you asking ‘Have there been those types of things that we found in Linchpin?’ There are those types of things that we know are out there in the environment or the enterprise. And so whether it’s commercial or on the DOD side, we know they’re out there. So we’re actually trying to mitigate some of those,” Bang told DefenseScoop.

“It’s really a framework to look at what are the cyber risks and vulnerabilities associated with third-party algorithms, and how do we work with industry to categorize that to look at tools and processes to reduce the risks, so then now we can adopt that faster?” he added.

His team has also been hosting a number of engagements with their industry partners to figure out a path forward with a potential need to request AI bill of materials, or AI BOMs from companies.

Such resources are envisioned to essentially help the government better understand potential risks or threat vectors the capabilities could introduce to their networks.

“We’re, again, conducting more sessions with industry. We understand their perspective. And it’s not to reverse engineer any [intellectual property], it’s really for us to get a better handle on the security risk associated with the algorithms. But we do understand industry’s feedback, so we are working really more on an AI summary card. You can think about it more like a baseball card. It’s got certain stats about the algorithm, intended usage and those types of things. So it’s not as detailed or necessarily threatening to industry about IP,” Bang said.

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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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This is where the Army’s Project Linchpin comes in.

“In the simplest form and concept it’s the way how we are going to deliver AI to the sensor modernization programs,” Bharat Patel, product lead for Project Linchpin at program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told DefenseScoop in an interview.

Project Linchpin is the Army’s first program of record providing an artificial intelligence operations pipeline. The Army did not respond to multiple requests for information about how many AI programs of record it now has.

“[T]his project takes the standard AI and machine learning operations pipeline from the technology industry and modifies it to perform in a secure government environment while protecting operational data. Project Linchpin offers a secure structure that could be replicated across the Army to deliver AI at scale,” Patel and Maj. Nick Bono, an acquisition officer and systems coordinator for intelligence systems, wrote in a recent article posted to War On The Rocks.

Patel explained to DefenseScoop that while there is nothing novel about an artificial intelligence or machine learning ops pipeline in the commercial world, bringing the concept to government and the military in particular is the challenge.

“Industry has been doing this, we’re going to apply industry best practices, we’re going to leverage commercial technologies to establish this,” he said. “I’m going to decouple all the components within the pipeline and then compete that against industry best of breed, and then bring in industry technology developers to develop models against our sensor modernization programs.”

Patel and Bono wrote that the end state is for Project Linchpin to be a standalone program of record providing a government-owned pipeline that will mitigate risks by breaking up the vertical integration of efforts that have be in place historically.

Project Linchpin will create a disciplined approach that enables continuous integration of machine learning capabilities into Army programs.

“The key really behind that is machine learning — true machine learning — is almost never done. It’s even more rapid than software. Machine learning, you could develop the model, you create the model in a machine learning pipeline, then you put that model in its intended end state,” Patel said. “You put that model in the intended end state, but once the operational data actually hits it, that’s when you see the model performing. That’s when you see what we call model drift — in certain cases, sometimes the model is not performing exactly because there’s a new type of data that comes in. So we have to take that data, bring it back into the operational pipeline, retrain the model and then get that model back into the environment.”

Ultimately, the project seeks to answer a simple question: “How does the Army deliver secure, trusted AI/ML capabilities to AI-enabled systems?” Patel said.

“Project Linchpin recognizes that there are limited resources (funding, technology like high-powered computing, and human capital in the form of AI experts and engineers) for every individual AI-enabled system to manage the process of developing, training, and deploying AI/ML capabilities on their own.  Project Linchpin scales that effort to consolidate AI talent and resources in a secure environment.  The end state is the reliable delivery of high-performing AI/ML capabilities that users can trust to employ on their systems,” according to Patel.

The effort can trace its roots to Project Maven, an Air Force-led initiative that was created in 2017 to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence. It focused initially on processing full-motion video feeds from unmanned aerial systems in the Middle East to support U.S. counterterrorism and counterinsurgency wars. Staff within the program office had been working with the Department of Defense on Project Maven since its inception, leading operational pilots and providing technical oversight.

After the work on Project Maven and coupled with the Army’s push for sensor modernization programs, officials began developing requirements that either implied or specified a need for machine learning, Patel said.

“Going back to my previous knowledge of actually working in this space, in the DOD, and how challenging it was in how complex the different types of tools, technologies [and] industry partners you need to bring in, I made the case to [the program manager] that it was pretty much unaffordable for each PM to go do their own machine learning pipelining,” Patel said.

As a result, he made the case to the PEO last August, briefed it to the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology last September, and by October, it was announced that the service would be standing up Project Linchpin as a program of record.

Operational outcomes for JADC2

Officials hope Project Linchpin capabilities can ultimately be used across the entire Army.

The main effort to begin with is the Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program — the service’s next-generation ground system to collect and disseminate sensor data to improve sensor-to-shooter kill chains. It will be a key aspect of not only the service’s so-called deep sensing priority — the ability to discover targets across thousands of miles for long-range fires — but the Pentagon’s new way of war known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).  

Patel noted that there’s many components to sensor-to-shooter networks, and an artificial intelligence operations pipeline can help optimize them.

“Our goal is owning that front part of sensor to the shooter is really optimized the ability to identify objects of interest and turn them into — I don’t want to call them targets, but targets of interest,” he said.

For example, an airborne sensor could be sending data to TITAN. As part of that process, TITAN must have algorithms to quickly identify an object and send that information to the shooter. But this capability can eventually be replicated in the aircraft, Patel said, forecasting the eventual goal of perpetuating this pipeline throughout the entire Army.

“Eventually, it’s taking that model and then bringing it into the aircraft. We want to do it for TITAN first and then bring it into the aircraft so that it’s identifying objects at a much more rapid pace,” he said.

Focusing on TITAN was in some ways a strategic decision given that it will receive data from space, air and ground sources. This means officials can build cross-cutting models that span several domains and program offices.

“One of the use cases that we brought to the table was, each PM does not need to build their own machine learning pipeline capability. In addition to that, each PM, even if we have a central pipeline, they don’t need to be in the model development business because this model that was developed for TITAN against [synthetic aperture radar] data, I could just optimize it to work for the aerial side,” Patel said. “This aerial sensor doesn’t need to go out and find its own company to build its own SAR model. I’m just going to tweak and optimize and put it on that system. We’re focusing on TITAN is the right place, because we’re going to have all bunch of sensor data and then we’re just going to optimize and provide all the AIs to the various programs.”

For the time being, Project Linchpin doesn’t appear as its own standalone entity in the Army’s fiscal 2024 budget documents. The only reference to it falls within the TITAN program.

Within TITAN, the documents note that the program will “initiate development and prototyping of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) platforms (i.e., Project Linchpin),” and that a fiscal 2024 funding increase for a portion of the program represents the advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning integration capabilities through the establishment of Project Linchpin.

Patel and Bono warned, however, that implementation of this pipeline will be critical.

“In most commercial applications the risks of error are just an inconvenience. If Google Maps recommends a faster route that takes you into a traffic jam you might simply be late for your meeting. However, if an intelligence sensor confuses a school bus for a tank — or fails to detect the tank at all — the results could be catastrophic,” they wrote. “No matter how much talk there is about how game-changing AI will be in the future, failing to plan for AI’s ‘back end’ infrastructure is planning to fail.”

In order to get the right data to build off, the program will be relying on the Army’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASAALT) data mesh concept, which aims to essentially standardize the vast quantities of data the service has in order to make it easier to get it to the right decision makers at the right time.  

Until that is fleshed out, Patel said officials will be challenged from a data perspective.

“We’re going to be focused on data collection teams in the interim. These data collection teams are going to be responsible for working with each PM to go … grab some data and bring that into our repository,” he said.

To train the algorithms properly, they might only need a fraction of the hours and hours of full-motion video, for example, because that small tidbit is really important to the algorithms’ development. The rest isn’t. To do that would be extremely manual.

But when ASAALT’s model comes online, that should relive some of that burden, Patel said.

“We are going to be challenged, but we have a path to address some of that as it relates to the sensor part of it. But then once ASAALT comes online with the data fabric and data mesh, I think it’s going to start being a little bit cleaner,” he explained.

Non-traditional contractors

When it comes to industry support, Patel said officials are looking primarily at non-traditional contractors and small businesses.

“We’re constantly going out to industry looking for who has the best technology for model training, who has the best technologies for model development? That’s right for the non-traditionals and small businesses,” he said.

The most recent request for information went out to industry in March, and the team is planning to use an upcoming Technical Exchange Meeting in May to provide more information.

Moreover, the Project Linchpin team briefed the effort to Army senior leadership in April with additional discussions planned going forward.

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Barker, who has been the deputy PEO since July 2021, takes over for Mark Kitz, who assumed the role in May 2021.

It was not immediately clear where Kitz will be headed. A spokesperson said his next assignment has not been confirmed.

“This a great win for the Army, BG Barker has done a fantastic job as our Deputy the last two years and I know the organization will be in good hands for years to come,” Kitz said in a statement emailed to DefenseScoop. “This organization is at the forefront defining how the Army will fight and win in the future and our programs and capabilities will help define the future of the Army.”

Barker, in a statement, provided he is “honored with this tremendous opportunity to continue serving with the incredible Soldiers, civilians and support contractors that make up PEO IEW&S,” adding the team “will continue our unwavering efforts to deliver critical capabilities for our Army and Nation.”

PEO IEW&S is responsible for equipping the Army and joint force with some of the most sensitive technologies that span intelligence collection and dissemination, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and more.

The office is in charge of several key capabilities pivotal to the Army’s transformation and modernization efforts in the next decade. Those include the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), which is the Army’s next-generation ground system to collect and disseminate sensor data, and the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), which will be a high-altitude fixed-wing jet the Army is developing to replace several systems and will cover mid-tier altitudes up to the stratosphere.

Both are key pillars for what the Army calls deep sensing, or the ability to collect intelligence over thousands of miles to inform long-range missiles and other effects.

The PEO also recently created a new program office for offensive cyber and space capabilities. Officials previously explained the new office was needed due to the amount of joint work the Army is doing on behalf of U.S. Cyber Command to deliver capabilities and programs for the cyber mission force across all the services.

One such program the Army is running for the joint cyber mission force is the Joint Common Access Platform (JCAP), which will allow the Department of Defense’s cyber operators to connect to their targets beyond friendly firewalls.

Editor’s note: This story was updated April 25 with comments from Kitz and Barker.

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Budget documents from last year projected the Army spending $298.9 million in procurement for fiscal 2024 for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN). However, fiscal 2024 budget documents provide no procurement funding for TITAN.

“The funding TITAN required for the prototyping program was realigned to RDT&E appropriate for the needs of the TITAN MTA Rapid Prototyping program,” an Army spokesperson told DefenseScoop. “There was a great deal learned about TITAN after PB23 was submitted that led to the Army’s request to realign funding in FY23 from Procurement to RDT&E (which was enacted through the FY23 NDAA and Appropriations Act) and led to changes in funding presented in FY24 and beyond.”

The total cost of the TITAN Middle Tier of Acquisition is $486 million in research and development funding from fiscal 2022 to 2026, which is funded across future years, budget documents state.

Specific research and development funding for TITAN falls under several efforts to include the program itself as well as low Earth orbit efforts, all aimed at continued development, fielding efforts and integration into future capabilities.

The Army is making deep sensing a key priority. With the shift to great power competition, the military will have to operate over much larger distances. As such, it will need to sense and conduct targeting over thousands of miles.

“If we’re going to do long-range precision fires, you need to do long-range precision targeting. In order to do that you have to have deep, deep sensing, and when we look at it, we’re looking at an array of capabilities,” Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters in March.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth stated last month listed long-range sensing as the first of her six operational imperatives.

“The first operational imperative for the Army of 2030 is really to be able to see and sense farther and more persistently at every level across the battlefield than our enemies,” she said at the annual McAleese and Associates Defense Programs Conference in March. “We’ve got to be able to collect and analyze unprecedented quantities of raw data from many different sources and that’s why we are modernizing our aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. We’re building this really into a family of systems that will include our [High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System] program, the Terrestrial Layer System and TITAN.”

The Army budget references divestments for aerial ISR modernization, namely the Air Reconnaissance Low, the RC-12 Guardrail, and Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (EMARSS).

These divestments are making room for something called the Multi-Domain Sensing System, which primarily includes HADES.

HADES will likely be a high-altitude fixed-wing jet the Army is developing to replace several systems and will cover mid-tier altitudes up to the stratosphere. There are several pre-prototype efforts involved with the program to help inform the final design.

The Army is requesting $191.3 million in research and development funding for HADES in fiscal 2024.

“We’re looking at that and we really got an array of ISR capabilities that we want to knit together and some of that is on the joint side, some of that is with us and that’s where the whole sense of convergence comes in where we’ve got a lot of sensors, data, the real secret sauce, if you will, is how do we bring that data into some type of integrated command system and then quickly be able to move it to the appropriate shooter effects mechanisms,” McConville said.

The Terrestrial Layer System is broken into two systems: one for brigades and one for echelons above brigades. The above-brigade variant is designed for long-range sensing in the electromagnetic spectrum.

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