US Army issues $17 million in contracts for Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node development

The US Army has issued agreements to Palantir Technologies and Raytheon Technologies in support of the design and software maturation of a new next-generation ground station.

The agreements total $8.5 million per vendor over a 12-month period of performance, with the first phase informing the development and integration of the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, according to a Jan. 11 Army press release.

The Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) is intended to be a key piece in the sensor-to-shooter chain, connecting sensors from all domains to war fighters and systems in the field to enable beyond-line-of-sight targeting. The system will be capable of downlinking data from multiple domains, processing it with artificial intelligence to create targeting data, and then delivering those solutions directly to the Fires networks, which can then determine the best available shooter to respond with.

TITAN is the Army's mobile intelligence ground station architecture that will leverage space-based, aerial and terrestrial layer sensors to provide targetable data. The system will provide access to low earth orbit satellites, enable deep sensing and shorten the sensor-to-shooter loop.

Palantir and Raytheon will each receive an $8.5 million other transaction authority (OTA) agreements for 12 months of work in the project’s first phase. That early stage will include a series of design reviews, software demonstrations and soldier touchpoints as the vendors mature the TITAN software and work on system-level design. The Army will eventually move to a single vendor for complete system prototyping for phase 2. The next stage will cover refinement of prototype capabilities, and the fourth and final phase will prepare a prototype that is ready to integrate future sensors and technology advancements.

The Army plans to use TITAN in future Project Convergence demonstrations once delivered to the field in the fiscal year 2023 to FY-24 timeframe. During the first Project Convergence demonstration last September, the service used a TITAN surrogate to process data from a Gray Eagle drone. During that event, the Army was able to take overhead tactical satellite imagery and downlink it to a TITAN surrogate located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. The TITAN surrogate then used the Prometheus artificial intelligence program to create targeting solutions from that data. Next, those solutions were transported to the main demonstration area at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, where another AI program determined the best shooter to receive that targeting solution.

Northrop Grumman has been tapped to build two TITAN prototypes. Those are expected to be delivered in 2022.