The U.S. Army is advancing the development of two variants of its tactical ground station designed to provide intelligence support to facilitate long-range precision targeting and improve situational awareness in contested environments, Defense Daily reported Wednesday.
Maj. Jermaine Wright, assistant product manager for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, said the service will likely buy six Advanced prototypes of TITAN and five Basic prototypes of the ground station and expects the program to transition to the production phase in fiscal year 2026.
In June, the Army awarded Raytheon Technologies and Palantir Technologies separate contracts to build and integrate TITAN prototypes.
“TITAN Advanced operates on five enclaves. Currently, it will be on an FMTV M1083 [truck] platform. And then the Basic variant, which will we get to in prototype maturation once we get to our preferred vendor post-upselect at the end of this phase, will be on a JLTV platform,” Wright said.
“The TITAN Basic will not have that space direct downlink. The technology is not there as far as antennas and whatnot. So what they will have is space access via the hubspoke network and a redundant communications network architecture to provide that space data,” he added.
Northrop Grumman has built a TITAN Pre-Prototype and Wright said the Army will take the TPP as a “space-ground component kit” for integration with the prototype designs from Raytheon and Palantir to provide the Advanced version a space direct downlink.