Latest news with #BrandonPollachek
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Palantir's Titan Truck Tops Army Performance Review
Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) scores a win as the Army ranks its AI-backed Titan battlefield intelligence truck among its top-performing programs, a Bloomberg review of an April report to Congress shows. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 8 Warning Signs with RTX. The report lists the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, or Titan, alongside four major systemsNext Generation Squad Weapon, Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, Common Infrared defense and a new Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System warheadas highest performers, with no big-ticket programs in the lowest tier. Under a $178.4 million, two-year contract awarded last March, Palantir is building 10 Titan prototypes: three are already delivered, four more arrive by December 31, and the final three by March 30, 2026, Army spokesperson Brandon Pollachek told Bloomberg. Each Titan package pairs a lightweight industrial truck with a same-size trailer housing backup power and a space kit for direct satellite data links, integrating feeds from terrestrial, aerial and high-altitude sensors into a single AI-driven targeting platform. Palantir beat legacy defense giant RTX (NYSE:RTX) for the Titan award and teamed with Anduril Industries, Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) and subcontractor L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) to execute the program. The Army's review praised Titan's profound impact on tactical intelligence operations by providing a centralized platform to collect, integrate and analyze multi-source data for precise direct- and beyond-line-of-sight targeting. The service noted that Titan is a great example of a non-traditional software company competing for and successfully becoming the prime vendor for a software-centric, hardware-intensive program. This ranking underscores Palantir's successful push from pure-software into hardware-heavy defense applications, where the company is already under contract to advance its next-generation deep-sensing targeting system. It also highlights the Army's growing reliance on AI and machine-learning tools to enhance battlefield situational awareness and decision-making. Given Palantir's reported $1.9 billion in annual government revenue and Services segment gross margins north of 70%, Titan's production scaling could meaningfully bolster the company's defense backlog and margin profile. Investors should note that Titan now moves to combat-realistic operational testing and evaluation ahead of a potential full-rate production decision and initial fielding slated for 202728. The performance review and upcoming milestones solidify Palantir's credentials in defense, with the appeal process and prototype purchases set to drive further revenue visibility. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
Axios
09-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
Army inks potential $4.2 billion deal for intel-gathering blimps
The future, chock-full of super-stealth warplanes, blinding-fast missiles and network-crippling hacks, will also feature aerostats — specialty blimps, for the uninitiated. Why it matters: For all the hoopla bleeding-edge technologies generate, it can be the simplest tools that prove most effective and long-standing. Plus, the juxtaposition is absolutely wild. Driving the news: The U.S. Army could spend as much as $4.2 billion over the next 10 years to sustain and upgrade its aerostat arsenal, according to a contract announced April 3. Ten companies, including Leidos, Qinetiq and TCOM, will compete for work overseen by the service's intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors shop, PEO IEW&S. Foreign military sales could also happen across European and Central commands. Poland last year announced a $1 billion arrangement. How it works: The Army has long deployed and experimented with aerostats and lighter-than-air systems; they contribute to communications relay, jamming, shot-spotting and more. One example, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, made headlines a decade ago when it broke free of its mooring in Maryland and floated into Pennsylvania. "Balloons are one of the very first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities used in air warfare," Brandon Pollachek, a PEO IEW&S spokesperson, told Axios. Today's aerostats "provide an essential and persistent 24/7 eye in the sky," he said. They're also "extremely cost-effective." (A Qinetiq spokesperson made the same point when asked about the contract.) My thought bubble: These beacons of U.S. presence in the Middle East are being modernized with China and Russia in mind — like all things Pentagon. The bottom line: "The United States of America needs to get over our JLENS problem, and we need to do it fast. There's just too much utility to these kind of platforms," Tom Karako, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.
