Special Report: L3Harris, Palantir advance radio-as-a-sensor concept

A US Army Ranger is shown equipped with L3Harris' AN/PRC-163. (US Army Special Operations Command)

Palantir Technologies has teamed with L3Harris to advance a new data network concept, leveraging data collected from L3Harris' family of software-defined radios and using Palantir-built software to turn this data into actionable battlefield intelligence.

The 'radio-as-a sensor' concept was borne out of L3Harris' artificial intelligence (AI) integration work with the US Army's Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) programme, for which programme officials had already been working with Palantir, according to Samir Mehta, president of Communications Systems at L3Harris.

“The work we're doing with Palantir now ... is figuring what level of compute do you need” aboard a given radio tactical communications device, Mehta said regarding technology maturation work on the radio-as-a-sensor concept.

“We always think about what kind of AI we need on the device or radio, but what we really [want] to develop is the radio as a sensor. It is not just what [data] the radio processes but what [data does] the radio sense, and right now that information goes into the ether,” Mehta told Janes during an August interview at the company's tactical radio facility in Rochester, New York.

“When you turn on a radio, it [scans] different frequencies to figure out what the appropriate frequency [should be] given the threats that are out there,” Mehta said. “So [the radio] finds the appropriate frequency and it optimises around it and communicates using that frequency,” he explained.