WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army awarded a contract to Bombardier Defense to supply no less than one Global 6500 aircraft to function a prototype airframe for a brand new spy plane program, the service announced Wednesday.
The firm-fixed-price contract, awarded Dec. 12, includes an choice to purchase two additional aircraft over a three-year period. The primary aircraft’s delivery date is about for Oct. 1, the statement noted.
The High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, will probably be the primary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft within the Army that uses a large-cabin business jet with advanced deep-sensing capabilities, in response to the service.
The brand new aircraft will bring “increased range, speed, endurance and aerial [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] depth,” Col. Joe Minor, the Army’s project manager for fixed-wing aircraft, said within the statement.
“HADES will operate at higher altitudes than legacy turboprop platforms. Higher altitudes equate to a capability to sense farther and more persistently into areas of interest,” he added. “Deep sensing is the Army’s number-one operational imperative for the Army of 2030.”
The Army is revamping its aerial reconnaissance and electronic warfare arsenals because it moves away from its aging Guardrail turboprop planes to raised prepare for potential large-scale conflict with Russia and China. The service wants a plane with much greater duration, speed and payload capability that may see, detect and goal threats from farther distances.
Leading as much as the HADES program of record, the Army has built and extensively flown technology demonstrators. Those spy planes have logged nearly 1,000 sorties within the European and Indo-Pacific theaters. Two more demonstrator aircraft are expected to deploy in 2024.
The service built and deployed two aerial ISR demonstrators starting in 2020 referred to as Artemis and Ares. Artemis has flown greater than 600 sorties in support of U.S. European Command’s operations; Ares has flown 300 sorties within the Indo-Pacific.
The Pentagon has expressed a must find a way to have interaction China at a distance. That requires a certain sort of asset that may perform the mission at a protracted range.
Artemis — or Aerial Reconnaissance and Targeting Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System — uses a Bombardier Challenger 650 aircraft. The Army in 2019 awarded a contract to HII, and the corporate subsequently awarded a subcontract to Leidos to construct the aircraft.
Ares — or Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System – uses a Bombardier Global Express 6500 aircraft. Alion Science and Technology, now owned by HII, won a contract to construct the aircraft in 2020 after which awarded a subcontract to L3Harris Technologies to execute the work.
The Bombardier Global Express 6500 is larger than the Challenger 650. The larger platform provides the Army with longer ranges and better altitudes, each of that are considered key capabilities within the Pacific region.
Two additional Athena aircraft — a radar variant and a signals intelligence version — will join the force and deploy in 2024 ahead of HADES. MAG Aerospace and L3Harris are teaming up to outfit a Bombardier Global 6500 with ISR sensors for the radar variant; Sierra Nevada will provide the signals intellience aircraft with its RAPCON-X sensor package.
“While you consider long-range fires, the extra word is precision. Precision implies that you simply need a goal. If you happen to’re going to have a goal, that you must find a way to surveil the world and to discover a goal of interest,” Steve Patrick, Bombardier Defense’s vp, told Defense News in an interview last month.
“The way in which that we view the issue set will not be to have a single solution for a single problem,” he added, “but have an answer that may satisfy multiple problems, that’s redeployable across the globe in a short time, that might be pivoted to where the present crisis is.”
The Army said last 12 months that the primary phase of the HADES program will include two different aircraft with different sensor packages.
Program Executive Office Aviation is taking the contract lead for the HADES program, while PEO Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors will work to amass payloads for platforms chosen for this system.
In September 2022, the Army awarded L3Harris and Raytheon’s Applied Signal Technology contracts to develop sensors for HADES. A minimum of one team has formed ahead of the HADES program competition: L3Harris, Leidos and MAG Aerospace announced in October they were teaming up for the trouble.
Colin Demarest contributed to this story.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.