U.S. Army’s Broad ISR Plans Come Into Focus

An Anduril Altius small uncrewed aircraft system, launched from a ground vehicle, autonomously tracks an enemy target in the Arizona desert and sends that data to a small, high-attitude balloon floating over 60,000 ft. in the air several hundred miles away.

The balloon’s payload relays that targeting information to a U.S. Army long-range fire unit another several hundred miles away, which launches a missile to take out the target.

This is a scenario the Army wants to see play out in an intelligence-focused exercise this year that will demonstrate how the service sees its future intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) construct. The planned Multi-Domain Sensing System is coming into focus, with new intelligence-gathering systems from the ground to the stratosphere. The need is acute, as the Army’s new long-range fires can outshoot the service’s current ISR platforms.

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“The Army is now in a position where it can shoot farther than it can see,” Andrew Evans, director of the Army’s ISR Task Force, tells Aviation Week. “That sounds very basic, but it’s true. It used to be that we could always see farther than we can shoot, so we didn’t have a problem. Now we can shoot much farther.”

The task force plans to test the ISR capabilities of the small Altius systems through multiple evaluations in the upcoming Vanguard exercise at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. In addition to the balloon evaluation, the task force is participating in a demonstration called Stiletto, in which 4-5 Altius 600s with electro-optical and signals intelligence (sigint) payloads will be launched from an infantry squad vehicle, loiter, find targets and relay the data to a shooter.

The Army has been targeting the high-altitude capability as part of its High-Altitude Extended-Range Long-Endurance Intelligence Observation System (Helios) effort. The service’s program executive office for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors expects evaluations to run through 2024 ahead of a program start and contract awards in 2025.

Evans says recent experiments have shown that small, tactical balloons likely have more use than larger ones. These can be small enough to be carried in a backpack or launched from a pickup truck before floating up beyond 60,000 ft. and providing sigint, communications relays or other missions. The small, cheaper balloons could be launched in larger quantities, so losing them is less of a problem.

“That could potentially be very powerful,” Evans says. “So if you have a launched effect that keeps soldiers out of harm’s way, relaying information through a balloon that relays information to a shooter many hundreds of miles away, you’re now doing true experimentation with multidomain operation principles.”

An emerging challenge, however, lies in the sensors themselves. The service is targeting operations in harsh conditions at high altitude while staying effective and cheap. This is an area where the Army needs help from industry, and there has been some progress in areas such as small radios and miniature radars. The first priority will be sigint, Evans says.

Operating below Helios will be the most well-known new Army ISR plan, the High-Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES). HADES will consist of a 14-strong fleet of Bombardier Global 6500s outfitted with sensors and radars to collect targeting information for systems such as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Precision Strike Missile. The service plans to make an award for a lead systems integrator for Hermes, with Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) competing against a team of L3Harris Technologies, Leidos and MAG Aerospace.

Evans says the current schedule is to award a contract for HADES by the fourth quarter of this year, with integration to begin in the first quarter of 2025. Requirements for HADES are being informed by a series of contractor-owned and -operated prototypes, the latest of which will be a fleet of four Airborne Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne (Athena) ISR aircraft. A team of MAG and L3 Harris are building two and SNC another two.

Both of the aircraft are progressing, with each side taking a different approach based on the nature of the companies, Evans says. SNC, which is privately owned and smaller than L3, can move quickly and accept risk, although it is looking to outsource some of the work because of its size. L3, on the other hand, is large and publicly traded, leading to more rigor in its decision-making that can make things move more slowly. It also has a “deeper bench” because of its size, so there is less of a push to outsource.

“Both performers are doing well,” Evans says. “Both have slightly different approaches to this, but their approaches are important for us to watch because it’s also helping inform the way we want to go forward in the future. . . . Both companies have been responsive to the Army’s needs.”

As the Athena aircraft are coming together, two other sets of prototypes are actively flying and providing surveillance data. Two Leidos-owned Airborne Reconnaissance and Targeting Multi-Mission System (Artemis) aircraft are deployed to Europe, with one dedicated to assisting in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. As Congress delayed on a supplemental package earlier this year to free up more funding for assistance to Ukraine, the Army had to shift funding around to keep the Artemis aircraft flying.

“One of those was solely dependent on the supplemental,” Evans says. “We were able to cash-flow out of accounts this year up until this point, but we were quickly running out of airspeed and altitude to continue doing that.”

With the supplemental bill signed by President Joe Biden on April 20, the Army can keep Artemis flying through the end of the fiscal year. If funding had run out, the service would have had to divest the aircraft.

Two other prototypes, both of the L3Harris-owned Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES), are deployed to Japan and flying ISR support for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The ARES prototypes have been able to support U.S. Forces Korea as well as watch parts of the East and South China Seas from their base in Japan.

The prototypes are all testing different sensor payloads to inform the needs for HADES, and the Army awarded Leidos a contract on April 23 worth up to $631.2 million for long-term sustainment of the sensors.

Due to the fielding timeline, the initial sensors for the new program will likely be different when the rest of the fleet comes online. That is by design, as the fleet’s capabilities cannot be stagnant and instead have to be tuned to emerging threats.

“What we need today in the South China Sea probably won’t be the same thing we need six years from now, and it certainly isn’t going to be the same thing we need in the western Baltics,” Evans says. “So that’s going to be a different sensor configuration. We’ve got to be capable of being that dynamic.”