U.S. Army’s Surveillance Plan Is In Business, Although Protest Lingers

The U.S. Army’s hopes to field one of the largest intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance business jet fleets took two major steps forward in late November, but the service must wait until year-end to learn if the overall program can proceed.

The Army took delivery on Nov. 25 of the first Bombardier Global 6500 to be converted into a high-altitude, deep sensing platform for future long-range fires under the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) program. The service awarded Sierra Nevada Co. (SNC) a $991 million contract in August to be the lead systems integrator for the program, tasking it with installing radars, sensors and other equipment onto the government-provided fleet.

• Sierra Nevada flies prototype while awaiting GAO decision
• Bombardier sees persistent demand from military customers

SNC’s company-owned, fully integrated Global 6500—outfitted with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) equipment and workstations—took off on its first flight Nov. 21. The aircraft, which SNC calls the Rapcon-X, is the basis for the company’s HADES design and is slated to be deployed next year as a contractor-owned, contractor-operated aircraft for real-world surveillance missions.

“Today was the first flight of the fully integrated aircraft,” says Joshua Walsh, SNC vice president of mission solutions and operations. “When I say ‘fully integrated,’ all the [intended] sensors were on board—the mission racks and all the workstations. Today’s primary focus was just getting the aircraft back in the air, ensuring it operates as a Global 6500 would operate. We achieved some test data points that we wanted to collect . . . that the aircraft performed as the analysis indicated it would. Initial feedback from the pilots is the aircraft performs superbly and flies like a Global 6500.”

However, overall HADES work is on hold for SNC and the Army. After SNC won the contract, L3Harris Technologies filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), prompting a stop-work order. The protest alleges that the change in SNC’s corporate name—to Sierra Nevada Co. from Sierra Nevada Corp.—violated federal acquisition regulations that require a continuous registration status in the online System for Award Management. The GAO has until Dec. 26 to resolve the protest.

While SNC believes the Army made the right decision with the award, “we respect the process, and we look forward to successful resolution and getting back to work,” Walsh said. “You know, this is a critical program for the Army.”

In the meantime, SNC will complete work on its second Rapcon-X aircraft, with the two comprising the service’s second phase for the Army Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne (Athena) program. L3Harris and MAG Aerospace are producing another two Athena aircraft as a team. These will join other flying prototypes that have set the requirements for the HADES program.

Modification of the second SNC aircraft is scheduled to be completed in December, and flight testing is to start soon thereafter or in early January. The aircraft will go to Bombardier’s facility in Wichita for flight testing ahead of deployment.

The Army hopes to take delivery of SNC’s first HADES aircraft in late 2026 or early 2027. The service is determining when to take delivery of the second Global 6500, with an expected handover of about one per year. The Army could field up to 14 aircraft for HADES as a whole.

SNC plans to outfit initial aircraft for the program with Northrop Grumman’s long-range reconnaissance sensor and a synthetic aperture radar with ground moving target indication. Future aircraft could use a different radar; SNC’s Rapcon-X has a Leonardo Osprey 50 active, electronically scanned array radar in its underbelly canoe.

“What you see today is a beautiful aircraft, but what that will become is a HADES system,” says Andrew Evans, director of the Army’s ISR Task Force. “The airplane itself is what we’ll describe as the workhorse to HADES. It’s what enables HADES to get in position to collect—to have the endurance necessary to provide meaningful station time.

“But the magic of HADES is what will happen in the back of that aircraft,” Evans explains. “So the next step to this program is integrating all of that equipment in the back and then delivering it out for an operational test to really stress-test the capability in the back. That’s what the Army will work on in the next couple of years.”

The delivery is the latest in a series of handovers from Bombardier Defense, which has seen increasing demand from militaries. Bombardier delivered the eighth Global 6000 to the U.S. Air Force on Oct. 31 for its Battlefield Airborne Communications Node fleet. The ninth is expected in 2025.

Bombardier, along with Lufthansa Technik and Hensoldt, conducted the first flight of a modified Global 6000 in September for the Persistent German Airborne Surveillance System (Pegasus) program. Berlin plans to field three of the aircraft.

The company also is delivering Global 6000s for the Saab GlobalEye surveillance variant—three to Sweden and five  to the United Arab Emirates.

L3Harris is looking abroad, too, to pitch its Global 6500 variant, the basis for its HADES proposal. The company showcased the aircraft at the Marrakech Air Show in Morocco, as Rabat has shown interest in procuring an ISR aircraft, although there is no timeline yet for the decision.

Gulfstream is garnering increased interest in its special mission aircraft as well. The company, BAE Systems and L3Harris are delivering the G550-based EA-37B Compass Call to the U.S. Air Force, which aims to procure 10. That number could increase, as Congress has raised concerns about a small fleet size. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 plan for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump calls for doubling the fleet.

The State Department on Oct. 7 approved the potential sale of the EA-37B to Italy at an expected cost of $680 million. Italy would convert two G550s to the standard under its plans to accompany other variants of the type including two conformal airborne early warning versions and four multimission multisensor aerial platform  configurations.

Gulfstream recently received a U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center contract worth up to $991 million that includes logistics support for its C-37 VIP transport fleet. The service is looking beyond the current fleet, calling to recapitalize the C-37s, but it has not set a timeline. Air Mobility Command also expects to replace its Boeing 757-based C-32 and 737-based C-40 with a single airframe—a substantial order for a business jet type.

—With Molly McMillin in Wichita