Bombardier Defense Delivers First Global 6500 For HADES Program

Bombardier Defense delivered the first converted Global 6500 business jet, a prototype, to the U.S. Army in support of its High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) program on Nov. 25 at Bombardier’s U.S. headquarters in Wichita.

“This capability is going to be a great asset not only for campaigning but for crisis and then support to conflict,” says Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence. “It supports our Army commanders as well as our Joint Force commanders as part of the Joint Force in the Army.”

Bombardier’s role in the HADES program is an important one, says Steve Patrick, Bombardier Defense vice president. “We are very humbled by the opportunity to support the Army’s modernization efforts. We have a long, deep history of collaborating with the Army and with other services.”

HADES is the centerpiece of the Army’s intelligence collection strategy, says Andrew Evans, director of the HQDA G-2 ISR Task Force. “And the Global 6500 is the system that brings that strategy to life. The aircraft gives us the range, payload capacity, speed and endurance to deliver timely, relevant and responsive capabilities for the full spectrum of Army and Joint collection requirements.”

Army officials declined to provide details of its contract with Bombardier, but say the service is determining when it will take delivery of a second one, with a handover pipeline of about one aircraft per year, Evans says. That number could change depending on the world’s situation.

“We’ve got to be responsive to what the world is doing,” Evans says. “We’re taking lessons learned from the world and applying them to this program.”

The Global 6500 is an ideal aircraft for the mission, Patrick says. It provides a maximum endurance of 18 hr. and up to 750 flight hours between maintenance intervals, with a 99.83% dispatch reliability. Bombardier has dedicated in-house engineering and support teams available around-the-clock.

The company takes a green or unfinished aircraft from the assembly line and brings it to Wichita to begin the conversion process so it can receive mission equipment at a later time, Patrick says.

The next step is to integrate the equipment in the back of the aircraft, Evans says. “What you see today is a beautiful aircraft. But what that will become is a HADES system. 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,” Evans explains. “But the magic of HADES is what will happen in the back of that aircraft. 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 first system delivery is expected in late 2026 or early 2027 and will include all of the mission gear integrated into the aircraft, Evans says.

HADES is the future, he says. “How we modulate that has a lot to do with what’s happening in the world and it has a lot to do with budgets. So, we have to contend with all of those complexities inside the building and we will do that.  . . . The future is a HADES future, and the speed of which we get to a full complement of HADES is still to be determined.”

There is more volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity today than the U.S. has likely seen since 1937-39, Hale says. Therefore, it is necessary for the Army to collect information for its commanders to use to make decisions at the right times and right places.

“To do that, we’ve got to be able to work in the multi-domain environment. Being able to have an open architecture on this aircraft so we can put on the collection gear that we need for the environment we’re operating in is absolutely critical to get after the enemy,” Evans says.

There are a variety of threats today. To better prepare for potential conflict, the Army says it requires aircraft that can provide early warning, battlefield fidelity at real-time speeds, and the scale and ability to effectively transition to operate in times of need.

As part of its modernization program, several initiatives lead into the HADES program. They include the Artemis (Aerial Reconnaissance and Targeting Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System), which uses the Bombardier Challenger 650 platform; ARES  (Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System), which uses the Global 6000 platform; Athena-R, (the Army’s Theater-Level, High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance-Radar); and Athena-S, the (Army Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance-Signals). The Athena-R and Athena-S programs use the Global 6500 as their platform.

In the past, systems were focused on the hardware, Evans noted. “You’d put a very specific box with a specific set of capabilities in a plane or in any other kind of vehicle and you would deploy that system, and if you found out that wasn’t aligned to the threat you needed, you had to put in a new box.”

The HADES system has a software-centric design.

“We’re going to put boxes in HADES,” Evans says. “We’ll put boxes in all combat systems that allow us to insert capabilities with software. So, if we have a threat that pops up in Africa, let’s say, that we need to address and it becomes a priority—that might require a different software load than something we would use in another part of the world. And we have to be adaptive enough to load that software quickly.”

The Army must continue to be responsive to the adversary’s ability to generate sensing and effects from more extended ranges, Evans says. “HADES today has some incredible capabilities, but it will be even more powerful if we can extend the effects of that system by two or three times by launching sensors off the rails. We are designing the system to be able to do that.”