Bombardier Defense delivers first HADES jet to Army

Bombardier Defense delivered its first Global 6500 business jet to the Army on Monday in a ceremony in Wichita, Kansas, to help close the service’s number one capability gap: deep sensing.

The jet will be the main platform for the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) program, the Army’s fixed wing aircraft-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system that will replace the legacy RC-12 Guardrail.

The Army has been on a multi-year journey to develop its own high-altitude ISR platform based on a business jet, somewhat unfamiliar territory for an organization that’s better known for employing ground systems, helicopters and small drones. HADES has relied on several pre-prototype systems that were contractor-owned, contractor-operated to help determine certain needs and requirements.

Those tools included the Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting Exploitation Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS), the Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) and the Army Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ATHENA) platform.

Army officials described the delivery of the Global 6500 as a big win for the service.

“It is great day for the Army and a great day for getting after our number one large-scale combat operations gap, and that is deep sensing,” Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, told reporters ahead of the ceremony. “The Army started an initiative about four years ago to get after large-scale combat operations and our deep-sensing gap. And this aircraft coming off the assembly line today from Bombardier is the first step in the process of being able to detect and collect intelligence as far as we can shoot now in our Army. This capability is going to be a great asset for not only campaigning, but for crisis and then support to conflict. It supports our Army commanders as well as our joint force commanders as part of the joint force and the Army.”

The airframe delivered by Bombardier is what officials described as the “workhorse” for HADES.

“It’s what enables HADES to get in position to collect, to have the endurance necessary to provide meaningful station time,” Andrew Evans, director of the ISR Task Force, said. “But the magic of a HADES is what will happen in the back of that aircraft. The next step to this program is integrating all of that equipment in the back and then delivering it up for an operational test to really stress-test the capability in the back.”

While Bombardier was chosen as the airframe builder, Sierra Nevada was awarded the integration contract in August, however, L3Harris filed a protest in September.

As a result, the program is in a “hold” right now.

“We’re in a hold but it was not unexpected … when you’re dealing with a program that’s a potentially multi-billion dollar program like HADES, what you would expect if you’re industry is to ensure that your proposal was fully vetted, fully reviewed,” Evans said. “That’s what industry is doing at this point, is they’ve asked the [Government Accountability Office] to look at that just to make sure that all T’s were crossed and I’s were dotted. And we welcome that.”

He added that the Army will defer to GAO’s findings, which are anticipated at the end of December.

Even with the protest, the service expects the mission equipment integration leading to a full-up HADES system will occur in late 2026 or early 2027.

With the first airframe being delivered Monday, he noted the Army is still in the process of determining when a second will be delivered, adding the estimate is to receive one per year.

However, that could change given world events and priorities for the Army and Pentagon. Officials described that they want HADES to be adaptive to real-world activities and are building it to be modular and software enabled to respond when the environment or adversary changes.

“We’re taking lessons learned from the world and we’re applying them to this program, and we’re accelerating or decelerating as needed to account for what’s happening around the world. The speed, again, to which we deliver HADES will be highly dependent on what’s happening in the world and how we apply resources against those priorities,” Evans said.

Hale explained the necessity of incorporating an open architecture on the aircraft to have the right collection gear to combat the enemy, which could differ by theater or environment in places such as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, European Command, Central Command or Africa Command areas of responsibility.

“As you look around the world today, whether you look in Indo-Pacom, Eucom, you look at Centcom, even Africom, there’s different threats and different technologies that are being utilized in those AORs,” he said. “As the senior intel officer for the Army, I’ve got to make sure we can collect on those requirements for our commanders so that they can make decisions appropriate for their mission. Whether it’s the open architecture, whether it’s the speed, the range, the altitude of the aircraft, that gives us better collection.”

Moreover, adversaries around the world are utilizing technologies, systems and concepts not observed before and the Army must be able to quickly adapt.

“Technology is moving faster than we can keep up with. This aircraft and this system gives us the opportunity to try to stay ahead or at least stay at pace with what the adversary is doing. Whether it’s in the Indo-Pacom AOR, as an example, Eucom, Centcom or Africom, every day the enemy is working in the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re utilizing EW capabilities, they’re utilizing unmanned aerial system capabilities that we haven’t seen before,” he said. “They’re increasing the use of new weapon systems that, quite quickly, we haven’t seen before. And whether it’s the Ukraine or whether it’s somewhere in Africa, our adversary is using these places as battlefields and testing areas to develop and continue to emerge technology.”

America’s enemies are sharing tactics and tech, meaning what is observed in one theater could be in another imminently. This portends that systems like HADES must be able to be modular to react across those environments.

Evans described HADES as taking a “software-centric design” approach. Historically, boxes that were mostly hardware-centric were installed on a platform and were difficult to take out and update. Now, officials can insert new capabilities.

“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 be a different software load than something we would use in another part of the world. We have to be adaptive enough to load that software quickly,” he said. “Software is pretty easy. You can load that in a half a day. That’s what allows something like HADES to be modular to the threat: less heavy integration of hardware and much more adaptive integration software.”