Bombardier Defense delivers the first HADES jet to the Army

Bombardier Defense on Monday delivered its first Global 6500 business jet to the Army 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 aging 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 uncharted territory for an organization better known for using 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.

These 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 major win for the service.

“It’s a big day for the Army and a great day to come after our number one major gap in combat operations, and it’s deeply felt,” 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 come after large-scale combat operations and our deeply felt 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 gather intelligence as far as we can shoot now in our army. This capability will be a great asset not only for campaigns, but for crises and then support for conflicts. It supports our army commanders as well as our joint force commanders as part of the joint force and the army.”

The airframe supplied by Bombardier is what officials described as the “workhorse” of HADES.

“That’s what enables HADES to be able to collect, to have the necessary endurance to provide meaningful station time,” said Andrew Evans, director of the ISR Task Force. “But the magic of a HADES is what’s going to happen in the back of that aircraft. The next step in this program is to integrate all that equipment into the back and then submit it to an operational test to really stress test the capability of the back.”

While Bombardier was chosen as the hull builder, Sierra Nevada was awarded the integration contract in August, but L3Harris lodged a protest in September.

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

“We’re on hold, but it wasn’t 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 make sure that your proposal was fully reviewed, fully reviewed,” Evans said. “That’s what the industry is doing at this point is they’ve asked (the Government Accountability Office) to look at it just to make sure that all the crossed, and I’s was pricked. And we welcome that.”

He added that the Army will address the GAO’s findings, which are expected in late December.

Even with the protest, the service expects the integration of the mission equipment leading to a complete HADES system to take place in late 2026 or early 2027.

As the first airframe was delivered Monday, he noted that the Army is still determining when another will be delivered, adding that the estimate is to receive one per year.

However, that may change given world events and Army and Pentagon priorities. Officials described that they want HADES to adapt to real-world operations, and are building it to be modular and software enabled to respond as the environment or the adversary changes.

“We take lessons from the world and we apply them to this program and we accelerate or decelerate as necessary to account for what is happening around the world. The speed at which we deliver HADES will be very dependent on , what’s happening in the world and how we apply resources toward those priorities,” Evans said.

Hale explained the necessity of incorporating an open architecture on the aircraft to have the right acquisition equipment to fight the enemy, which could vary by theater or environment in places like the US Indo-Pacific Command, European Command, Central Command or Africa Command areas of responsibility.

“As you look around the world today, whether you look at Indo-Pacom, Eucom, you look at Centcom, even Africom, there are different threats and different technologies being used in these AORs,” he said. “As the chief intelligence officer for the Army, I have to make sure that we can gather those requirements to our commanders so they can make decisions that are 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 a better collection.”

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

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

America’s enemies share tactics and technology, meaning that what is observed in one theater may be in another immediately. This portends that systems such as HADES must be able to be modular in order to respond across these environments.

Evans described HADES as 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 deploy new capacities.

“If we have a threat that emerges in, say, Africa that we need to address and it becomes a priority, it 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 it in 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.”