The US Army is quietly trying to turn sleek business jets into some of the most important eyes and ears in its arsenal. Instead of buying more lumbering turboprops, the service is moving to a fleet of long‑range, high‑altitude aircraft that can hoover up data for hours and feed it straight into modern missile and drone networks. At the center of that shift is a plan to field 11 High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, jets based on the Bombardier Global 6500.
On paper it sounds simple, almost corporate: buy a handful of business jets, bolt on sensors, call it a day. In reality, the Army is trying to replace around 60 aging turboprop intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms with a system that can survive in contested airspace, keep up with long‑range weapons, and still be affordable enough to buy in useful numbers.
The Army’s big bet on business jets
The US Army has laid out an unusually detailed wish list for its new HADES fleet, and it starts with performance. The request for information calls for aircraft that can cruise at least 450 k at altitude, self deploy more than 6,000 nautical miles, and then loiter in a defined region for long stretches. The US Army also wants each jet to stay on station for at least 12 hours, a requirement spelled out in an RFI that notes The US Army wants 11 such aircraft. That kind of endurance is meant to feed a constant stream of intelligence and targeting data to long‑range missiles and drones that depend on precise sensor cues to be useful.
Underneath the performance numbers is a clear design choice. The service is looking at up to 11 custom Bombardier Global 6500 airframes, a business jet platform that offers the altitude and range the Army wants without the cost of a clean‑sheet design. The aircraft fuselage and structural components are specified to avoid composites in most areas, with exceptions like the nose and tail, a detail highlighted in an RFI that even contrasts the choice with older turboprops such as the de Havilland Dash 7 in a Jan report. That conservative structural approach is meant to simplify maintenance and battle damage repair, even as the jets carry cutting edge electronics.
From legacy turboprops to HADES
The shift to HADES is not happening in a vacuum. By Michael Peck has reported that HADES arrives as the Army retires around 60 turboprop ISR aircraft, including long serving RC‑12 Guardrail variants. In the same coverage, By Michael Peck notes that the service is trying to move away from a patchwork of small fleets and into a more coherent pattern of high altitude, long endurance sensing, a point echoed again in a later By Michael Peck reference to the HADES concept. The legacy turboprops simply cannot fly high or far enough to stay outside modern air defenses while still collecting useful data.
Presently, the Army is not just looking at business jets. It is also weighing airline sized platforms like the P‑8 Poseidon and unmanned systems as part of a broader ISR mix, as one analysis of future fleets notes. At the same time, the service has already started fielding other jet based sensors, including the Athena‑R, which deployed to South Korea with a team from MAG Air and L3Harris, with Evans overseeing continued integration work on a second Athena. That mix of experiments and retirements shows an Army trying to pivot quickly while still keeping enough coverage in the air.
Inside the HADES program and its limits
Behind the scenes, the HADES program is already a sizable business. The Army selected Sierra Nevada Corporation as lead system integrator for its High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, a role formalized in an Article that describes how the company will pull together sensors, mission systems and ground links. Sierra Nevada has a potential 12 year, $991.3 m contract from the Army to serve as lead systems integrator, a deal valued at $991.3 million in total with individual task orders worth about $93.5 million. In WASHINGTON, The Sierra Nevada Corporation, or SNC, has already bought another Bombardier Global 6500 for the program, the first non prototype jet under a portfolio that was described as approaching $1 billion two years earlier.
Even with that money on the table, the program is not racing ahead unchecked. An Army spokesperson told An Army reporter that the current plan is to acquire six production aircraft and three prototypes for the HADES program, a figure repeated in separate notes that again cite Breaking Defense and again in a third reference to the same program. That is fewer than the 11 aircraft envisioned in the broader RFI, suggesting the Army is hedging its bets while it watches budgets and threat assessments evolve. What the US Army is asking for in its HADES ISR aircraft RFI also includes a production tempo of up to four aircraft per year, a detail spelled out in What the US describes as The RFI.
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