Here’s what pre-prototypes and deployments have taught the Army about business jet ISR program

The Army has learned critical lessons from pre-prototype platforms that deployed to theater to inform a program for new intelligence-gathering aircraft, according to a senior official leading the modernization effort.

The service has been on a multi-year journey to develop its own high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform based on a business jet, somewhat unfamiliar territory for an organization that’s better known for employing ground systems, helicopters and small drones. The ultimate program — the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) — 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.

“Since we deployed ARTEMIS to the Pacific for its validation flights and then onward to [U.S. European Command] … what we’ve learned first and foremost is these are in-demand systems. When combatant commanders get them and Army theater commanders get them, they say, ‘This is a big key part of my collection strategy,’” Andrew Evans, director of the Army’s ISR Task Force, said in an interview Monday at the annual AUSA conference. “Knowing that we have the right type of system out there is very important. We’ve iterated on the system — so ARTEMIS, then ARES and then we’re about to deploy some ATHENA assets as well … We iterated it on these systems and optimize them to the point that we’re addressing theater commander collection requirements.”

Evans said one of the biggest lessons is that while bigger jets can fly higher and see farther — meaning they can collect much more data — the Army must ensure it has the right bandwidth on and off the aircraft.

“We started with insufficient SATCOM capability and then we upgunned that, so we’re in a better position there. We have learned how to optimize collection tracks as a result of this,” he said.

These platforms are necessary to achieve one of the Army’s top priorities: deep sensing. Top service officials have said a fixed-wing jet for ISR, separate from what the Air Force has, is necessary for the Army because it has specific requirements that must be met. As the Army plans to fight against more sophisticated adversaries over greater distances, it must be able to see and sense farther in the physical and non-kinetic realms.

Evans explained that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it was a wake-up call highlighting a potential peer competition engaging in larger-scale combat than what the U.S. military confronted during the Global War on Terror.

A subsequent study identified 19 large-scale combat operations gaps, with the first being deep sensing.

“We got our start as a result of what Russia did with Crimea and deep sensing. [It] was all about identifying what the threat was doing in the deep battle, because what happens in the deep battle is all shaping operations that affect what happens in the front end of the battle. We knew we had a significant gap in our capabilities, which is, how do we see into that deep space to affect what’s about to come at you 72 hours or 96 hours later? As a result of that, the Army started to double-down on this concept of deep sensing,” Evans said.

“HADES, the program itself, is just about how do we optimize deep sensing in organic ways for the Army? How does the Army ensure that it’s never caught by surprise? How do you see far enough in, with enough persistence to ensure that you’re informing commanders before they’re faced with the threat that they may not know is there?” he added.

The Army in August announced that it selected Sierra Nevada Corp. to serve as the lead system integrator for HADES, which will be the first Army jet and replace the RC-12 Guardrail. The eventual system will be government owned and government operated.

SNC will integrate a variety of sensors for communications intelligence, electronic intelligence, synthetic aperture radar and moving target indication onto a fleet of Bombardier Global 6500 business jets.

L3Harris filed a protest for the award in September.

Evans noted that one of the other key lessons from the pre-prototypes is how to employ these capabilities.

“One thing that’s unique about something like an ARTEMIS, ARES or ATHENA is you don’t fly them like the Guardrails that the Army used to fly. You can fly them in different ways, in different areas, potentially. And there’s different considerations for how you might employ a high-end system like that. We’re learning, our formations are learning, our soldiers are learning how to do that. Collection managers are learning how to employ these systems as a part of the bigger collection matrix in the theaters,” he said. “All of these lessons that we’re learning are being ported over into how we design HADES.”

The pre-prototype platforms can see three times farther, in some cases, than what the Army has been able to see before, Evans said.

“The idea that we can see three times further, that we can stay twice as long, that our mission availability rate — which is not something most people talk about, but we know when we go out to that jet it’s going to do its mission that day,” he noted. “When you operate an aging fleet of aircraft that the Army’s had with the with the old legacy fleet, we were successful if we could launch eight out of 10 times, 80% operational readiness rate. We say success is 10 out of 10. We’re seeing that every day with the jet.”

Given all these lessons, HADES won’t be what Evans termed a “cold start.”

“HADES is a five-year running start, so when we design the first HADES, it’s with five years of lessons learned. Some people say, ‘Hey, Army, how can you claim that you’re going to architect the HADES and then deliver within 24 months?’ Well, because really we’ve had five years of learning. We’re going to take that five years, architect in over the next two years and then deliver our first HADES by late ’26,” he explained. “We’ll continue to work on HADES. We believe we’ll deliver an initial prototype of HADES by late 2026. We’ll put it into what we call an operational test or user assessment at that point. We’re using the middle tier of acquisition approach for HADES, which means we’re using some flexible congressional authorities, which gives us a lot of room to move fast on this. We’re using an abbreviated [capability development document] as a requirements backbone. We’re moving fast.”