US Army awards enhanced HADES airborne ISR contract

The US Army has contracted L3 and Raytheon to demonstrate, develop, build, and integrate prototype electronic intelligence (ELINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT) sensors onto an enhanced version of the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) Multi-Domain Sensing System (MDSS).

With the HADES mission system hosted on the Challenger 650-based ARTEMIS aircraft, the US Army is understood to be examining a number of potential manned and unmanned aircraft to host an enhanced version of HADES. (Bombardier)

The US Army Project Director for Sensors – Aerial Intelligence (PD SAI) announced on 15 June that the Phase 1 contract was awarded through the Consortium for Command, Control, and Communications in Cyberspace (C5) to L3 Communications Integrated Systems and Raytheon Applied Signal Technology three days prior. The Phase 1 award will run for eight months, and is valued at USD4.37 million.

“The [US] Army is pursuing HADES to address the demands of future Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) against peer and near-peer adversaries,” Dennis Teefy, project director, PD SAI, said. “HADES will be globally deployable and provide a multifaceted sensing capability at higher altitudes and longer ranges, and with longer endurance than is currently available from the [US] Army's RC-12 Guardrail, MC-12 Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (EMARSS), and EO-6C Airborne Reconnaissance Low (ARL) aircraft. The goal is to provide deep sensing intelligence collection of indicators and warnings, electronic order of battle, and patterns of life for target development. This will allow stand-off operations to detect, locate, identify, and track critical targets for the ground commander.”