Bombardier Defense has delivered the first prototype Global 6500 aircraft for the Army's High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), the company announced today.
The Global 6500 is a fixed-wing platform that will help the Army strengthen its deep sensing capabilities, according to Bombardier. The Army awarded the company a contract in December 2023 for one jet, with options to buy another two over the course of three years, Inside Defense reported in January.
The Army will use the business jets for aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to provide deep sensing capabilities against peer and near-peer adversaries.
The HADES program has been in the works since 2020 to replace the Army’s turboprop aircraft, with the ability to operate in a larger geographical area and deploy in a period of days rather than weeks.
Andrew Evans, the director of the Army’s ISR task force, told reporters this morning prior to a ceremony at Bombardier’s Wichita, KS facility that the service is in the process of determining when to deliver the second plane. The goal is an eventual pipeline of one plane per year, but that could fluctuate based on world events, he said.
“We’re taking lessons learned from the world and applying it to this program and we’re accelerating or decelerating as needed,” Evans said.
In August, the Army announced it had selected Sierra Nevada as the lead system integrator to provide the aerial ISR capabilities for HADES. However, L3 Harris filed a protest against Sierra Nevada on Sept. 16 with the Government Accountability Office.
An L3Harris spokesperson told Breaking Defense in October they decided to file the protest on the HADES award after reviewing information from the Army debriefing.
Work on HADES was forced to stop due to the protest. According to GAO, the protest is to be resolved by Dec. 26, and Evans said he expects the findings to be released at that point. He did not provide an estimate on how much the protest would delay the HADES program.
“GAO has important work to do now. Their legal teams are looking at this and they’re working through it. And we will defer to their findings at the end of this,” he said.
The next step in HADES is the integration of equipment in the back of the aircraft and delivering it for an operational test to “stress test” it, Evans added. The delivery of the first HADES system with mission gear fully integrated is scheduled for either late 2026 or early 2027, he said.