Army eyes more HADES jets, but program isn’t ‘full steam ahead’
An Army spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the current plan is for the service to acquire six production aircraft and three prototypes for the HADES program.
An Army spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the current plan is for the service to acquire six production aircraft and three prototypes for the HADES program.
SNC said the first prototype is scheduled to be delivered some time this year.
“What has changed is that we’ve doubled down on the Army’s priorities, and I believe our Army senior leaders and Congress are helping us remove some of the barriers to acceleration," PEO Aviation Brig. Gen. David Phillips told Breaking Defense.
“Using government-furnished Bombardier Global 6500 jets, the HADES prototypes will be the first Army-owned, large-cabin business jets utilized as aerial ISR platforms,” SNC said in a press release today.
“This institutionalizes this role of transformation that we've been doing in the ISR Task Force, makes it more permanent, and also combines it with the important role of strategy and strategy formulation for the Army Intel Corps,” said Director for the Strategy & Transformation Office Andrew Evans.
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"This is very early in the process. My guidance, to my staff, is nobody really overreact to this global transformation. We must transform," said ISR Task Force Director Andrew Evans.
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“What is enduring is this idea of transformation, you never finish transforming,” task force chief Andrew Evans told Breaking Defense. “Once you finish the thing, you move on to the next thing that you need to transform.”
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Andrew Evans, the director of the Army’s ISR Task Force, gave Breaking Defense new details about the Army's plan for the HADES future surveillance aircraft after a coveted contract award.
An Army official previously told Breaking Defense that a baseline HADES configuration will include moving target indication, high-end signals intelligence and other capabilities.
Andrew Evans, director of the Army ISR Task Force, told Breaking Defense the initial packages include “a Moving Target Indication capability, we'll have high end signal intelligence capability, and we'll have a number of other capabilities that come with HADES as a baseline configuration.”