Sierra Nevada Corporation has been selected by the U.S. Army to serve as lead systems integrator for the U.S. Army’s future long-range spy aircraft.

The contract for the integration work on the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) extends over a period of 12 years and is initially worth $93.5 million, with the potential to reach up to $994.3 million, the Army announced on Thursday.

The selection of a leading integrator is an important step in the service’s effort to overhaul existing fixed-wing aircraft used for reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The service plans to retire about 70 aircraft – its entire ISR fleet – to introduce the HADES aircraft, which is rapidly deployable and offers deep-reach capabilities.

“HADES is the centerpiece of the Army’s long-promised transformation strategy for airborne ISR,” said Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, deputy chief of staff for Army Intelligence (G-2), in a statement announcing the contract. “HADES enables the Army to fly higher, faster and farther, directly impacting our ability to see and sense deeper and delivering an organic capability consistent with the Secretary of the Army’s key operational imperative – depth perception.”

For the first time, the Army is using a wide-body business jet – the Bombardier Global 6500 – as the aircraft for the spy plane. The Army awarded Bombardier a contract for one aircraft in December with the option to purchase two more within three years.

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A team of L3Harris Technologies, MAG Aerospace and Leidos competed with Sierra Nevada for the integration contract. All four companies are involved in ISR prototype projects with the Army.

The Army has spent more than five years testing prototype fixed-wing ISR aircraft with high-speed jets to support the HADES program. It began with the deployment of Artemis – an Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-mission System – which flew in the European war zone near the Ukrainian border. Leidos built Artemis using a Bombardier Challenger 650 jet.

The service then deployed Ares – or Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System – to the Pacific theater in April 2022. L3Harris built the aircraft from a Bombardier Global Express 6500 jet.

Together, Artemis and Ares have flown more than 1,000 sorties through April of this year, according to Andrew Evans, who leads the Army’s ISR Task Force. They fly roughly 10-hour-long sorties and average 20 sorties per month, he added.

The Army is also preparing to put four more prototypes into service that will determine requirements for the HADES program. The Army has selected two companies to each supply two jets with spy technology to advance long-range targeting plans.

MAG Aerospace and L3Harris will equip a Global 6500 with ISR sensors for the Army’s radar-focused Athena-R project.

And Sierra Nevada is providing its RAPCON-X, based on a converted Bombardier business jet, for the service’s signals intelligence-focused Athena-S project.

Now that the Army has selected a team to install sensors on the aircraft, the Army estimates the process will take 18 months before the aircraft can be deployed for a user evaluation. That evaluation involves moving the aircraft from a controlled test environment in the United States to operational environments to stress test the systems.

The Army will use HADES for a limited period and then begin building additional aircraft while the early prototype remains in service.

The service plans to have 14 HADES aircraft in service by 2035, according to a slide shown by Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, then-director of the Army Aviation Administration, during a speech at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference in Denver in April.

While industry officials expect the Army to continue to award contracts to build all HADES aircraft to the same team, Andrew Evans, head of the Army’s ISR Task Force, noted earlier this year that “our colleagues on the acquisition team have been instructed to ensure that we give ourselves as much flexibility as possible in the process.”

With 70 “very capable” Beechcraft King Air and De Havilland Canada Dash-8 aircraft, the Army has done “tremendous and impactful work in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Evans said. But the existing fleet will not be able to conduct long-range missions off the coast of China – which the U.S. government sees as its greatest threat – “or really almost anywhere else in the world when it comes to extended geographic ranges with limited basing and access,” he added.