Sierra Nevada to supply US Army with intel-gathering jets in $554M deal

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Military chosen Sierra Nevada Corp. to supply intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane and associated companies for an ongoing overhaul of its aerial spying and focusing on capabilities.

The corporate’s RAPCON-X, transformed Bombardier enterprise jets, received approval for the Military’s Theater Degree Excessive Altitude Expeditionary Subsequent Airborne ISR-Indicators Intelligence undertaking, or ATHENA-S, in line with a Nov. 14 announcement.

The multi-year contract, initially teased final month on the Affiliation of the U.S. Military conference in Washington, is value $554 million. Sierra Nevada spent hundreds of thousands of its personal {dollars} refining its candidate, which is able to cuing in on digital transmissions and accumulating goal signatures on the bottom.

“This award is the direct results of SNC’s dedication to placing ‘pores and skin within the recreation’ and staying one step forward by anticipating challenges and innovating options years prematurely,” Tim Owings, government vice chairman for mission options and applied sciences, stated in a press release. “Our born-digital design course of and engineering strategies place RAPCON-X among the many most succesful and quickly configurable A-ISR platforms worldwide.”

RELATED

The Military is within the midst of revamping its aerial reconnaissance and digital warfare arsenals. It’s shifting away from Chilly Warfare-era planes and their limitations and towards a future the place battlefield insights are gleaned from dramatic distance, with long-reaching firepower to match.

The ISR investments come because the U.S. Division of Protection prepares for potential large-scale battle with Russia and China. The Military is paying specific consideration to what’s often known as deep sensing, or the capability to seek out, monitor, goal and kill from farther away and with finer precision.

Each ATHENA-S and its long-range-radar sister, ATHENA-R, will form the service’s Excessive Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, anticipated later this decade. L3Harris Applied sciences and MAG Aerospace had been tapped for ATHENA-R earlier this yr. The businesses didn’t disclose the worth of the contract on the time.

Sierra Nevada stated it should conduct its ATHENA-S work at services in Hagerstown, Maryland. The corporate is the 57th largest protection contractor on this planet when ranked by defense-related income, in line with Protection Information evaluation.