Army may halve planned HADES buy from 12 to 6 new spy planes
“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.
A Bombardier Global 6500 aircraft. (Bombardier via US Army)
AAAA 2025 — The US Army will potentially pare its fleet of High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) aircraft in half as part of a larger acquisition shakeup, according to an EXORD obtained by Breaking Defense and confirmed by service officials.
Earlier this month, the service began releasing details about force structure changes and weapons cuts as part of its Army’s Transformation Initiative (ATI), and an executive order from Army leadership dated May 7 details additional cuts, including cutting the HADES fleet from 12 aircraft down to six.
“This is very early in the process,” ISR Task Force Director Andrew Evans told reporters today. “My guidance, to my staff, is nobody really overreact to this global transformation. We must transform … and we’re all in on supporting the Army’s effort to do this.”
Col. Joe Minor, the project manager for fixed-wing aircraft, said that since the plan was always to produce a small number of HADES that are essentially “hand-built,” he does not expect the overall cost of the program to soar if the buy is halved.
Last year, the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) won an Army contract to integrate a suite of capabilities onto the Bombardier Global 6500 jet under the HADES program. The service wants to have an initial aircraft ready for the force by the end of 2026 or early 2027 and had planned to acquire more than a dozen aircraft under a one-per-year buy, depending on budgets and the threat analysis.
Then on Wednesday, at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference in Nashville, Tenn, Laurence Mixon — with the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors — told reporters that there would likely be several changes to his team’s portfolio while Evans hinted at today’s HADES announcement.
“There’s nothing … that we can say specifically on a specific program that’s going away or changing,” Mixon told reporters. “But I will tell you, there is no longer an appetite to reinforce failure.”
The key question for HADES, Evans added, will be how many systems the service ultimately acquires.
“It will not be whether we require it at all … until warfighters cease their demand for ISR,” Evans said.
