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

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army selected Sierra Nevada Corp. to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft and related services for an ongoing overhaul of its aerial spying and targeting capabilities.

The company’s RAPCON-X, converted Bombardier business jets, won approval for the Army’s Theater Level High Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne ISR-Signals Intelligence project, or ATHENA-S, according to a Nov. 14 announcement.

The multi-year contract, initially teased last month at the Association of the U.S. Army convention in Washington, is worth $554 million. Sierra Nevada spent millions of its own dollars refining its candidate, which is capable of cuing in on electronic transmissions and collecting target signatures on the ground.

“This award is the direct result of SNC’s commitment to putting ‘skin in the game’ and staying one step ahead by anticipating challenges and innovating solutions years in advance,” Tim Owings, executive vice president for mission solutions and technologies, said in a statement. “Our born-digital design process and engineering techniques place RAPCON-X among the most capable and rapidly configurable A-ISR platforms worldwide.”

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The Army is in the midst of revamping its aerial reconnaissance and electronic warfare arsenals. It is moving away from Cold War-era planes and their limitations and toward a future where battlefield insights are gleaned from dramatic distance, with long-reaching firepower to match.

The ISR investments come as the U.S. Department of Defense prepares for potential large-scale conflict with Russia and China. The Army is paying particular attention to what’s known as deep sensing, or the capacity to find, monitor, target and kill from farther away and with finer precision.

Both ATHENA-S and its long-range-radar sister, ATHENA-R, will shape the service’s High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, expected later this decade. L3Harris Technologies and MAG Aerospace were tapped for ATHENA-R earlier this year. The companies did not disclose the value of the contract at the time.

Sierra Nevada said it will conduct its ATHENA-S work at facilities in Hagerstown, Maryland. The company is the 57th largest defense contractor in the world when ranked by defense-related revenue, according to Defense News analysis.