The U.S. Army has formally given the designation ME-11B to its forthcoming High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) intelligence-gathering aircraft. The modified Bombardier Global 6500 business jets will have extensive sensors suites that include the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System-2B (ASARS-2B) and could have the ability to launch drones.
Last August, the Army awarded the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) a contract valued at just under $1 billion to modify Global 6500s into the HADES configuration, as well as provide other support and services. Work under that contract was suspended until January of this year due to an ultimately unsuccessful protest by L3Harris, which had competed for the HADES deal as part of a team with Leidos and MAG Aerospace. Bombardier separately delivered the first Global 6500 for conversion in November 2024.
The first Global 6500 delivered to the Army for the HADES program. Bombardier
“The military mission design series designation of ME-11B was assigned to the Army’s future aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft, which will be based on the Bombardier Global 6500 platform,” a spokesperson for the Army’s Program Executive Office for Aviation (PEO Aviation) confirmed to TWZ earlier this week.
The designation here reflects that there is another militarized Global 6500 already in service with the U.S. armed forces, the U.S. Air Force’s E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft. It’s also worth noting here that the aircraft in the Air Force’s initial fleet of E-11As were based on older Bombardier BD-700 and Global 6000 business jets. The BACN jets provide highly specialized communications capabilities that allow for the rapid transfer of data between various aerial platforms, as well as forces on land and at sea, which you can read more about here.
A US Air Force Global 6500-based E-11A BACN aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in 2022. USAF
The Army has also been making use of a small fleet of contractor-owned and operated business jets, including types based on the Global 6500, to help lay the ground for its future ME-11Bs.
The “M” in the ME-11B designation stands for “multi-mission.” This is something that has been applied in the past to other crewed aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms with multiple sensor systems. This includes the Army’s MC-12S Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (EMARSS) and the U.S. Air Force’s MC-12W Liberty, both of which are based on the Beechcraft King Air series of twin-engine turboprops.
The Army says the ME-11Bs will feature “signals intelligence, synthetic aperture radar/moving target indicator [SAR/MTI], and additional built-in capabilities.” The main sensor system the aircraft will carry that we know about so far is the ASARS-2B radar, which was originally developed as an upgrade for the ASARS-2A used on the Air Force’s famed U-2 spy planes. The Royal Air Force’s (RAF) now-retired Sentinel R1s, which were based on the Bombardier Global Express, also carried a radar based on the ASARS-2A.
The ASARS-2B radar will allow the HADES aircraft to collect SAR imagery, which are highly-detailed ground maps, and offers ground moving target indicator (GMTI) functionality to spot and track vehicles on the ground. ASARS-2B can be employed in either mode regardless of cloud cover, smoke, dust, or other obscurants down below, as well as at night. The GMTI data can be used for general intelligence purposes, as well as for mapping patterns of life and targeting. It can be overlaid on the SAR images to help further refine intelligence collection areas.
The M part of the ME-11B might also point to additional capabilities or the potential to add them down the line. For instance, Australia, which designates military aircraft in a style similar to the United States, is in the process of acquiring a fleet of MC-55A Peregrine aircraft based on the Gulfstream G550 business jet that will be capable of performing ISR and electronic warfare missions.
When it comes to the HADES jets, the use of the multi-mission designator could be, in part, a nod to Army interest in being able to employ so-called “launched effects” from the aircraft. The Army uses the term launched effects as a catch-all for uncrewed aerial systems that can be deployed from aircraft (fixed wing and rotary, crewed and uncrewed) in flight, as well as ground or maritime platforms. The Army has a vision for a family of launched effects drones able to conduct ISR and electronic warfare missions, act as decoys, or even be employed as loitering munitions.
The ME-11Bs are also expected to be able to carry additional stores, including ones that could expand the jet’s defensive capabilities, on underwing pylons.
“We’re looking at that with great interest as well, right?,” Andrew Evans, the ISR Task Force director within the Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2), told Breaking Defense about possible underwing stores last year. “Protecting something like this becomes very important.”
A rendering of a future ME-11B showing stores on underwing pylons. US Army
Launched effects drones would also allow ME-11Bs to reach deeper into more heavily defended areas without putting the aircraft and its crew at greater risk. There have been persistent concerns about the survivability of the HADES aircraft, especially in any future high-end conflict like on the Pacific against China. U.S. officials only expect the air defense threat ecosystem to keep growing in scale and scope. This includes the prospect of anti-air missiles with ranges up to 1,000 miles, which would be well beyond the line-of-sight reach of the ME-11B’s sensors.
In general, the ME-11Bs will be able to fly higher, faster, and farther, and do so while carrying a bigger sensor payload, than the turboprop designs that currently make up the Army’s crewed ISR fleets. Those capabilities will also allow the HADES jets to get to and from operating more rapidly and remain on station longer.
There also continue to be questions about the overall capacity of the future ME-11B fleet, which the Army has said could consist of between 10 and 16 aircraft in total. The service currently has historically operated dozens of smaller turboprop crewed ISR aircraft globally, but has already been in the process of divesting many of them.
HADES is just the first part of a planned Multi-Domain Sensing System (MDSS) ‘system of systems.’ The Army’s current vision for the MDSS notably includes a High-Altitude Platform-Deep Sensing (HAP/DS) component. The service says HAP/DS “will comprise the high-altitude layer and will be a Multi-Domain Operations-capable low-signature, high-altitude platform(s) (i.e., stratospheric balloons/solar fixed wing aircraft) operating in the stratosphere that will enable penetration into highly defended threat operational areas.”
TWZ has previously reported on the Army’s ongoing push to field high-altitude balloons for ISR and other missions, including launching swarms of drones, as well as the service’s experimentation with high-altitude, extreme-endurance drones. The U.S. military, as a whole, is also increasingly looking to space-based capabilities to provide ISR coverage that has traditionally come from aerial assets in the past.
A graphic the Army previously released showing a notional “operational view” for how its planned MDSS system of systems might be employed in conjunction with other assets. U.S. Army
As it stands now, the Army is hoping the first example of what is now dubbed the ME-11B, with its suite of intelligence-gathering and potentially other capabilities, will be ready for service by 2027.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com