The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX) and L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) other transaction authority agreements to build, integrate and demonstrate communications intelligence and electronic intelligence sensor prototypes for the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System under the initial phase of the Multi-Domain Sensing System program.
The service issued the OTA awards through the Consortium for Command, Control and Communications in Cyberspace, the program executive officer intelligence electronic warfare and sensors said Tuesday.
HADES is the Army’s next-generation aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform. Dennis Teefy, the Army’s project director for sensors – aerial intelligence, said the service expects HADES to help meet the demands of multidomain operations against peer- and near-pear adversaries.
“The goal is to provide deep-sensing intelligence collection of indicators and warnings, electronic order of battle, and patterns of life for target development. This will allow stand-off operations to detect, locate, identify, and track critical targets for the ground commander,” Teefy said of HADES.
The Phase 1 project for COMINT/ELINT sensor prototypes could be worth $4.37 million over a performance period of eight months. Under the first phase, vendors will perform sensor-level demonstrations to determine system gaps and capabilities to inform prototype fabrication, design modifications and upgrades under the second phase.
Phase 2 will call for contractors to further develop their sensors and Phase 3 will involve the development of an integrated COMINT/ELINT system for flight testing.
The Army expects the OTA prototype project covering all three phases for MDSS HADES to have a ceiling value of approximately $49 million.
