The U.S. Army awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. a $554 million contract to provide jets for the Theater Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Aerial-Signals Intelligence program.
The company announced Tuesday that it will provide its new RAPCON-X family of aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to support the service branch’s ATHENA-S project.
ATHENA-S is a prelude to the Army’s High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System program of record, which is expected to be launched before 2030. The projects aim to deepen the branch’s knowledge about the use of high-altitude sensing operations in ISR.
SNC utilized model-based systems engineering to design RAPCON-X, a configurable A-ISR platform that employs synthetic aperture radar to gather and process data such as signals intelligence, electro-optical reconnaissance, and moving-target signatures on the ground.
The contract will be performed at SNC’s aircraft integration facilities in Hagerstown, Maryland.
