Leidos and and L3Harris Technologies announced today they are teaming up for the U.S. Army's Theater Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne - Signals Intelligence (ATHENA-S) proposal. Together the companies will seek to deliver two enhanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft in support of the program.

“The Leidos-L3Harris team focuses each of our companies' extensive and diverse talents to achieve mission success with ATHENA-S,” said Tim Freeman, Leidos senior vice president and Airborne Solutions Operations Manager. “With our combined integration, investment, engineering and design expertise, we look forward to producing a highly-configurable platform with more ISR capabilities to create an operational picture of the battlefield. The Leidos-L3Harris team is excited to deliver a decision advantage for the U.S. and our allies.”

Together, the Leidos-L3Harris team is the only one with experience designing, integrating, certifying and operating ISR business jets for the U.S. Army. The team will work to modify two Bombardier Global 6500 jets with radar, electronic and communications intelligence capabilities tailored to ATHENA-S requirements. The aircraft are intended to support U.S. Army missions in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility and are designed to close the gap between the Army's medium- and high-altitude ISR aircraft fleet. ATHENA-S will fly at higher operating altitudes, provide increased range, greater endurance, more capacity for larger payloads and greater standoff ranges, along with next-generation sensor technology.

Leidos currently operates two Leidos Special Mission Aircraft (LSMA) for the Army's Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting and Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS) program in support of U.S. European Command. The LSMA provides deep-sensing electronics intelligence to enable threat analysis and delivery of long-range precision fires.

L3Harris currently operates a Bombardier Global Series jet as part of the Army's Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) program supporting U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. In addition to ARES, L3Harris is also performing on Phase 2 of the Army's Multi-Domain Sensing System program to develop, build, integrate and demonstrate prototype electronic and communications intelligence sensors for the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) program.