Company building unique military planes in Tulsa for special forces missions | Lugar Business News

With an initial government grant of $170 million, L3Harris will equip and make flight-ready at least six AT-802U Sky Warden planes in Tulsa.

The manned, single-engine, turboprop aircraft is designed for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as missions in extreme combat environments.

It is designed to perform in austere, disaggregated combat environments with limited infrastructure. It has unparalleled range and endurance, weapons, sensor and communication capabilities, the company said.

The contract, for now, has a cost ceiling of $3 billion.

“I was ecstatic,” Luke Savoie, president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for L3Harris, told the Tulsa World last week, when asked about news of the grant. “This is very personal to me.”

Savoie is a former Air Force pilot of the AC-130 gunship and other aircraft, and had a large role in designing and developing the Sky Warden platform.

Many of the Sky Warden’s features are proprietary, and its capabilities — depending on its individual specifications for the military — are not available publicly, Savoie acknowledged.

However, he said, depending on the aircraft’s sensors, a pilot would be able to pinpoint a specific point where an enemy is firing.

“I can look out the window, and I can see someone shooting. And I can sit there on the throttle and hit a button, and drop a point of where I was looking at. I saw someone shooting a weapon — I drop a point right there,” he said.

“And I can go over here and hit another button, and the auto-pilot — based on what I was just looking at — will now automatically put the aircraft into orbit around that point.

“I hit another button … and now the fire control is targeting that position. So I have a sensor looking at it, the fire control has updated that — that’s what it should be targeting — and now I can just roll in, and put a shot off and engage that, and never have had to sit there in tight coordinates or do all these weird mouse clicks and all this other stuff (at a distance, with drone military aircraft),” Savoie said.

“It’s fairly tightly integrated and digitally controlled. And that’s the greatest thing about the weapons system is how tightly that all works.”

He declined to say the cost range for each aircraft, depending on its specific weapons and sensor configuration, but a news release by the company said the Sky Warden is “affordable.”

The plane’s intended use is for close combat support by the Air Force, Savoie said, but could also potentially be sold to U.S. allies.

“Sky Warden has a demand out there. If you’re a nation state that deals with violent extremists — if you’re either budget constrained or you’re infrastructure constrained, or you need things to be multi-role … this provides options for those potential types of customers,” he said.

“I’m honored to be part of this program and provide this capability to customers. We look forward to growing … and expanding our presence in the state, and look forward to supporting the state of Oklahoma,” he said.

U.S. Special Operations Command selected L3Harris and Air Tractor Inc.’s Sky Warden system for its Armed Overwatch program.

With an initial program contract award of $170 million, the program could include delivery of up to 75 aircraft.

Production of new, fully modified, Armed Overwatch mission-configured aircraft will begin in 2023 at L3Harris’ Tulsa modification center, the company said in a news release, following initial production at the Air Tractor Inc.’s Olney, Texas, aircraft manufacturing facility.

Air Tractor is a manufacturer of aircraft for agricultural, firefighting and utility applications. Olney is about 130 miles northwest of Dallas and 40 miles south of Wichita Falls.

In Tulsa since 1974 and at Tulsa International Airport since 2013, L3Harris develops, maintains and operates airborne missile tracking systems in support of the Missile Defense Agency Airborne Sensor Program.

The Melbourne, Florida-based company is a technology supplier for military, government and commercial partners.

L3Harris employs 306 people in Tulsa and, with the contract, is looking to expand with about 100 new positions including engineers and mechanical and electrical installers, Savoie said.

In November, the company announced an expansion of operations in Tulsa, with plans to create at least 80 new jobs.

“We’ve been a strong supporter of L3 in wanting to put them in a position to be successful by providing world-class facilities for them to do their work, just like we do with so many other rapidly growing companies out there at the airport,” Tulsa Longevo G.T. Bynum said at the time.

“This is really, in my mind, this is one of our greatest opportunities for growth as it relates to Tulsa’s economy. It’s the industrial cluster that we have right here at the airport,” Bynum said.

People in the Tulsa area could see the planes flying from Texas to L3Harris’ facility at Tulsa International Airport as soon as this fall, Savoie said.

“The Sky Warden design reflects our commitment to America’s national security, and the AT-802U will be equipped with everything we’ve learned manufacturing aircraft over the past 46 years,” Air Tractor President Jim Hirsch said in a statement.

“The L3Harris team is an excellent partner, and our production and engineering staff are ready to immediately deliver this world-class product to our nation’s special forces,” Hirsch said.

L3Harris has more than $17 billion in annual revenue and 47,000 employees, with customers in more than 100 countries, according to its website.

“Sky Warden will bring powerful and affordable close air support, precision strike, armed ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), and command and control capabilities directly to special operations forces in the battlefield,” Sean Stackley, president of integrated mission systems for L3Harris, said in a statement.