Bombardier’s Global aircraft platform has achieved a significant in-service milestone with the U.S. Air Force in special-mission configuration. A fleet of four modified Global aircraft has collectively flown 100,000 hours since entering service. These aircraft are an integral part of the Air Force’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) program, an airborne communications relay that extends communication ranges, bridges between radio frequencies and “translates” among incompatible communications systems.
Over the course of their mission, BACN aircraft have regularly flown over 18 hours a day for months at a time, demonstrating dispatch reliability of the Global platform.
Starting with one Global Express aircraft in 2007, the BACN fleet today also includes two Global Express XRS variants and one Global 6000 aircraft. The four jets are known in the Air Force as the E-11A.
