A hangar at Reno Stead

Sierra Nevada Corporation began in 1963 with John Chisholm and a handful of employees working out of an aircraft hangar at Reno Stead Airport in Nevada. For decades it was a small electronics and defence contractor. In 1981 it hired a young Turkish-born engineer, Fatih Özmen, and in 1994 he and his wife Eren bought the company. Under the Özmens it grew into a multi-billion-dollar private firm with more than 4,000 staff and 36 locations in the United States, Britain, Germany and Turkey, living mostly off Pentagon and NASA contracts and specialising in taking other people’s aircraft and turning them into something else.

The Özmens take over

That talent shows in its aircraft work. In 2009 SNC converted Polish PZL M28 Skytrucks into C-145As for US Air Force Special Operations Command. In 2016 it opened a 130,000 sq ft modification centre at Meridianville, Alabama, turning King Airs into military surveillance aircraft such as the Army’s EMARSS and Customs and Border Protection’s Multi-Role Enforcement Aircraft. It also built the Gorgon Stare wide-area airborne camera system, flying combat sorties since March 2011, and in 2015 bought the type certificates for the Dornier 328 and 328JET, though a Turkish plan to build them as a regional jet was abandoned in 2017.

Super Tucanos from Florida

Its best-known aircraft is a Brazilian one. In 2011 Embraer’s Super Tucano beat the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 in the US Light Air Support competition, and SNC, as US prime contractor, delivered A-29s built at Embraer’s plant at Jacksonville, Florida, under a $427 million contract. Afghanistan received 26 between 2014 and 2017, Lebanon six, paid for by Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria 12 after a sale held up over human-rights concerns was approved in 2017. US special operations advisers took three. The partnership is still marketing the A-29, demonstrating it to Ghana in February 2024.

Dream Chaser, the spaceplane that would not die

SNC’s most famous gamble is the Dream Chaser, a winged spaceplane descended from NASA’s HL-20 lifting body, acquired with SpaceDev in 2008. Its test vehicle made its first free flight on 26 October 2013, crash-landing when its left main gear failed to deploy, and landed cleanly in 2017. In 2014 NASA picked Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts instead; NASA’s Bill Gerstenmaier judged SNC’s design the least mature, and its director Mark Sirangelo likened the loss to a death in the family. SNC redesigned it as a cargo ship and won an ISS resupply contract in 2016. In 2021 it spun off Sierra Space to run it; the first vehicle, Tenacity, was finished in 2023 and still awaited launch in 2026.

Doomsday 747s

The biggest contract came in May 2024: $13 billion from the US Air Force for the Survivable Airborne Operations Center, the successor to the four E-4B Nightwatch aircraft that would carry American leaders through a nuclear war. Boeing had withdrawn in 2023, so SNC won unopposed. It bought five ex-Korean Air Boeing 747-8s to convert, hardened against nuclear and electromagnetic effects and fitted for air refuelling, with work expected to run to 2036. The company has had controversies too: in 2017 it paid $14.9 million to settle False Claims Act overcharging allegations without admitting liability, and in 2024 China sanctioned it over arms sales to Taiwan.

Fábricas

• Sparks headquarters · Sparks, Nevada — Corporate headquarters
• Meridianville aircraft modification centre · Meridianville, Alabama — 130,000 sq ft, opened 2016, plus a 60,800 sq ft extension
• Embraer Jacksonville (partner) · Jacksonville, Florida — A-29 Super Tucano assembly for US-funded customers

Gente

• John Chisholm · founder — Started the company in 1963
• Fatih Özmen · owner and chief executive — Joined 1981, bought the company with Eren Özmen in 1994
• Eren Özmen · owner — Co-owner since 1994
• Mark Sirangelo · head of space systems — Led the Dream Chaser programme through the 2014 commercial crew loss