Brown: Air Force Serious About E-7 Wedgetail
Australia’s airborne early warning E-7A Wedgetail by Boeing
AFA: The Air Force is looking seriously at buying the E-7 Wedgetail to replace the aging Boeing E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes, with an eye to the 2023 budget.
“We are doing internal analysis,” Chief of Staff CQ Brown told reporters today here at the Air Force Foundation’s annual Air, Space & Cyber conference. “The E-7 is a good platform. It’s flown by the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal Air Force is getting ready to procure some as well.”
Boeing originally built the Wedgetail for the Royal Australian Air Force, signing a developmental contract in 1999. It has been providing updates and maintaining the Australian aircraft since the plane first came into service in 2009. The UK announced in March 2019 it intended to buy five E-7s, but in March of this year decided to cut the number to three, according to a report in Janes.
Brown said he has been in conversations with both the Australian and British air chiefs about the capability, but that the service has not yet initiated conversations with Boeing about how soon after a budget decision the company could begin production for the Air Force.
Ultimately, Brown said, military commanders want to move the mission to track moving targets in the air and on the ground) to space-based systems, as first announced by Space Force head Gen. Jay Raymond in May.
“When you look to the future, ideally you’d like to be able to look at capability that can be defensible,” he said.
But the Wedgetail could fill the gap in the meantime. Brown explained that the service’s analysis is looking at the AWACS “mission capable rates, and how much it cost to be able to maintain and keep those aircraft viable. And this is why we are taking a look at the E-7.”
Acquiring the Wedgetail “gives us a path” while the service awaits a space-based capability, he said, as “an option to be able to get the capability much faster than if we were to start a new start from scratch.”
Indeed, the commander of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, has expressed interest in the E-7, due to concerns with the flagging readiness of the AWACS planes.
Given that “it’s already a proven capability, and having seen it in action, I think it’s something we do want to use,” he added. “And at the same time, if this becomes a (budget) line, we’ll probably start replace some E-7s.”
Brown noted that he personally has flown the E-7 twice.