Industry Heavyweights Make Final Push for New Air Force Spy Plane
By Sandra Erwin
July 18, 2017
For the better part of the past decade, U.S. Air Force officials have gone back and forth on how to modernize a fleet of surveillance planes so old that the original airframes — Boeing 707 airliners — have been out of production since 1979.
The 17 planes now in service, known as the E-8C joint surveillance target attack radar systems (JSTARS), have been workhorses around the world and average 48 years in age. It is not uncommon for a portion of the fleet to get grounded for maintenance issues, increasing the pressure on the Air Force to replace them with more reliable airplanes.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/07/18/industry_heavyweights_make_final_push_for_new_air_force_spy_plane_111835.html
