Let Us Retire 50-Year Old Radar Planes, Air Force Asks Congress
The E-7 Wedgetail is the “leading candidate” to replace the oft-grounded E-3 Sentry, if Congress approves the president’s 2023 budget request.
MARCUS WEISGERBER | MARCH 28, 2022 01:30 PM ET
The U.S. Air Force’s new budget request includes nearly a quarter-billion dollars to start replacing decades-old E-3 AWACS radar planes with...well, it’s not quite decided. But the “leading candidate” is the E-7 Wedgetail, a Boeing aircraft flown by several allies.
“We're going to be making that decision [of which aircraft to buy] sometime, I think, within the next several months,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Friday during a roundtable with reporters before the Pentagon’s budget request was sent to Congress on Monday. “We've got to take a look at requirements and do some market research...The leading candidate, quite obviously, is the E-7, but we want to do our due diligence.”
The Air Force asked lawmakers for permission to retire 15 E-3s, nearly half of its fleet. Replacing the E-3s will also require Congressional approval. In their 2023 budget request, Air Force officials are asking for $227 million to start retiring and replacing the Sentry, more commonly known as the airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, and easily recognized by the giant dorsal disc of its radar antenna. The Air Force began flying the E-3 in the 1970s, but it is based on the Boeing 707 airliner, a plane that first flew in the 1950s. Gen. Mark Kelly, the head of the Air Combat Command, recently quipped that the plane has difficulty flying “1/8 of a mile away from a [maintenance] depo—and that's with the finest sustainment enterprise on the planet.” Still, the U.S. and its NATO allies have been flying E-3s AWACS regularly to monitor the airspace in Europe since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/let-us-retire-50-year-old-radar-planes-air-force-asks-congress/363679/
