Knowing where the enemy is can be the difference between life and death on the battlefield, which means
that having a way to see what's coming can be a decisive advantage.
From 2007 to 2009, this producer actually flew on the E-3 Sentry well in the Air
Force. But the aircraft that I've come back to isn't the same as the one I used to fly on.
Thanks to billions of dollars worth of upgrades for more than 40 years, the US Air Force has relied on
the E-3 Sentry, a airborne warning and control system known more generally by its acronym
AWACS, to monitor skies around the world.
The E-3 was a critical asset for the Air Force in most major operations during the 1990s and
during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It fulfilled a critical function of air traffic control and air battle management during almost two
decades of U.S. engagement.
As you can see, it has a giant radar dome on top of it.
Airborne early warning uses active and passive sensors, such as radar and emitter sensing to
create a picture of the battlefield which can be used to make crucial decisions.
It's also important to keep an eye on the sky here at home.
Recently, an E-3G was sent to monitor the suspected Chinese spy balloon over the northern
United States.
The best way to describe it is kind of like the quarterback in the sky.
Over the skies of Europe.
Nato's E-3 sentries, one of the few military assets owned by the alliance, keep a
watchful eye on the contested airspace in Ukraine and with a radar range of around
280 miles, it means that they do not need to be in Ukraine's airspace.
Nato's E-3 the French have E-3s And so there's a lot of E-3 patrol over
in Europe, the US E-3 is generally don't go to Europe because they have a robust capability.
Today we're there.
We plan to be there for a little while in support of operations.
It's designed to control the battle space, to see what's coming, to see what's over the horizon.
It's pretty important when the US is trying to figure out what's going on, even with the dragon modification
that gives some of these aircraft a so-called glass flight deck filled with modern avionics, these
venerable planes with iconic dome are reaching the twilight of their lifespan.
It is becoming increasingly difficult, really impossible, to keep the aircraft
flying. I mean, these are over 45 year old aircraft.
It's a challenging aircraft.
And that makes it fun.
It is it isn't an airplane that you just throw the autopilot on and everything.
Is it for you?
According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, retiring 15 E-3s could save
$3 billion over five years.
To put it in context, if the E-3 was a car in Virginia, it would qualify for antique
license plates.
The Air Force is prohibited from retiring E-3s until an acquisition strategy for a replacement
is in place.
The potential threat that's out there has evolved and we need to evolve to keep up.
Congress has leaned towards a replacement, setting aside $200 million to develop an Air Force version of
the E-7 Wedgetail made by Boeing.
It's time to go to a new platform.
But in the age of long range missiles, drones and hypersonic weapons, is the wedgetail worth the
cost?
Radar or radio detection and ranging was invented before the Second World War.
The ability to detect aircraft by sending radio waves and then receiving the waves that bounce back
from an object such as a bomber were a game changer.
Radar was a big reason that the UK was able to hold off Nazi Germany in the Battle of Britain in
radar use by the US and the Pacific helped vector fighters and anti-aircraft guns to push back the
imperial Japanese forces.
Island by island. Putting radars on aircraft was the logical next step.
When a radar is on the ground, its range is limited by terrain.
A flying radar can see further because it is less susceptible to obstructions and it can see further over
the horizon. Radar isn't foolproof.
It can be jammed. It can be tricked by countermeasures like chaff, essentially rolls of aluminum that
create ghosts on a radar operator's screen and stealth aircraft can evade radar with purpose built
airframes designed to bounce radar waves away from the receiver.
But having an eye in the sky can be a key to victory in war or the century that keeps the peace by seeing
what's coming next.
Engineering, testing and evaluation on the E-3 Sentry began in 1975 and the
first aircraft was delivered to Tinker Air Force Base in 1977.
The final E-3 was delivered in 1984.
Currently, the Air Force has 31 E-3 in active service.
According to the New York Times, the E-3 was at the time the most expensive plane ever proposed by the
Air Force. The cost per aircraft in 1975 was around $111 million,
which adjusted for inflation would be near $604 million today.
The most recent variant is the E-3G, but older versions still fly with various air forces around the
world.
The interface is like a normal computer that you would interface with at home.
This here is going to be our bread and butter.
It's our scope. What allows us to see what our air battle managers are seeing allow us to
kind of be that sanity check or that that second voice for.
Them in a real world mission.
The E-3 can stay airborne for 8 hours without refueling and with aerial refueling.
That time can be substantially increased.
As an aircraft that you actually have to fly and you have to be there consciously in the moment, you know,
thinking about the next step.
And if you're not in the next step, you're already 300 feet behind the aircraft.
So it's a challenging aircraft, but it's also lets you be a pilot,
if you would.
The E-3 can't operate without our airmen.
And our maintainers are just amazing.
They do such great work in turning this airplane and making it flyable and safe every day.
It is a very.
Technical system being with the age.
The electronics are are very old and take a lot of expertise and technical know.
How to get around.
So definitely challenging, but at the same time, it definitely seems impactful, very
impactful to the mission.
Wherever the US needs to get more information about what's going on in the world, there's usually an E3
somewhere nearby. If U.S.
threes aren't responding to real world events, they're usually either deployed or training
specifically.
Right now we're doing a lot of different events such as Red Flag and those type of large force
employment exercises.
At events such as red Flag, a high intensity training environment filled with air forces from around the
world.
The E-3's role, whether it is at a red flag or it is in combat, is
to bring order to chaos.
And so the airmen here every day trained to be ready tactically, professionally and personally to go and
to do that mission.
Today, modern fighters have active, electronically scanned radars, but they still don't have the
360 degree coverage that a dedicated plane would have, nor the power that it can bring to bear to
see faraway targets.
So we're air battle managers.
So essentially sit at one of these consoles, utilize our radios and talk to whatever players
are out there and look at our computers, see what's going on around us, and just let everybody out there
know what's kind of going on.
We're all doing the same thing, contributing to like one big picture, talking to each other,
making sure that we're all on the same page like, you're doing this.
I'm doing this together.
We get the mission done.
Now, the way the data links work, the way the radios work, it's all digital.
It's all digital.
So one thing as ABM's going through training, we're trained to be that cool, calm, collected voice over the
radio.
The E-3 uses a mechanically steered radar, which means that it rotates to refresh the screens of the radar
operators. As the radar rotates, the beam it sends out covers the area over and over, creating a radar
picture. Awacs also sends and receives data from other forces using data links.
The sentry also has the ability to detect passively, which means it can pick up other objects that are
emitting.
Well, in a sense a passive detection system which doesn't have to send out a beam, it doesn't have to
send out a radar, it can pick things up by other means.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed fighters and missiles that were designed to take out
high value aircraft like AWACS.
Today, China has designed long range air to air missiles that can reportedly be carried on its J-20
stealth fighter, a potent combination and potentially deadly one for AWACS crews if a conflict were to
occur.
So I think the E3 operates in an environment, generally speaking, where we've got layered
defenses that kind of are between us and the and the adversary.
I mean, this is a high value target for any adversary just because of what it provides in terms of command
and control.
When you think about the future threats, Chinese ability to
employ longer range precision missiles that will target aircraft like this,
you have to question whether the current system can really endure in that
high end environment.
Until the E-7 arrives, the 552 will continue to train for flying the E-3.
High tech training can be the difference between success and failure, and the Air Force has invested in
new tools to help prepare airmen for missions.
This is the 966th Student Innovation Center.
It's where new airmen come to learn how to fly this multimillion dollar aircraft.
Even virtual reality is used to allow airmen in training to learn the layout of the jet without having
to set aside a physical aircraft for them to use.
Do you do you see utility in it?
I definitely see utility in it because before this, we didn't have the opportunity.
So when they came out of the academics portion, most of them have never even been on the plane before,
except for the first time that they fly.
So with this, they can actually go in and explore the plane, learn different locations,
like I said, and just kind of be able to build that level of confidence
before they actually step foot on the plane.
The 966th typically sees anywhere upwards of 400 students a
year, and that includes initial qualification training and upgrade training
for the wing as a whole.
Checklists and technical orders are all now on tablets, which makes updates and new releases.
A breeze for aircrew, not to mention not having to lug around the stack of manuals that used to be required to
fly.
And our operators just their ability to study and work hard to make sure they understand the adversary,
understand our tactics, our needs, our requirements, and and go out and employ this airplane in the way that
it's designed.
Until a replacement aircraft is online, the US Air Force's E-3Gs will
remain on standby, keeping a watchful eye at home and abroad.
And there will be some overlap between those two platforms as we try to
smartly phase down the current capability and and generate
some cost savings there that help us to field the new capabilities.
The Wedgetail uses, the MULTIROLE electronically scanned array or MESA radar developed by
Northrop Grumman. Since the radar is electronically scanned, it isn't reliant on a mechanical sweep to
refresh what the radar sees, resulting in a much faster scope refresh rate for the operator.
It also has less moving parts, which makes it more reliable.
Another advantage is that due to the advanced systems, the mission crew on the E-7 is 12.
The E-7 isn't a new design.
It's been flying since 2004 and operational with the Australian Air Force since 2009.
Turkey and South Korea also fly a similar 737 AWACS produced by Boeing, known as the P
eaceEagle and PeaceEye, respectively.
The US Air Force plans to have its own requirements, which means that they won't be buying off the shelf.
One of the lessons that we continue to learn with every acquisition
program out there is you have a much higher chance of success delivering
on time, on schedule.
If you keep those requirements locked.
In, these specific needs will have to be developed and incorporated on prototype aircraft before full
rate production can begin.
There's a physical limitation on how fast you can turn a roll of aluminum into an
E seven.
So we're already in 2023.
Having the first one out in 2027 is not bad from an acquisition point of view, even for a
system that's been in some variants in the field for a long time, that's pretty darn
quick. If there are ways of making it quicker, we really need to consider that in order to make sure that
we don't lose the capability because of a problem with the aging AWACS.
The U.S. is also buying new planes, unlike the UK, which is taking older aircraft in retrofitting them
into the Wedgetail standard.
So first and foremost, it's the right platform at the right time.
Reportedly, Air Force crews are already preparing to train on Australian E-7s to prepare for the next
generation of U.S. Air Force AWACS.
Because it's based on a platform.
737 which there are thousands, there's much more access to parts.
It uses about a third of the fuel of an E-3.
So it's much more efficient to operate and it brings more capability than the E-3 does.