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‘The ability to stare’: Why the US Air Force is eager to get the E-7
Mar 23, 05:22 PM
AURORA, Colo. — For nearly 50 years, the E-3
Sentry aircraft served as the cornerstone of the U.S. Air Force’s
ability to keep eyes in the sky. In the waning years of the Cold War, and
throughout America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the airborne warning and
control system aircraft, or AWACS, and its trademark 30-foot rotating radar
dome swept battlefields and potential conflict zones around the world.
But that Northrop Grumman-made APY sensor takes 10 seconds to fully
rotate and refresh its view of aircraft the AWACS crew is trying to track.
A lot can change in a 10-second blink of an eye: An aircraft flying at
hundreds of miles an hour can move more than a mile in that timespan, and for a
jet topping Mach 1, that could be more than 2 miles.
Boeing’s
E-7A, the aircraft set to replace the E-3 AWACS, will give the Air Force a
different way of looking at battlefields. Instead of periodic rotational
sweeps, the E-7′s multirole electronically scanned array long-range sensor will
allow operators to fix its gaze on a target — or several of them.
“It essentially
comes down to the ability to stare at something,” Carson Elmore, who runs
business development for Boeing’s international E-7 program, said in a March 8
briefing on the E-7′s
capabilities at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare
Symposium in Colorado.
And top Air Force generals aren’t hiding how
eager they are to have the E-7 and its new capabilities at their
disposal.
“I want them very
quickly,” Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said in a
roundtable with reporters at the conference that day.
The Air Force in February awarded Boeing a $1.2 billion contract to begin
work on the E-7 fleet; the service plans to reach 26 aircraft by 2032. The air
forces of Australia, Turkey and South Korea are already flying E-7s, and
production is underway for a British fleet. The Royal Australian Air Force
calls its E-7 the Wedgetail, but the U.S. has not decided on its own E-7′s
name.
The U.S. Air Force plans to first buy two rapid prototype E-7s, with the
first to be fielded in 2027, and then make a production decision on the
remainder of the fleet in 2025. The service has repeatedly said its AWACS
capabilities — which were state of the art when first fielded in the late 1970s
— are out of date and not advanced enough for future conflicts.
Furthermore, the AWACS’ aging 707-based airframe and TF33 engines are
increasingly hard to maintain, the service argued, and its radar capabilities are
outdated. The Air Force is retiring its fleet of AWACS, which once numbered 31,
and plans to be down to 16 by the end of fiscal 2024.
In a March 10 budget briefing with reporters at the Pentagon, Air Force
Secretary Frank Kendall downplayed the risk of a capability gap emerging by
slashing the AWACS fleet nearly in half before the first E-7 arrives.
“The E-3 is
essentially not effective in the environments we’re most worried about,”
Kendall said. “The sensor is pretty ancient at this point, and the aircraft are
very expensive to maintain.”
At the symposium briefing, which took place in a trailer mocked up to
resemble the interior of an E-7, Boeing officials walked reporters through how
it plans to build the Air Force’s new E-7 fleet, and what makes them different
from the AWACS.
New plane and fresh radar
The biggest differences between the AWACS and the upcoming E-7 will be
how the sensors work and the views they provide, said Rod Meranda, Boeing’s
head of business development for its domestic and international E-7 program.
The E-7′s multirole electronically scanned array, or MESA, will be able
to lock its view on a target instead of having to sweep around, and the
operators on the E-7 will be able to tell it to refresh that view at certain
intervals. Boeing would not say how quickly the MESA will be able to refresh
its view, citing security concerns, but Elmore said it would be able to do
“rapid relooks.”
The MESA will also be able to look in several directions at once,
allowing the operators at the E-7′s array of 10 stations to simultaneously
monitor multiple angles. Elmore said this will allow the aircraft to
considerably narrow down the possible location of an aircraft, resulting in
greatly improved situational awareness.
E-7 controllers will also be able to set its array to conduct periodic
sweeps in several directions, Elmore said. For instance, the controllers could
set the MESA to watch targets on one side most of the time, and every so often
look in the other direction “to make sure somebody’s not sneaking up on me,” he
explained.
Like the AWACS, the E-7 will also be able to listen
for radar and other electronic signals a potential enemy aircraft is emitting,
then locate the plane and check the signal against a database to help identify
the type of plane.
Boeing officials declined to discuss the range of the E-7′s sensor and
how it compares to the AWACS, as well as its self-defense capabilities, citing
classification concerns. Boeing’s website lists chaff and flares among the
E-7′s defensive measures.
Mounting the MESA array on the E-7, along with all the power and
capabilities that its 737 body can carry, provides a more capable means of
conducting surveillance compared to smaller drones, fighters and satellites,
Meranda said.
“You can’t put
this kind of power in an unmanned” aircraft, Meranda noted. “Space — same
thing. [It’s a] massive array to give you a lot of capability.”
Cutting the crew
The E-7 will also require a smaller crew than the AWACS thanks to newer
technologies, Elmore said. The Air Force’s AWACS fact sheet said it requires a
flight crew of four, plus a mission crew of 13-19 specialists.
Boeing said the E-7 can get the job done with just a pilot and co-pilot,
and a variable number of mission operators running the bank of 10 stations
lining the aircraft, depending on mission requirements. That crew could be as
small as three if a flight only needs one mission operator to use a scope.
And, for example, if an E-7 carries out a lengthy and complex mission —
AWACS operations sometimes exceeded 24 hours — it can seat up to 21 people: the
pilot and co-pilot, 10 mission operators at the stations, and nine more in
reserve to rotate in and out. The cockpit also has a jump seat for a third
pilot.
Each station — six on the port side, four on starboard — has two displays
operators can use to spread out radar signals, and chat windows used to
coordinate with other aircraft, the air operations center on the ground or
other teammates elsewhere. The operators also have intercoms, and the plane’s
radios will be able to use more capable Mobile User Objective System satellite
communications.
Although the E-7 has several features that differ from the AWACS, Elmore
said Boeing kept the stations and how they are controlled similar to what E-3
operators are used to. “We wanted to have a very short training and transition
time frame for the operators when they get out of the E-3 and they come to the
E-7,” he noted.
The E-7 also has a new situational awareness feature, which the AWACS
lacks, called the flight deck tactical display, which alerts the pilot to
what’s going on in the battlespace and what may be flying nearby. Elmore said
the display is tied into the E-7′s electronic warfare self-protection
capabilities, but would not go into more detail.
This display, which is mounted near the pilot’s knee, means the E-7 does
not need a crew member found on the E-3 — the AWACS monitor — Elmore said.
AWACS monitors fly in the back of the aircraft and keep in touch with their
pilots to update them on what is in the area.
“All of the
tracking on AWACS, you had a whole set of people who worked on tracking and
identifying” other aircraft in the area, Elmore said. “We’ve eliminated them
because the machine does it.”
Elmore said the E-7 will be able to link up with assets used by joint
forces so it can share data — both drawing information that the E-7 can use and
sending data to partner forces.
Building the E-7
It typically takes Boeing four years to make an E-7, though the company
says it could shave about six months off that timeline by procuring long-lead
items in advance. It takes two years to make the commercial 737-700, and then
two more years “chopping this airplane up” to modify it into the E-7.
Meranda said that when the Air Force’s E-7 program kicks into gear, which
could happen later this decade, Boeing wants to build four per year.
To make an E-7 for the Air Force, Boeing will first buy a 737 tube from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas, and bring it to its factory in Renton, Washington. Once the tube is on the factory’s “line 3,” which is dedicated to military work and is where Boeing builds P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol planes, Boeing will start beefing it up so it can handle the extra wear and tear military flying dishes out.
The central feature of the E-7 is its blade-like
MESA sensor, nicknamed the “top hat.” Installing it requires a significant
amount of work, and Meranda said Boeing will cut the 737 plane in half to
reinforce the structure to bear the weight of the MESA sensor.
The company will also install wings typically used on 737-800s, which
Elmore said will give the E-7 greater lift capability, as well as stronger
landing gear, among other modifications.
The U.S. version of the E-7 will be similar to the three Boeing is now
building for the U.K., particularly in terms of the air frame, sensor and
mission equipment, though the U.S. Air Force made unique requests Boeing
declined to specify.
Boeing wants the E-7 fleet to be largely interoperable so it’s easier and
cheaper to upgrade different nations’ fleets. Meranda said the E-7 will use a
suite of open-mission systems software to simplify upgrades; the U.S. Air Force
will test the technology in 2025.
The entire acquisition process for an E-7, including testing and Federal
Aviation Administration certifications that occur after construction and
modification, could take five years, but Boeing wants to get it done sooner.
The company said that advance procurement funding will lower the risk for
businesses involved in building the E-7. For Boeing, that funding will allow it
to start building the commercial plane earlier, Meranda said. And advance
funding allows Northrop Grumman engineers and production facilities to start
working on the planes’ sensors, he added.
But Boeing officials reiterated the Air Force’s statements that not much
can be done to rapidly accelerate the process of acquiring new E-7s. While the
U.K. purchased used planes to convert into its E-7s, Meranda said there’s not
many more used airframes available to adapt into additional E-7s.
Elsewhere at the AFA Warfare Symposium, top Air Force generals made no
secret of their desire to get their hands on the E-7 as soon as possible.
The E-3s “are a significant challenge to keep them in the air, just
because they’re very old and they have a lot of maintenance requirements, and
the E-7 obviously doesn’t have that,” Wilsbach said.
And in the air, “the E-7 has significantly greater capabilities [over the
E-3] from the standpoint of what it can see and how it can contribute to the
overall objectives,” the officer added.
Wilsbach told reporters he planned to visit Boeing within days to discuss
how fast the company can produce E-7s.
In another discussion with reporters, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark
Kelly echoed Wilsbach’s urgency, saying he felt “like a proud father” to see
the service make progress on acquiring the E-7.
“I just wanted
more than twins,” he said, referring to the two rapid prototype E-7s. “I want
as many of those kids as I can.”
The Air Force’s effort to update its electromagnetic spectrum aircraft,
including the E-7, EC-37B Compass Call, and electronic warfare capabilities in
the F-35 and F-15EX fighters, could make the difference between winning and
losing a war, Kelly said.
“Coming in second
in [the electromagnetic spectrum] is a horrible place to be.”
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