AWACS - Move over for the Wedgetail - Air & Space Forces Magazine

 

Boeing aims for annual output of 6 E-7 Wedgetails to fill global early warning ‘gap’

As Breaking Defense toured Boeing's Seattle area facilities where the E-7 radar plane will take shape, company officials talked about getting the bird in the air — and their vision for what it can do.

By   MICHAEL MARROWon January 05, 2024 at 10:48 AM

 

A Royal Australian Air Force E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft lands at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Jan. 30. 2020. (U.S. Air Force Photo William R. Lewis)

TUKWILA and RENTON, Wash. — Aerospace giant Boeing plans to ramp up production of the E-7 Wedgetail to an ambitious six planes per year to keep up with burgeoning global demand, according to the company official charged with getting the early warning birds in the air.

Previously, executives discussed plans for producing four of the radar planes a year with the possibility of reaching up to six. But in a December interview with Breaking Defense inside a trailer that houses a partial mockup of the Wedgetail’s interior at Boeing’s Tukwila Development Center, E-7 program manager Stu Voboril said it’s become obvious the company will shoot for the higher end as legacy airframes are phased out.

Pointing to orders from the US Air Force and now a recent win from NATO, Voboril said, “We’re working to get to a capacity of six per year. That’s where we think we need to be,” adding that the company aimed to reach that goal around the later part of this decade.

“As the [E-3] AWACS retirements are occurring globally, there’s a gap. So we’re trying to fit this within the gap of where the retirement of the AWACS fleet is right now,” he said.

The US Air Force, which now intends to buy 26 Wedgetails, expects its first two rapid prototypes to arrive by 2027 and that the remaining aircraft in the fleet will be delivered by 2032. The new aircraft is set to replace a fleet of 31 E-3 Sentry aircraft, a platform the service is rapidly divesting.

In November, Boeing’s E-7 prevailed in a competition to replenish NATO’s own E-3 early warning fleet, where the alliance has set a minimum order of six aircraft. NATO now wants its first E-7 by 2031 and has stated that its incumbent E-3 fleet should be retired around 2035.