E-7A Wedgetail

[Clark Griswold]

3 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

It’s not about smaller plane, biz jets can fly higher and faster which makes their sensors more useful.

Also, Boeing is terrible at producing aircraft now.

Copy and understand, I believe @ClearedHot mentioned in this or another thread the Israeli AWACS based on the G550, same platform for the new Compass Call, I could see that as a selling point for logistical support and their jet has some very high end capes

2 minutes ago, brabus said:

Those are all excellent reasons to NOT stick with the E-7 shitshow. E-7 would have been nice about 15 years ago, but obviously we’re well past that and it’s very sensible to drop that hot pile of garbage (from a programatic POV) in favor of better tech.

True, I’m just thinking the politics factor can trump the military capabilities factor here if not addressed 

Just as emotions often over power logic, it has to be considered 

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/air-force-cancels-e-7-wedgetail-citing-survivability-and-cost-concerns/

From the article:

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this morning, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, raised concerns that the E-2D might not be able to match the E-7’s capabilities, and cited prior statements from Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein that a space-based capability wouldn’t be available until the early 2030s.

“We just haven’t heard, in my view, sufficient justification for the cancellation of such a critical program,” Murkowski told Air Force leaders.

Jobs, money, prestige, etc… politicians want their constituents to have their fair share plus whatever else they can get.  I want my Congressman to do the same, I think trying to meet her plus other politicians half way on this while developing the orbital systems is the best way.

 

[brabus]

The E2D is great for current day; weird, a senator doesn’t know shit. 

[Clark Griswold]

The E2D is great for current day; weird, a senator doesn’t know shit. 

Nor sure her motives, could be the economic footprint of supporting a smaller platform or could be legit performance concerns

Didn’t catch all of her comments but if I were a staffer or mil liaison working for her, I’d make the argument for an E-7 not just for the combat C2 mission but for long range patrol and monitoring, peacetime to contingency planning. Air and surface surveillance.

The Arctic, maritime regions and maintaining a watch on long range patrols and joint ops occasionally being conducted by the Russians & Chinese are all examples of how not just in WW Taiwan how a long range multi sensor capable platform fits into the team.

Just dreaming and if money grew on trees…
Develop a MAX 7 based platform, the MAX is not a NEO but worth it for domestic considerations.
Referencing the defunct E-10 project, develop a GMTI capability plus long range EO/IR.
Develop this with the Israelis, leveraging their capes into a domestic modern platform (if not using the G550 based platforms)


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[Lawman]

It’s not about smaller plane, biz jets can fly higher and faster which makes their sensors more useful.
 
Also, Boeing is terrible at producing aircraft now.

Life is about trade offs.

The easy counter to this is what kind of ground footprint required when we are talking about expeditionary basing.


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[ClearedHot]

[brabus]

I think the big hump for many to get over is the significant paradigm shift - peer warfare has rapidly changed and airborne C2, as we know it, is essentially obsolete (at least until we destroy a lot of adversary capabilities). So, we’ve had to look at other means to gain battle space awareness, ITW, data passage, etc. So again, yawn to the E7 getting shitcanned; G550s (or similar) to support the non-peer stuff.

[Majestik Møøse]

On 6/24/2025 at 8:19 PM, brabus said:

@Majestik Møøse I’m very confident in my assessment (and it’s not “mine” per se, but rather I concur with it). Though perhaps we are both thinking of different scenarios/vignettes, which is certainly possible and could drive either position being valid. But, we’re not going to be able to sort that out on the internet. To be clear, I’m not anti-manned ISR, and it will continue to play a role, but there are several scenarios where it has zero game, at least for the foreseeable future (and probably doesn’t make sense to change that vs. putting efforts into UAS, AI, Space, Cyber, etc.)

Nope, we’re thinking of the exact same scenarios. I understand how to get sensors in range to accomplish jobs while staying within ALR if it’s aggressive enough.

You keep referencing WW3; does your scenario stop short of the point where multiple orbits have been attacked with nuclear weapons? If America has built an asymmetric (but vulnerable) advantage in space and is using it to attack, only economic interests are stopping a nuclear-armed dictator from letting them fly.

Personally, I don’t believe in nuclear winter or EMP that much and plan on fighting after the exchange. I hope we still have something PMC with a chair in it or else I’ll be relegated to third string KP duty.

China also believes in non-LO airplanes; that’s why they keep building them. They also have a luxury we don’t: they can actually build stuff on timelines and deliver capabilities before they’re OBE. The real issue with the E-7 is that regardless of funding we still wouldn’t deliver one (and it’s just one) for 2 more years still even though it’s a 20 year old existing jet.

[brabus]

56 minutes ago, Majestik Møøse said:

I understand how to get sensors in range to accomplish jobs while staying within ALR

So do I, but it doesn’t involve E-3, E-2D, E-7, etc. If you think it does, you are unfortunately missing some valuable information, context, experience, and overall understanding gleaned from all of that. That’s not a spear, it’s just a pragmatic “you don’t know what you don’t know,” and I’ll leave it at that. 
 

1 hour ago, Majestik Møøse said:

The real issue with the E-7 is that regardless of funding we still wouldn’t deliver one (and it’s just one) for 2 more years still even though it’s a 20 year old existing jet.

That we agree on. Acquisitions process has been fucked for a long time.

[Pooter]

Cutting the F-35 buys in this bill bothers me a lot more than anything about the E-7. Maybe it's because across the 4 red flags I've done, the E-3s GAB'd every vul except 3 so I struggle to understand what airborne C2 could even provide me. 

But slowing production of our most advanced fighter on the promise of some silver bullet dominance platform that is just boeing renderings at this point feels like we're falling into the same trap that netted us 20% as many B-2s and F-22s as we should have right now. We've got 400 F-35s out of a planned order of 1,763.  Less than a quarter of the way there and we're cutting F-35 production already for future promises from a company that can't produce a single engine trainer plane on time or a narrow body airliner without band-aid fixes.

Long story short: if something doesn't change we are fucked. If we can't tighten the turn circle on making new stuff we at least need to have the patience to produce the stuff we've already developed in significant numbers.

[BFM this]

13 hours ago, Pooter said:

Cutting the F-35 buys in this bill bothers me a lot more than anything about the E-7. Maybe it's because across the 4 red flags I've done, the E-3s GAB'd every vul except 3 so I struggle to understand what airborne C2 could even provide me. 

Had friends that were ABMs.  They tried.  A few had moments of helpfulness.  But overall, BACN was 1000% more useful than Darkstar, any day.

[Ziplip]

23 hours ago, Pooter said:

Cutting the F-35 buys in this bill bothers me a lot more than anything about the E-7. Maybe it's because across the 4 red flags I've done, the E-3s GAB'd every vul except 3 so I struggle to understand what airborne C2 could even provide me. 

But slowing production of our most advanced fighter on the promise of some silver bullet dominance platform that is just boeing renderings at this point feels like we're falling into the same trap that netted us 20% as many B-2s and F-22s as we should have right now. We've got 400 F-35s out of a planned order of 1,763.  Less than a quarter of the way there and we're cutting F-35 production already for future promises from a company that can't produce a single engine trainer plane on time or a narrow body airliner without band-aid fixes.

Long story short: if something doesn't change we are ed. If we can't tighten the turn circle on making new stuff we at least need to have the patience to produce the stuff we've already developed in significant numbers.

I'm with you that the F-35 cuts bother me to as we desperately need mass.

However, I think your Red Flag example is off, it would be similar to saying that because it'd be hard to find a use case for the F-4 in a modern Red Flag, that we should just scrap the fighter force. The problem is the E-3 is an old bird and should have been sent to the boneyard 15 years ago and we should have gotten the E-10 or E-7. 

Unfortunately as far as C2 platforms go, the JSTARS was actually the most advanced platform we had but buying them second (or fourth) hand led them to an early grave with no capability to replace it. Personally as an ABM, I believe if we cancel the E-7 the Air Force should blow up the C2 enterprise as it's evident no one wants to pay for it (not saying get rid of it, but we don't seem to want any Tac C2, but we also don't want to staff the AOCs).

[Clark Griswold]

Why can’t you have both in a platform, BACN and AWACS, links boosted and an additional sensor feed from a radar(s)?
This plus the C2 for UCAV & UAS.
This might / probably would push the capability to a platform that can comfortably operate in the high 40s but go big or go home


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[tac airlifter]

On 6/30/2025 at 9:02 AM, brabus said:

 “you don’t know what you don’t know,” and I’ll leave it at that. 

I don't like these type answers because it assumes someone knows enough to correctly predict the next war.  You can't be read into enough SAPs to get future acquisitions right; if you could we would have done it.  But we have a historical 100% rate of getting it wrong-- none of our wars started with a force properly trained & equipped for that war.  All of the retired GO futurists and industry funded think tanks have always gotten it wrong, the war budget has always needed to completely realign to emerging threats we didn't predict and our secret expensive thing has never been the one we needed.  
 

I'm probably taking your statement into a context you didn't intend; would be a fun conversation over bourbon sometime! 

On 6/30/2025 at 8:27 PM, Pooter said:

If we can't tighten the turn circle on making new stuff we at least need to have the patience to produce the stuff we've already developed in significant numbers.

Well said!

[Majestik Møøse]

On 6/30/2025 at 7:02 AM, brabus said:

So do I, but it doesn’t involve E-3, E-2D, E-7, etc. If you think it does, you are unfortunately missing some valuable information, context, experience, and overall understanding gleaned from all of that. That’s not a spear, it’s just a pragmatic “you don’t know what you don’t know,” and I’ll leave it at that.

I didn’t say it involved any of those planes, minus 69 points for reading comprehension.

“Not a spear” GMAFB. You have no idea what the other people here know or not, and if you’re assuming you have all the answers and the rest of us are fools, rip that patch off your shoulder and give it back. Credibility requires humility.

[Pooter]

14 hours ago, Ziplip said:

I'm with you that the F-35 cuts bother me to as we desperately need mass.

However, I think your Red Flag example is off, it would be similar to saying that because it'd be hard to find a use case for the F-4 in a modern Red Flag, that we should just scrap the fighter force. The problem is the E-3 is an old bird and should have been sent to the boneyard 15 years ago and we should have gotten the E-10 or E-7. 

Unfortunately as far as C2 platforms go, the JSTARS was actually the most advanced platform we had but buying them second (or fourth) hand led them to an early grave with no capability to replace it. Personally as an ABM, I believe if we cancel the E-7 the Air Force should blow up the C2 enterprise as it's evident no one wants to pay for it (not saying get rid of it, but we don't seem to want any Tac C2, but we also don't want to staff the AOCs).

Yeah sorry I was mostly being tongue in cheek about the E-3 and how broken they are. I've flown with a wedgetail in integrations with the aussies and it was shit hot. Mostly I have just completely lost faith that we can actually acquire and field new airplanes on a reasonable timeframe, so even if we did get the E-7 I'm skeptical it would make it to IOC before the big fight where we need it. 

Edited July 2 by Pooter

[brabus]

5 hours ago, Majestik Møøse said:

You have no idea what the other people here know or not, and if you’re assuming you have all the answers

I agree, and no I don’t have all the answers, never made that claim. I guess I misunderstood your statement of “I know how to get sensors in range” to mean manned, airborne ISR. Perhaps we are on the same page, but just confusing a bit when earlier you seemed to be debating me on the utility of manned, airborne ISR in a peer fight (in the beginning at least). 

[brabus]

5 hours ago, Pooter said:

so even if we did get the E-7 I'm skeptical it would make it to IOC before the big fight where we need it. 

Like many things, it’s also one of those capabilities that would have been phenomenal to have FOC 15 years ago, but a late 2020s IOC just makes it a “meh.” The US acquisitions process is horrible.