Latest news with #AirborneWarningandControlSystem
Business Insider
28-07-2025
- General
- Business Insider
NATO's flying radar is an old plane, but E-3 crews say it's still a mission workhorse
NATO AIR BASE GEILENKIRCHEN — Stepping aboard the E-3 Sentry feels a bit like walking into a museum. The modified Boeing 707/320 passenger jet is decades old, and the dated interior is a constant reminder. But don't let the jet's age fool you. The E-3, an Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, is packed with highly advanced technology that enables it to perform surveillance, communications tasks, and battlefield command and control. "It's an aging aircraft, but it's still relevant," Capt. Jasper, a Dutch surveillance controller who monitors air and surface activity, explained. Over the past couple of decades, he said, whenever there was a conflict, "the NATO AWACS was always the first one to deploy." In the early days of the Ukraine war, these aircraft were just about flying around the clock. Business Insider recently flew aboard a NATO AWACS from Geilenkirchen, in western Germany, to the Baltic region and back. The eight-hour surveillance mission was tasked to support an alliance security operation in the Baltic Sea following the sabotage of critical undersea infrastructure. The modified E-3 began engineering, testing, and evaluation in 1975, and two years later, the first operational aircraft was delivered to the US Air Force. NATO received its first of 17 E-3s in early 1982; 14 planes are operating out of Geilenkirchen Air Base. During its more than 40 years in service, the Sentry has flown to support missions and conflict operations around the world, including over North America, Europe, and the Middle East. More recently, the NATO alliance has increased its focus on Eastern Europe and monitoring of Russian activity following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. For a "very old aircraft," it is "still very relevant nowadays," said Capt. Jasper, who, like other members of the multinational crew that BI spoke with during the flight, could only be identified by his rank and first name for security reasons. Every year 'will be more challenging' While the interior of the E-3 gives off Cold War relic vibes, the aircraft is a highly sophisticated flying radar and airborne command post packed with sensitive technology and computer monitors displaying a range of highly classified information that was sanitized thoroughly before BI was allowed to take a look. The aircraft is equipped with a large 360-degree rotating radar dome, which can see over 300 miles across the air and surface, and advanced sensors that can detect friendly or hostile objects from far away. Data collected by the E-3 can then be distributed in real time to allied aircraft, ships, or ground stations, giving battlefield commanders essential situational awareness in war or peacetime. And unlike fixed land-based radars, the aircraft is not restricted by terrain or the curvature of the Earth. "We have a unique capability," Capt. Jasper explained. "We can fly, we can see a little bit further, we can see a little bit lower, and we can take maritime assets as well." The E-3 is a flexible command and control platform capable of battle management; it can coordinate with other aircraft — fighter jets, bombers, or tankers — whether during a conflict sortie or just during a training run. Maj. Ben, an American officer and the AWACS' fighter allocator in charge of coordinating with other aircraft, described the E-3 as a "critical C2 (command and control) node," explaining that "it provides that long reach of a radar for our higher headquarters, as well as communications." "We have the radar, we have the radios, to be able to reach out at long ranges and communicate, coordinate, and control any aircraft that we can see, and then we can talk to," he said. "We're also able to reach back to higher headquarters and pass along any critical information so they can make better decisions" with that real-time data. The E-3 doesn't necessarily look any different than it did back in the 1980s, but even though the airframe remains the same, the systems have continuously been updated over the years, explained Dutch Capt. Donny Demmers, a public affairs officer who was permitted to share his full name. A recent $1 billion final modernization effort, for instance, is intended to provide the AWACS with new communications and networking capabilities, according to a NATO fact sheet. The E-3's system upgrades over the years have been so significant that Capt. Jasper, who previously flew with the plane from 2010 to 2015, needed to renew his training when he returned in 2022. There had been so many changes. However, as time goes on, Demmers said the logistics of maintaining the aircraft have become increasingly challenging, especially because production lines are not cranking out readily available spare parts, like the engines. "It's still safe, but every year we pass, it will be more challenging" to keep the aircraft up to standard, he said. NATO announced plans in 2023 to eventually replace the E-3 fleet with Boeing's E-7 Wedgetail, a derivative of the US aerospace giant's next-generation 737 aircraft. The first new aircraft is expected to be ready for operational duty by the early 2030s, with the E-3s set to retire after 2035. But until that day comes, the E-3 crew is more than happy with its performance and believes that the mission will continue on uninterrupted. "It's still a good jet and we are performing our task. We are fulfilling the higher command's objectives that they're giving us," Capt. Marek, a Polish passive controller who works with the AWACS' advanced sensors, said of the E-3. "NATO is planning to change the platform," but this process takes time, he said. "So our maintainers, our logistics, are doing their best to keep these jets in that perfect status. And I have no doubts that it will still be an operational jet for many years."
India Today
30-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
The battle for air superiority
As the dust settles over the India-Pakistan conflict—triggered by India's missile strikes on nine terrorist hubs in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Punjab province in response to the Islamabad-sponsored terrorist attack in Pahalgam in April—it is time for a reckoning of how the two adversaries fared. Uniquely, over four intense, dramatic days (May 7-10), the theatre of war was the skies on either side of the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border. Airpower was the key factor, manifested not in the dogfights of yore, but their modern equivalent, comprising precise strikes, electronic warfare and smart coordination between aircraft, ground radars and airborne early warning and control system (AEW&CS)/ Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. Drones and missiles were used aplenty by Pakistan, and India's multi-layered air defence (AD) system rose to the occasion like never before. According to the Indian Army, its air defence units neutralised nearly 800-900 Pakistani drones during Operation Sindoor.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
What Happens To The Air Force's Strangest Plane Now That It's Being Replaced?
Sometimes, the military comes up with some truly insane ideas -- that work. What if you stuck an airport on a boat? Now, aircraft carriers rule the seas. Okay, what if you stuck a radar station on a plane? That gave us a type of aircraft that can detect enemies in the air and direct entire aerial battles. Since the 1970s, the U.S. Air Force has used the E-3 for this purpose. Called the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), it is truly one of the strangest planes America's military has ever flown. It sports an enormous rotating radar dish on its back, 30 feet in diameter, giving it a silhouette that's instantly recognizable. Flying in pretty much every major conflict the U.S. has been involved in since its deployment, the AWACS is a staple of American airpower. But its long watch is at last coming to an end. The AWACS uses a positively ancient airframe, the Boeing 707, which first flew in 1957 and no longer even flies commercially. That means parts are harder and harder to come by, and the cost of maintenance is skyrocketing, even as its once-peerless capabilities are becoming second-tier in the modern world. So the Air Force has already started to put them out to pasture, specifically by tossing them in the Boneyard. Read more: Buy One Of These Electric Pickup Trucks Instead Of Humiliating Yourself With A Tesla Cybertruck The Boneyard is the nickname for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. While the base plays host to a number of units, it's most famous for being the home of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. Essentially, if the Air Force needs to take a plane out of flight rotation, it can send it to this team for storage, potentially repair, and if need be, long-term retirement. With almost 3,200 aircraft on site, the Boneyard is the largest airplane graveyard in the world. The extremely arid desert air made it an ideal location for parking old planes, since humidity leads to rust and erosion. By storing the planes instead of destroying them, the Air Force could refit them for flight in an emergency; otherwise, the junk planes are a great source of parts, particularly for older airframes like the AWACS has. Since 2023, the Air Force sent 14 AWACS to the Boneyard, taking them out of operational rotation, possibly forever. Another was left at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the main hub for the plane, as a display. That leaves only 16 AWACS still flying for the United States, though NATO and other allies still fly their own as well. The primary mission of the E-3 AWACS is to coordinate air battles and detect enemy aircraft and missiles. Essentially, the beating heart of the plane is that gigantic radar dish on the back, which can sweep for contacts up to 250 miles away. All of that information is then displayed to the crew, as many as 19 specialists, whose job it is to relay that information back out to other American or allied forces in the area. Recently, NATO has been flying the AWACS to detect Russian bombing flights and missile launches against Ukraine so it can make sure the conflict doesn't spill over the border into NATO countries. Far more than simply a source of information, the AWACS is also an airborne command and control center, able to direct an entire air battle if need be. It can also assist ground commanders by advising them of what the enemy has in the air. As mighty as the E-3 AWACS once was, it has started to show its age. The aircraft are decades old, parts for its archaic Boeing 707 airframe are getting harder to come by, and worst of all, its signature radar dish is no longer top of the line. A full sweep of an area takes 10 seconds; in other words, if there's a specific enemy plane or missile you want to track, you're only going to get an update every 10 seconds. That's an eternity in the heat of combat. So in 2023, the Pentagon announced that it had ordered Boeing E-7s to replace them. The E-7 is based on the 737 airframe (even though the 737 MAX has been a headache for Boeing), still in operation around the world today. Parts are plentiful, in other words. More importantly, it trades the bulky radar dish for a linear piece called the multirole electronically scanned array. This can lock onto one or more targets to track, rather than having to wait for a dish to sweep around. This is the military, however, and nothing happens quickly. So even though the plane is already operational in several allied air forces, the U.S. doesn't expect to get prototypes until fiscal year 2028. The plan was to get 26 of the finalized versions by 2032, but now the Trump administration is reviewing budget priorities, and the whole project could be scoped back or even scrapped. If the Pentagon does proceed with acquiring them, the U.S. Air Force versions of the E-7 ought to be the pinnacle of airborne early warning and battle management. In fact, it's possible that they will hold on to that distinction forever. That's because the future of this mission isn't airborne at all -- it's orbital. Somewhere around a decade from now, the goal is for this kind of real-time information gathering, sharing, and coordinating to be handled by vast constellations of small satellites across both low-Earth orbit and medium-Earth orbit. If those plans are successful, these satellites could render the planes redundant. Why wait for a plane to taxi to the runway, take off, and fly all the way to the battle when you already have a network of satellites overhead all the time? Then again, redundancy is never a bad thing in battle, where assets get shot down all the time. The Pentagon may well like keeping airborne capabilities around as a backup. The E-3 AWACS has been flying for 50 years; so if they ever fly at all, there's no reason to think the E-7 couldn't be, too. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
News18
18-05-2025
- Politics
- News18
How Pakistan Lost Its Airborne Warning And Control System During Operation Sindoor?
The success Operation Sindoor not only brought Pakistan to its knees, but its losses are emerging one after the other by its own admission. A former Pakistani Air Marshal has recently revealed that Islamabad list its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft in an Indian missile strike on the Bholari airbase near Karachi. The Pakistani government was on a mission to spread propaganda and false claims about damage in India to create panic among people. But India's Press Information Bureau (PIB) and several defence officials have debunked such claims.
Mint
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Viral video: Ex-Pakistan Air Marshal admits losing AWACS at Bholari airbase during Operation Sindoor
Although the Pakistani government has not officially acknowledged the damage from the Operation Sindoor airstrikes, a former Pakistani Air Marshal has let out that an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft was destroyed by the Indian airstrikes at Bholari airbase in Sindh province on the early morning of May 10. In an interview, ex-Air Marshal Masood Akhtar said the Pakistani military tried to save the AWACS aircraft but the missiles kept coming. 'They (Indian forces) fired four back-to-back Brahmos surface-to-surface missiles or air-to-surface missiles, I am not sure. The Pakistani pilots rushed to secure their aircraft, but the missiles kept on coming, and unfortunately, the fourth one hit the hangar at Bholari airbase, where one of our AWACS was standing. It was damaged,' Masood Akhtar said. The AWACS is designed to detect aircraft, ships, vehicles, missiles, and other incoming threats from long distances. Operation Sindoor, launched on May 7, was India's swift retaliatory strike targeting nine terror infrastructures in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK). The mission followed the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, where 25 tourists and a local were killed. After India targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on May 7 in response to the Pahalgam terror attack, the Pakistani military attempted to breach Indian air defences. However, the attempt failed, and India struck back by hitting Pakistani airbases and destroying key military areas and equipment. The military strikes continued for four days before the Pakistani DGMO dialed his Indian counterpart to reach an agreement. Meanwhile, in a strong warning to Pakistan, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that Operation Sindoor is not over yet and whatever happened was 'just a trailer'. 'We have kept Pakistan on probation. If its behavior improves, then okay, otherwise, it will be given strictest punishment,' he said.
