Joe Campion provides insight into the RAF’s latest airborne early warning programme, the Boeing E-7 Wedegtail
In 2019, the UK MOD announced that it would be replacing its ageing fleet of Boeing E-3D Sentry AWACS aircraft with a Boeing 737 military derivative, the E-7 Wedgetail AEW1 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft. The first Wedgetail is due for delivery to the RAF in 2023, but already the programme has hit complications. The size of the new fleet has been reduced and the RAF’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) force has switched location.