How Soon Can U.S. Air Force’s E-7A Rapid Prototype Be Ready?

Since the U.S. Air Force announced its plans to procure Boeing’s E-7A Wedgetail to replace its geriatric E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control fleet, one question has been circling the program: How much faster can it go?

“I’d like to accelerate [procuring] the E-7 if I could. We really need it,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall tells Aviation Week. “I’m motivated to go quickly—we need to get these things in the field, get them built.”

• A budget plus-up to accelerate the prototype has not panned out
• The service plans a fleet of 26

The E-7 seems to be the kind of program that would be easy to accelerate. Boeing already developed the 737-derived platform for the Royal Australian Air Force and has sold it elsewhere. The U.S. Air Force used rapid prototyping authority to try to bring on the initial test aircraft quickly, and Congress added $200 million in funding late last year to move it along even more rapidly.

Boeing says it is moving as fast as it can. The first two test aircraft are not due to be delivered until 2027. Now the focus is on finding funding to bring on the rest of the fleet as soon as possible. This is happening just as the 31-aircraft E-3 fleet is being retired, leaving a capability gap for the airborne early warning and control mission.

“The question that I get asked most often is: Can you go faster? Because we are acutely aware of the need and the gap and the capabilities needed in the battlespace,” Casey Madsen, Boeing’s manager of the E-7 program for the Air Force, told Aviation Week at the company’s emerging Wedgetail office at Boeing Field in Seattle. “And for the rapid prototype contract, we can’t go faster. . . . It takes two years to build the jets; it’s going to take two years to modify [them]. The clock has already started.”

Cutting of the metal for the fuselages of the first E-7s has begun at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, and production slots for the first two jets are scheduled at Boeing’s Line 3 in Renton, Washington, where it also makes the P-8 Poseidon submarine-hunter and C-40 executive transport.

The prototypes will be delivered as Boeing Business Jets with a 737-700 fuselage and 737-800 wings to Boeing Field across Interstate 5, where they will be disassembled. The top of the jets’ fuselages will be removed and reinforced to support the signature Northrop Grumman multirole electronically scanned array (MESA) radar.

The Air Force in late February awarded an initial prototype contract worth up to $1.2 billion to start the work. The service is resigned to the fact that the initial prototypes will not be delivered for four years and is looking at ways to speed up testing and training. This includes the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center working with the Royal Australian Air Force and the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) to meet certain test points so they only have to trial U.S.-specific systems. Up to 60 U.S. Air Force personnel are deploying to Australia this spring to train.

While the Air Force is set on the initial schedule, Congress is less keen after adding funding to the Air Force’s budget to speed up the prototypes.

“At the Air Force’s request, we appropriated another $200 million above the president’s budget to accelerate this program. It did not get accelerated, and we wonder why, where the $200 million went,” Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said to senior Air Force leaders in early May.

Air Force and Boeing officials say that since the prototypes cannot be accelerated, this funding went toward long-lead production items and preparing to move to procurement quickly when the time is right. “It was an investment, really, in the program to allow us to go faster when we move into production,” Madsen says.

The Air Force is seeking even more funding. In addition to a request of $681 million in the fiscal 2024 proposal, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., asked for about $600 million more in his unfunded priorities list to speed procurement for the program. The program’s budget is set to rise dramatically, to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2025, to buy the first procurement aircraft, with $7.4 billion through 2028 to buy 10. The Air Force has decided on a fleet size of 26 E-7s.

The plan is to increase procurement to a rate of four per year. That pace is set by planned production at Boeing’s Line 3 and Northrop Grumman’s MESA radar production rate capability. However, Madsen says studies and discussions are underway about rising to a rate of six per year. “There are plans being worked as far as what the lines will look like,” she says.

The plan is to build P-8s and E-7s at the same time on the same line. An STS Aviation facility in Birmingham, England, where the RAF E-7s are taking shape, has additional capacity. That facility could be key for changes to Boeing’s E-7 plans—the company recently responded to a request for information for NATO to replace its E-3s, and it says there are options for other E-3 operators or militaries that might see a need for the Wedgetail. “We have two viable lines right now, and we are looking at standing up other facilities,” Madsen says, adding that this would “depend on requirements and priorities.”

The Air Force has been enthusiastic about the E-7A’s capabilities, based on Australia’s experience with the aircraft as well as other operators such as the Republic of Korea Air Force and the Turkish Air Force. The U.S. versions will be based largely on the UK’s, with adjustments planned for satellite communication, military-code GPS, cybersecurity and program protection requirements.

Madsen says these advanced data processing, communication and network upgrades are designed to increase the aircraft’s connectivity with U.S. and allied aircraft and space assets. The U.S. versions are designed with open mission systems architecture to allow for easier upgrades.

Northrop Grumman says in a statement that it is producing the MESA with “mission-critical updates” and improved interoperability for the U.S. program. “In partnership with Boeing, we are committed to delivering MESA sensors at a pace that meets the needs of our customers,” says Ed Griebel, Northrop Grumman’s vice president for airborne surveillance programs. “We remain committed to providing multifunction sensors that address and reflect the evolving global battlespace environment.”

The first E-7A with a MESA installed was delivered to Australia in 2001, and the Air Force wants its program to include modernized aircraft as much as possible, even though Boeing’s commercial Next-Generation production line has ended. Madsen says the ongoing production of other commercial-derivative products means parts obsolescence and diminished manufacturing sources will not be a problem, especially if more customers buy E-7s.

The UK program is facing some issues. The RAF announced late last year that its first jet would not be delivered until 12 months later than planned, in 2024, as Boeing foresees an average increase in lead times of 244 days on certain parts. The delay is particularly frustrating for the UK, which bought two used Boeing Business Jets instead of new-build aircraft for its program.

The UK’s bad news could be good news for the U.S. These supply chain issues should be ironed out by the time the U.S. aircraft go into production, says Steven Wert, the U.S. Air Force’s program executive officer for digital. Boeing says it does not expect serious supply chain issues for the aircraft, the radar or the CFM56 engines.

As another step to keep the program’s cost low and schedule on time, the service intentionally kept its requirements low and similar to the UK’s, with upgrades to come later.

“What [Air Combat Command] knows they want is actually much more,” Wert says. “So this is the rare case of [them] not putting all those requirements on the table, [which] would add years to the process. They want speed to ramp [up], recognizing [that] we’re going to iterate on this platform.”

Kendall highlighted this goal to Congress in May, saying the Air Force is looking at upgrades to its aircraft alongside the Royal Australian Air Force, four years ahead of delivery.

“There are some modifications that have to be made for use in the U.S. airspace to comply with some of our communications requirements and so on, but they’re relatively modest,” he told Congress. “We are also working with the Australians on follow-on upgrades to the E-7 that would enhance its capabilities.”

In the meantime, the Air Force faces a high bill for keeping the remainder of its Boeing 707-based E-3s until the E-7 comes onboard. The service’s fiscal 2024 request includes $8.9 billion in operations and maintenance costs for the E-3 Sentrys, almost $1.6 billion more than is planned for the E-7s. The service faces increased maintenance costs for the E-3s, particularly with the Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines, old avionics and other aging parts.

Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of Air Combat Command and a longtime advocate for the Wedgetail, compares the two with a scenario of a Boeing 707-based U.S. E-3 and 737-based Australian E-7 deployed to a U.S. base in the United Arab Emirates.

“They both have a maintenance issue. Let’s say it’s the exact same part,” Kelly says. “The Australians will drive over to Dubai, and they’ll be back in 2 hr.—airplane’s up and running,” he says. “[Our airborne warning and control systems aircraft] breaks on the same part and breaks more often because it’s that old. We’ll have to call back, we’ll cannibalize it out of the boneyard . . . and two weeks later we’re gonna be back. That is not a way we’re going to be able to resource and sustain a fight. So we have a capability gap today for that, and the only way we’re going to plug that gap is going to be E-7s on the ramp as fast as we can and as many as we can.”