FighterControl

According to the daily mail the RAF plan to retire the fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS as early as this year even though delivery of the E-7 Wedgetail will not be until 2023.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ready.html

Sounds like a re-run of the Nimrod fiasco

Nimrod, Sentinel now Sentry..............

How long before someone mentions the ‘H’ word.

The Sentry is a knackered system which should’ve been retired and replaced several years ago, so retiring it now to save some money makes sense. In the meantime the French and NATO E3’s will continue to provide cover until the E7 arrives.

What the H word second letter a, 7 letters were retired and mostly all airframes handed to America supposed to have been replaced by F-35? VSTOL?
(Harrier?)

Bin it, our Sentry force is embarrassingly elderly now. The Daily Mail seems to overlook that we operate in a coalition with some very highly trusted allies (such as France and the US), and that we survived for small periods without Nimrod R1, Nimrod MR2, Canberra, etc. etc.

Why are our E3's so knackered? They are probably the newest E3 airframes in existence having only been in service since around 1990, the NATO ones have 10 years on ours and the USAF ones even longer and still going strong! Have we not been maintaining and upgrading them? The rate of deterioration seems pretty rapid, if the E7s degrade at the same rate, we may end up relying on the French and NATO E3s to cover us again in 20 - 30 years time!

They weren’t upgraded, enduring operations in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t need it so the money was spent elsewhere. The airframes are fine, the cost of upgrading is uneconomic when you can buy something so much better.

And don’t be fooled by the fact that the US hasn’t bought Wedgetail, on Red Flag when E-7 flies nobody else is interested in working with E-3. That said I wouldn’t be surprised if a long endurance UAV was under consideration or even development.

Fighterfoto wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:58 am

That said I wouldn’t be surprised if a long endurance UAV was under consideration or even development.

This has been looked at, but the way Synthetic Aperture/ AESA Radar works relies on having a large flat* panel to hold all the transmitting elements. The larger the panel, the better the range/resolution. The electronics to drive all the thousands of emitters and receivers is also quite heavy and power hungry. At the moment, it all requires a medium sized airliner to get all the kit in/on. I doubt even the largest current UAV has the payload or power generating capabilities.

*Some work on mounting the elements on the surface of a sphere was done for CaptorE, but was binned as too high risk. Shame really because (if it had worked) it would have been a very elegant solution to increasing the radar coverage beyond 180 Degrees.

That kind of tech has moved towards airships rather than aircraft. Reading around it seems the US has leapfrogged the E-7 era, and will move from E-3 to a range of E-7 replacements.

page_verify wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:36 am

Bin it, our Sentry force is embarrassingly elderly now. The Daily Mail seems to overlook that we operate in a coalition with some very highly trusted allies (such as France and the US), and that we survived for small periods without Nimrod R1, Nimrod MR2, Canberra, etc. etc.

You don’t mention the 2 Squadrons of NATO E-3s in Germany too.

E-3 is a NATO asset; retiring the tiny RAF fleet of 1950s designed aeroplanes is no big deal.

Red-Eye-Knight wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:28 am

According to the daily mail the RAF plan to retire the fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS as early as this year even though delivery of the E-7 Wedgetail will not be until 2023.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ready.html

This news is four months old, this was announced in the Defence Review, fairly sure it has already been discussed on this very forum.

TonyO wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:37 am

Red-Eye-Knight wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:28 am

According to the daily mail the RAF plan to retire the fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS as early as this year even though delivery of the E-7 Wedgetail will not be until 2023.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ready.html

This news is four months old, this was announced in the Defence Review, fairly sure it has already been discussed on this very forum.

Indeed. Prior to the review, the OOS year was 2022, this merely bought it forward a year.

Have heard that the E-3s would have gone even earlier too but they were needed to support CSG21 during the Mediterranean stint. I was also told they may go on into 2022 for a short while.

103 hasn't flown since coming back from Cyprus 22/6 and 106 hasn't flown since 29/6, with not a single engine ground run heard in July, that's not to say they haven't happened.

Wouldn't surprise me if when 101 returns from Cyprus that's it - hopefully they are around for a little longer!

There's clearly a rush for in year savings, Sentinel, Hawk T1, Islander/Defender, now Sentry. It would be a brave man that would bet on both C130J and Typhoon tranche 1 being around in 12 months time....

When did the Islander / Defender go?

2 weeks ago

red leader wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:37 pm

When did the Islander / Defender go?

Try and keep up!

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=207605

5 years time.. Uk Scraps Typhoon fleet, Grob 120 takes up QRA responsiblity