RAF to scrap E-3 Sentry this year

[ColintheCaterpillar]

Still no word on who won the tender for the Disposal of the E3s (107/102) and Sentinel fleet.

I can't see it sadly.

I genuinely think this could be a problem for the MoD, given the number of valuable, current, airliners that are being disposed of at the moment. There aren’t many companies who can do it, and surely commercially the civil aircraft being retired post Covid are well ahead in their priorities.

[Unknown74]

Coincidence that it's the Sentry that's the picture for the August 2021 RAF Calendar at the moment! - Lovely picture it is too.

[plmc135]

The only logical place to put an E-3 would be on the gate at Waddington. Least expensive in the short term but like many other gate guards sitting in the open for any significant length of time, creates issues.

We cannot afford to keep every type of aircraft that our armed forces operate, some will just have to be memories like many WW2 types.

[Fighterfoto]

No RAF Sentry’s are slated for preservation.

[Unknown74]

Nowadays Museums and collections don't seem to get full aircraft, someone could get a couple of E-3 Cockpits or even a Radome or two?

[rik1301]

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!

You say that partly in jest, but I wouldn't rule it out given how the Sentinel got treated. A refresher of what the MOD said about that :

“Sentinel was introduced in 2008 in the knowledge that a significant equipment upgrade would be required in the mid 2010’s. The Defence Review in 2010 cancelled this expected upgrade bringing forward the likely out of service date. The SDSR 2015 determined that Sentinel should be retained for a further period and set a new out of service date of March 2021. While some work was conducted on the on-board equipment this fell well short of a full system upgrade. The radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses. Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date has been retained. No identical capability is operated by the UK (though similar capabilities exist in the NATO inventory).”

(source: https://theaviationist.com/2021/02/25/r ... d-belarus/)

The Sentinels got tossed on the scrap heap after only 14 years service because basically the government couldn't be arsed to maintain them.

[Malcolm]

The Sentinels got tossed on the scrap heap after only 14 years service because basically the government couldn't be arsed to maintain them.

It's not really about maintaining them - it's about keeping the on-board electronics, sensors and communications suites up to date. For an ISTAR platform (like E3, or Sentinel) unless you're prepared to rotate your fleet through an almost continuous chain of upgrades (like the RC-135's get) they will become less effective and ultimately obsolete. The airframe and engines may be fine, but the internal gubbins isn't state of the art any more.

I mean, how many of us are still using 2008 (never mind 1988 in the E3's case) vintage PC's, and if you are do you expect to easily get spare parts if/when it breaks, or would you just go out and buy something newer.

Meanwhile, I'm off to work out how to play my wax disks and 8 track tapes into a bluetooth speaker setup.

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unless you're prepared to rotate your fleet through an almost continuous chain of upgrades (like the RC-135's get)

That really hits the nail on the head - the UK knows which capabilities need preserving and which need sacrificing when money's tight. Sentinel was a capability we should have, where as RC-135, E-7, P-8 etc. are capabilities we must have.

[rik1301]

The Sentinels got tossed on the scrap heap after only 14 years service because basically the government couldn't be arsed to maintain them.

It's not really about maintaining them - it's about keeping the on-board electronics, sensors and communications suites up to date. For an ISTAR platform (like E3, or Sentinel) unless you're prepared to rotate your fleet through an almost continuous chain of upgrades (like the RC-135's get) they will become less effective and ultimately obsolete. The airframe and engines may be fine, but the internal gubbins isn't state of the art any more.

I mean, how many of us are still using 2008 (never mind 1988 in the E3's case) vintage PC's, and if you are do you expect to easily get spare parts if/when it breaks, or would you just go out and buy something newer.

Meanwhile, I'm off to work out how to play my wax disks and 8 track tapes into a bluetooth speaker setup.

Well maintenance or upgrades - they both fall under the same heading when it comes to the frame being operational. Regardless of which it is, if you're paying x for the frame and its capabilities in the first place then you should be budgeting y for yearly costs for maintenance and software/hardware upgrades to keep it operational. Not a good comparison I confess, but it's similar to buying a high-end top spec PC then never bothering to download and install Windows update patches and never bothering to take the case off every year and clean out all the fluff and dust clogging the fans to keep it running sweet. That seems to be the MODs way of working based on where they're at with the Sentinel at least. The frames aren't even that old. The E3 admittedly is akin to trying to run your business and internet on a Commodore 64 so retirement for those makes sense.

[Malcolm]

Well maintenance or upgrades - they both fall under the same heading when it comes to the frame being operational. Regardless of which it is, if you're paying x for the frame and its capabilities in the first place then you should be budgeting y for yearly costs for maintenance and software/hardware upgrades to keep it operational. Not a good comparison I confess, but it's similar to buying a high-end top spec PC then never bothering to download and install Windows update patches and never bothering to take the case off every year and clean out all the fluff and dust clogging the fans to keep it running sweet. That seems to be the MODs way of working based on where they're at with the Sentinel at least. The frames aren't even that old. The E3 admittedly is akin to trying to run your business and internet on a Commodore 64 so retirement for those makes sense.

Not really. Maintenance means keeping and repairing what you've currently got at the standard it's currently at. That means ordering enough spares up front, and keeping a close track on any obsolescence issues so that if Commodore stop making the Commodore 64 you have a method of dealing with it.

No-one can tell you how much an upgrade is going to cost until/unless you know what that upgrade is. If you continually rotate the fleet through upgrades, then you can do it incrementally as and when new kit becomes available - new radios one cycle, new radar processors next cycle, etc etc. The overall cost might be slightly higher, but it's spread out over a number of years and you can buy the most important upgrades at the first opportunity for at least some of your fleet. The downside is you can end up with a fleet of aircraft where no two are carrying the same kit.

If you buy 3/5/7 ISTAR/ELINT aircraft, and do nothing to them for 15 years, then you've suddenly got a lot of spending to do to bring them all back up to 'state of the art spec', and mission creep pokes it's nose in too. Bean counters see the total bill in one hit, fall off their perch and bin the whole project.

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If you buy 3/5/7 ISTAR/ELINT aircraft, and do nothing to them for 15 years, then you've suddenly got a lot of spending to do to bring them all back up to 'state of the art spec', and mission creep pokes it's nose in too. Bean counters see the total bill in one hit, fall off their perch and bin the whole project.

Again, hitting the nail on the head. There are some ISTAR fleets that get the big bucks and some which get the left over pennies. Our limited funds need to be spent on defending the realm for the next few years.

[rik1301]

The semantics are moot. Whether you call it maintenance or upgrades, the plane isn't operational with them, ergo BOTH should be budgeted for when deciding how many years you want them to last. As the Sentinel article clearly stated - they knew what upgrades would be needed and when, yet went ahead with the purchase and then decided to pull the funding a couple of years later.

[Malcolm]

The semantics are moot. Whether you call it maintenance or upgrades, the plane isn't operational with them, ergo BOTH should be budgeted for when deciding how many years you want them to last. As the Sentinel article clearly stated - they knew what upgrades would be needed and when, yet went ahead with the purchase and then decided to pull the funding a couple of years later.

But it is operational if it's maintained properly. I've no doubt the RAF E-3's can provide credible detection against cold war and 1990's vintage soviet threats. Similarly the Sentinals can still detect whatever it was they could detect back in 2008 when they were ordered - probably more because crew training and experience will be better as they learned how to interpret what they were seeing.

Back to your Windows analogy - You'd be surprised just how many critical systems depend on Windows NT4 and Intel486 processors. Many are kept going on the "if it ain't broke don't fix it principle". Updates to these are prohibited.

[Malcolm]

Our limited funds need to be spent on defending the realm for the next few years.

I/m probably in the minority, but in that context I'm not keen on the E-7 spending either. P-8 yes, it enables us to get Trident to sea without requiring support from friendly nations. If we want a truly sovereign nuclear deterrent then we need P-8 (or similar).

But E-3/E-7 aren't used for defence of the realm - they're expeditionary/offensive. Have E-3's ever been scrambled on a Q shout? - not in my memory. Dunno about in the Shackleton era, but nowadays defence of the British Isles and Falklands is all done with ground based radars. E-3 is only really used to support offensive missions, and realistically needs to operate from foreign bases closer to the action. The chances of requiring sovereign AWACS support within range of a UK sovereign runway seem slim to me - and with E-7 we won't even be able to AAR the things.

[rik1301]

The semantics are moot. Whether you call it maintenance or upgrades, the plane isn't operational with them, ergo BOTH should be budgeted for when deciding how many years you want them to last. As the Sentinel article clearly stated - they knew what upgrades would be needed and when, yet went ahead with the purchase and then decided to pull the funding a couple of years later.

But it is operational if it's maintained properly.

The Sentinels disagree.

[ColintheCaterpillar]

Sentinel isn’t the best example given they way it was acquired: an Urgent Operational Requirement used to unlock the funding, which present issues further down the line. It was never going to be a long term fleet.

Sentry/E-3 is another issue entirely. It’s not just about mission equipment upgrades, it’s also about the base aeroplane, and keeping a frame like a 707 in a regulatory compliant state can be a nightmare for a small fleet, which is different to the “major” operators (USAF/NATO). Upgrades for both can run into billions, and that’s where a new fleet makes far more sense. And with E-3D you talk about a 30 year old, very small fleet.

As has been said before, it really isn’t as simple as people think.

[ColintheCaterpillar]

Our limited funds need to be spent on defending the realm for the next few years.

and with E-7 we won't even be able to AAR the things.

Unless of course we refuel them like a lot (the majority) of the times the E-3s refuel. The whole AAR argument is blown way out of proportion.

Good old coalitions.

[Malcolm]

Our limited funds need to be spent on defending the realm for the next few years.

and with E-7 we won't even be able to AAR the things.

Unless of course we refuel them like a lot (the majority) of the times the E-3s refuel. The whole AAR argument is blown way out of proportion.

Good old coalitions.

Which means it isn't a sovereign asset/mission. I've no issues with coalition/NATO ops, but if the spec for the next few years is "defence of the realm" then in the narrow meaning of defence, the E-3 isn't currently used, and likely E-7 won't be either. Defence of the mainland UK isn't something that can be dependent on a foreign nation or coalition IMV.

For coalition ops I'd much rather we pool our assets with a type common to the rest of NATO. I don't know what they intend to do with the Nato E3 fleet long term, but there is a risk that we end up operating a fleet of 3 E-7's that will be expensive to update (due to being a small fleet) and allowed to go obsolete in the same way the E-3D's have.

[ColintheCaterpillar]

and with E-7 we won't even be able to AAR the things.

Unless of course we refuel them like a lot (the majority) of the times the E-3s refuel. The whole AAR argument is blown way out of proportion.

Good old coalitions.

Which means it isn't a sovereign asset/mission. I've no issues with coalition/NATO ops, but if the spec for the next few years is "defence of the realm" then in the narrow meaning of defence, the E-3 isn't currently used, and likely E-7 won't be either. Defence of the mainland UK isn't something that can be dependent on a foreign nation or coalition IMV.

Most current RAF E-3 tasking is under the NATO umbrella. It’s one of our major contributions to NATO and is part of the NATO AEW force. And given we’re members of NATO, defence of the U.K. definitely is one thing we can rely on a coalition for. Almost every week NATO allies deal with live threats to each others’ airspace through the QRA chain. We perform QRA on behalf of other nations too.

For coalition ops I'd much rather we pool our assets with a type common to the rest of NATO. I don't know what they intend to do with the Nato E3 fleet long term, but there is a risk that we end up operating a fleet of 3 E-7's that will be expensive to update (due to being a small fleet) and allowed to go obsolete in the same way the E-3D's have.

Rumours that both USAF and NATO are now also looking seriously at E-7, now it’s a mature platform. After all, they’re also suffering hugely expensive problems keeping their own AEW assets airborne… more old E-3s.

[Malcolm]

Most current RAF E-3 tasking is under the NATO umbrella. It’s one of our major contributions to NATO and is part of the NATO AEW force. And given we’re members of NATO, defence of the U.K. definitely is one thing we can rely on a coalition for. Almost every week NATO allies deal with live threats to each others’ airspace through the QRA chain. We perform QRA on behalf of other nations too.

Exactly - E-3, and more so E-7 is fine as part of a coalition effort, but little use as a sovereign asset.

For coalition ops I'd much rather we pool our assets with a type common to the rest of NATO. I don't know what they intend to do with the Nato E3 fleet long term, but there is a risk that we end up operating a fleet of 3 E-7's that will be expensive to update (due to being a small fleet) and allowed to go obsolete in the same way the E-3D's have.

Rumours that both USAF and NATO are now also looking seriously at E-7, now it’s a mature platform. After all, they’re also suffering hugely expensive problems keeping their own AEW assets airborne… more old E-3s.

If it's only any use as part of a coalition, I'd rather we were buying into either the NATO or USAF buy. Trouble is, I don't think either will happen in the next 10 years by which time our E-7's will be due their first MLU. The USAF in particular seem to be angling for some communality with E4, E6 and E8 replacements, which I can't see being 737 based.