The E-7A Aircraft
The Joint Force needs the E-7A “Wedgetail” to deter and defeat authoritarian aggression highlighted in the US national defense strategy (NDS) and national security strategy (NSS). It’s the only aircraft with the air-refueled range, advanced communications, and multicore processing to provide persistent awareness in a contested threat environment. Its multirole electronically scanned array (MESA) covers more airspace in more detail than the 60-year old E-3B/G airborne warning and control system (AWACS). It does it with less aircrew (AI-assist), less fuel (engine efficiency), and lower upgrade costs (mission software). We need to train talent now for this core Air Force mission.
Requirement: Weaponize Info in Ops
National security in the AI age requires weaponizing “information in joint operations” (Joint Publication 3-13, September 2022). Operations must collect and process data into information quickly for the centralized command and distributed control that can defeat numerically superior forces. We need better sensors and networked capabilities for massed one-versus-many effects. That’s capacity, not just capability. Operations also must create information advantage for the joint force, not just defend or justify themselves. Advantage can be lost in an instant. We can regain it by rearranging our sensors, strikers, jammers, refuelers, and resuppliers better than the adversary. Orchestrating command and control while managing risk requires the most relevant weapons.
Weaponized information combines kinetic and behavioral effects vital to winning and losing. More agents are weaponizing information in more ways than ever. Threats range from influence campaigns that target elections to cyberattacks on infrastructure to dredged-up territorial seizures and blatant military invasions. Without holistic awareness at the level of tactics and operations, we become irrelevant, manipulated, or dead. We need resilience, but that won’t defeat proactive threats. To do that, we must sense farther, move data and information faster, and make better decisions.
The E-7 is purpose-built for the so-called “high-end” fight, which must include the struggle over influence that determines whether and how we fight. Time-sensitive networking replaces E-3 legacy capabilities. The AWACS has served well but its maintenance costs, readiness rates, and hardware are simply not competitive. Space-based radar is a possibility, but we don’t have it yet. What we need now is the capability to connect sensors, shooters, and decision-makers across multiple domains in a secure architecture that permits continuous improvement.
Context: The Asia-Pacific
Let’s clarify this imperative. In the Asia-Pacific, the distance-time required for influential presence demands exceptional awareness. The military effort alone must integrate air, space, maritime, cyber, land, and electronic warfare forces. Besides that joint force effort, national command authorities need all available options to influence behavior. That means anticipating actions across the entire competition spectrum. Without the E-7, we face a critical capability gap.
The first rapid-prototype will be produced in 2025 and operational by 2027. A complete inventory of 27 is scheduled for 2032. Any delay widens the gap. That’s a four-year feast for autocrats. Take China under Xi Jinping. The 975,000-member People’s Liberation Army combines aggressive diplomacy, punitive economics, massive disinformation, and routine baiting of Taiwan and US allies Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Add to that list anyone who dares to “disrespect” China and, in an imperiously imperial throwback to tributary obeisance, “Xi Jinping thought.” By 2049, Xi plans to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Sound innocuous? To a single-Party authoritarian regime, it means destroying democracy.
In four years, Xi’s rejuvenating military will have 400 ships and submarines, 2500 aircraft, 350 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 500 nuclear warheads. The inventory includes guided missile nuclear attack submarines, over-the-horizon anti-ship cruise missiles, amphibious ships, an expeditionary marine corps, helicopter assault ships, fifth-generation fighters, early warning aircraft, a long-range stealth bomber, supersonic uncrewed aerial systems, anti-satellite weapons, hypersonic missiles, electronic warfare, the “three warfares” (psychological-public opinion-legal), a third operational aircraft carrier, dredging ships, and escorts for its 15,000-vessel fishing fleet that routinely disrespects other states’ exclusive economic zones.
With that great leap forward, the following scenario is realistic. Xi claims the Taiwan Strait as an inner sea, threatens to “shatter the bones” and “bash the heads” (he uses such language inside China) of any external violator, and mobilizes forces to enforce sovereignty over Taiwan. The E-7 is essential to preempting and countering such aggression. It enables air and space superiority, enhances joint force capabilities, informs decision-making, and holds high-value targets at risk. This combination provides authorities with more influence and options.
Four allies already operate the E-7—Australia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The Australian version and a future nuclear submarine capability provide deterrence, defense, and influence to de-escalate a crisis. South Korean E-7s detect missile and small-radar signature threats. Turkish E-7s participate in NATO exercises. British E-7s enter service in 2024 and aircrews are training in Australia, part of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance established in 2021.
Without the E-7, our forces are much more vulnerable. With it, the US and its allies are more likely to defeat an invasion of Taiwan and therefore deter it. Even better, persuade Beijing to renounce the use of force against Taiwan. That decision would be consistent with Xi’s “peaceful unification” claim, but it’s utterly naïve to expect it without a credible capability to impose and sustain unacceptable costs. That requires resourcing the weapon systems with the capabilities to do so and at the force-level capacity to do it.
Airborne command and control is instrumental to operational effectiveness. Since its deployment to NATO in 1982, the E-3 has provided essential battlespace awareness. From Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to anti-terrorist operations in Syria today, the E-3 helps destroy enemy forces with far fewer friendly casualties and unprecedented precision. Novel combinations of stealth, quantum, AI, and autonomous capabilities will require acute sensing, rapid connecting, and dynamic targeting.
