Pentagon chief reverses course on E-7, now supports US Air Force acquisition

After publicly dismissing the value of airborne early warning jets, defence secretary Pete Hegseth now says the Trump Administration will support acquiring the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail.

In a reversal to its previous stance, the US defence department is now supporting an acquisition of the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail.

During a budget hearing in the US House of Representatives on 12 May, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth was asked for an update on the US Air Force’s E-7 programme, which has funded two prototype aircraft but notably lacks any commitment to fielding an operational fleet.

Hegseth has personally come out against an E-7 acquisition over the past year, as has the USAF’s civilian secretary Troy Meink. Both men have previously stated the belief that airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft are too vulnerable to survive in modern combat and should be replaced by satellites.

However, Hegseth not only walked back that view during the 12 May hearing but also said the Trump Administration will be requesting funds to advance the E-7 programme into procurement.

“There are gaps that need to still be filled,” Hegseth says. “The E-7 is one of those. I think it has a future. It has a place on the battlefield.”

Although the White House did not include any funds for the Wedgetail in its fiscal year 2027 budget request to Congress, Hegseth says the Pentagon will be submitting a supplemental funding request that includes an E-7 line item.

The move does not affect Boeing’s near-term work on the E-7 rapid prototyping programme, which has already been funded for the delivery of two aircraft. Those 737-700 passenger jets are currently undergoing military conversion in Birmingham, where the UK firm STS Aviation Services is performing modification work on a trio of Wedgetails bound for service with the UK Royal Air Force.

The first of those aircraft, registration WT001, is undergoing final testing and evaluation at the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) Boscombe Down site in Wiltshire, with delivery expected later this year.

The US Air Force’s AEW&C requirement previously laid out a need for 26 operational E-7s to replace its ageing – and shrinking – fleet of E-3 Sentries. In addition to retirements that began in 2023, Washington lost one E-3 in March to an Iranian one-way drone strike that caught the large jet on the ground and in the open.

While that sort of vulnerability was at the time viewed as validation of the argument for a space-based system for aerial threat management, the Pentagon now appears to be going the other way. This is likely due to the technical challenges and lengthy development time associated with creating an entirely new sensor layer in space.

“The scope and scale of moving this layer to space is unprecedented,” said Dan Stewart, a former deputy director of the US National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite agency, in March.

A space-based method for both air battle management and airborne moving target indication (the formal name for aerial threat detection) still remains largely conceptual, at least within the bounds of publicly available information.

In March, the think tank Center for New American Security published a report criticising the view that a dedicated aircraft for air battle management is an obsolete or no longer relevant capability

“Proposed alternatives are either longer-term technological prospects, unproven at or incapable of battle management, highly vulnerable, or a combination of the three,” the report states.

Instead, the CNAS suggests that ideas like a space-based layer for air battle management and airborne moving target indication should be viewed as complementing traditional AEW&C aircraft, rather than replacements.

The US pivot on the E-7 may also throw a major NATO procurement effort back into uncertainty.

The alliance’s headquarters is seeking a replacement for the contingent of NATO-owned Boeing E-3 Sentries under the Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) tender.

Saab’s GlobalEye became the presumptive frontrunner for that contract last year, after the consortium of European member states backing the acquisition said Washington’s withdrawal from its own E-7 programme had removed the “strategic and financial basis” for the acquisition.

L3Harris says it is also competing for that opportunity with its Bombardier Global 6500-based Aeris X platform, which secured a competitive win in South Korea last year against both Boeing and Saab.

In April, NATO denied reports in European media that Saab has already been selected as the winner of the AFSC competition.

“The nations participating in the initiative to replace our existing AWACS fleet continue their work on this with the support of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency,” an alliance official told FlightGlobal.

That acquisition programme covers six aircraft.