Britain’s retired fleet of Sentinel aircraft is to be sold to the U.S. Army and flown to the United States after work is undertaken to make them flyable again.

A source on the team that was supposed to be scrapping the aircraft last night told me:

“The Ministry of Defence has accepted a joint bid from Raytheon USA/Bombardier. This will involve us making the aircraft flyable again to go over to the States. The rumoured end customer is the U.S. Army.” 

It is understood that much of the systems had already been stripped out in preparation for scrapping. When I asked what work is being done on them in the UK, I was told:

“Work has started to make them serviceable for flight already. Just enough to get them over the pond. Nothing to do with the mission side.”

It’s reasonable to assume that work will be done in the United States to provide new/updated mission systems.

The move is somewhat controversial as the Ministry of Defence previously advise that the aircraft were to be sold for scrap and “not for reuse”. According to the Ministry of Defence in a potential sales notice last year:

“The Defence Equipment Sales Authority (DESA) is inviting expressions of interest from Companies interested in being considered for receiving an Invitation to Tender (ITT) in respect of the proposed sale of the aircraft for stripping so to harvest all reusable parts for potential resale, recycling or disposal and final dismantling and removal of the remaining platforms. Note these aircraft are not for reuse.“

It would seem the Ministry of Defence have changed their minds on that last point.

https://twitter.com/geoallison/status/1460720839997939722

What did Sentinel do?

The aircraft, described on the Royal Air Force website as “the most advanced long-range, airborne-surveillance system of its kind in the world”, provided the British armed forces with long-range, wide-area battlefield surveillance, delivering intelligence and target tracking information. The aircraft had been operationally deployed in support of operations in Afghanistan, Libya and Mali, and was deployed in support of British and Coalition operations in Iraq and Syria.

Sentinel in flight over Iraq.

The Sentinel R1 fleet was a key C4ISTAR asset for the British armed forces. Operated by the Royal Air Force’s No5 Army Cooperation Sqn, the Airborne Stand-off Radar system incorporates linked ground components with the aircraft’s powerful active electronically-scanned array surveillance radar, the system included a moving target indicator and was capable of generating synthetic aperture radar imagery, for what the Royal Air Force called “unparalleled situational awareness”.

The imagery is then passed by secure data links to ground stations at all levels of command and control. By operating at high altitudes, and at considerable longrange stand-off distances, the radar platform is able to remain over safe territory while providing an excellent ‘look-down angle’ of the target area.

Why was Sentinel retired?

Officially, the aircraft was scrapped “due to obsolescence” with the Ministry of Defence claiming that the aircraft was “now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses”. It was becoming obsolete because the money wasn’t spent to upgrade it.

Jeremy Quin, Minister for Defence Procurement at the Ministry of Defence, even stated that Sentinel was introduced in 2008 in the knowledge that a significant equipment upgrade would be required in the mid-2010s.

“Sentinel was introduced in 2008 in the knowledge that a significant equipment upgrade would be required in the mid-2010s. 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.“

The UK however never found that money, never upgrading Sentinel.

Defence Analyst Howard Wheeldon was quoted here saying that the Ministry of Defence should have found the cash for the modernisation of the jet.

“That Sentinel required capability upgrading should not have been the reason for its premature withdrawal. ISTAR remains one, if not the most important, element of air power capability and taking a [capability] gap is unacceptable. The decision to scrap Sentinel capability is not only one of the worst that emerged out of SDSR 2015 but it is also the one that I believe the U.K. will most likely come to regret. The lack of such important capability, and with no imminent replacement in prospect, is dangerous and ill advised.”

What will the U.S. use it for?

That’s currently unknown but the aircraft is almost identical to concept imagery used to depict the replacement for the E-8 JSTARS replacement.

Look familiar?

However, during the 2019 U.S. budget rollout it was announced that the U.S. Air Force will not move forward with an E-8C replacement aircraft. Funding for the JSTARS recapitalisation program was instead be diverted to pay for development of an advanced battle management system comprising of a network of sensors linked to a ground-based command and control system.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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91 COMMENTS

  1. Hopefully all the monies made from these type of sales is being sensibly reinvested back into procurement for the UK armed forces and not wasted somewhere.

    • The year 2010 is emerging as the ‘annus horribilis’ of the British armed services. A bad decision carried forward. (See also HS2)

      • The sell off of the Harrier fleet was another, and the scrapping of Nimrod MR4, both for political reasons,not military or financial.

          • I think Blue Streak was scrapped because of the difficulty of siting land based liquid fuel IRBMs anywhere in the UK. No arguments about TSR2.

        • Nimrod was a complex issue. The loss of the Nimrod over Afghanistan was beyond a tragedy… it was gross negligence and pressure being applied to the tech sign off of the A2A refuelling capability… “technically” the mission platform may well have been capable. I cannot vouch for that but mechanically the aircraft was clumsy and outdated. This is borne out by the Haddon-Cave Judicial review which is an amzing read defining simply breathtaking, arogant, commercial, pressures bought about “operational theatre demands”.

          Opening page

          “A Failure of Leadership, Culture and Priorities”.

          Nimrod MR4 was the same sircraft with a different mission role. The embarassment wasnt the cancelling of that programme it was not creating a new platform using modern serviceable technology – an A330 would have been an excellent platform choice to stuff with the electronic gadgetry and given the next 50 year platform. Safe well proven and being eyed up for the future tanker MRTT platform anyway…

          Converting Nimrod was basically like saying lets continue using this Austin Maxi with a new Mini engine in it it was a cobbled together set of parts with poor technical oversight as to safety – with the added joy of wet dreams irt to cost savings and exaggerated costsby British Waste of Space.

          Nimrod did however result in a long needed tightening up of Safety oversight for military platforms for design changes.

          Pdf ….here

          https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/pdf-the-nimrod-review-an-independent-review-into-the-broader-issues-surrounding-the-loss-of-the-raf-nimrod-mr2-aircraft-xv230-in-afghanistan-in-2006/

  3. Another prime example of the UK axing a key capability and others benefitting from our inept stupidity. In a modern world it beggars belief….the airframes clearly have a lot of life left in them yet, they just needed a systems upgrade which of course we couldn’t afford to pay for.

    • As a nation we could afford it [a systems upgrades] but the MOD chose not to. The ministers who announced the decision wont be accountable of course, but will gratefully receive any non-exec directorships with various companies in the military-industrial procurment chain, the faceless bean counters who actually did the powerpoint presentations explaining jam tomorrow, have moved up the chain of command in the classic peter principle manner [you rise to your level of incompetence], and the managed decline of our armed forces continues to despair.

      • It is despair. We could have updated those aircraft and had a key capability so badly need over the battlefield. But its one lot of defence cuts after another, with no actual thought for the guys and girls that get sent out to fight for Queen and Country…….

      • Perhaps it should become a standard that when decisions like this are made (in any sector not just defence) that a named minister and civil servant project leader accompanies the news report and an attempt should be made to have them explain their decision making in public. At least then they are accountable in future if anything bad happens as a result.

        Never liked Dominic Cummings but his idea that a civil servant / minister’s job success/failure should follow them to their next post was a decent one.

  5. It’s always a shame to lose a capability, and Sentinel seems to have fallen into the very British trap of not receiving ongoing updates to keep it relevant (when will we learn?!).
    But, if it had to go, then I’m glad they’re not being scrapped- I expect we’ll get a better price for them and I don’t think it’ll all go on getting them airworthy again. In the medium term, the capabilities of the Sentinel are going to be taken up by drones (Protector, Vixen etc. will all have ISTAR capabilities), which is a good thing because the environment is only going to get less permissive. Losing a fully crewed Sentinel would be a gut punch when a drone could have done the job.

  6. This is something you don’t hear about nowadays – the US tries to buy as much first-hand, American built equipment into its military as possible. This could parellel to when we sold are retired Harrier’s to the US, the Marines wanted to fly them but the US did not let them – time will tell us if whatever US service wants to use them but if they do, they’ll have a world-class capability we shoved aside

    • The bit about our Harriers is not strictly true. They bought them and stripped out their parts to keep theirs flying because of the delays in the F-35 program.
      They literally had no choice because no other aircraft is capable of flying off their littoral carriers such as the Wasp Class.
      The US also announced that they would not use the Harrier in a contested environment.
      Our “world-class capability” was a capability many years ago, but a 1950’s design which was developed way beyond it’s potential by the time it was finally retired is simply not good enough for the modern battlefield

      • The USMC acquired our Harrier fleet for parts, that part is true but after the loss of 10 Harriers in a commando raid by the Taliban in Afghanistan the majority went to replace these losses and still fly to this day

  7. Pros and cons of them being withdrawn from service aside, it’s better to see an airframe with life left in it being used, seems so wasteful to send them to be scrapped.

  8. The Raytheon Sentinel is just the latest high-profile victim of the problem that did in HMS Bristol and USS Enterprise CVN-65

      • There were only 5 Raytheon Sentinel R.1 made and HMS Bristol was supposed to be the lead ship of an 8 ship Type 82 Destroyer and USS Enterprise CVN-65 was supposed to be the lead ship of a 6 ship Enterprise-Class Aircraft Carriers but only the lead ships got built
        There were never enough of them around to make the operating costs affordable and once the numbers war shifted they become uneconomical to run

        • CVN-65 had several smaller reactors (8 I think). The Nimitz class appeared about 10 years thereafter with 2 big reactors. This was a much better option than building additional Enterprise class CVNs.

        • There were only ever going to be 4-6 ASTOR, so that wasn’t an issue. Although losing the capability is daft, the timing was surprisingly consistent. Stretching my memory a bit they were due in service in 06 and out in ’18; the ISD was a couple of years late and the retirement the same.

    • HMS Bristol was around for yonks.

      She was the trials ship for Sea Dart.

      She was taken out of service when her steam m/GT power plant blew up for the fourth (?) time. It had got silly and she was massively expensive to run.

      She was launched in 1969 and in service 1973 – 1991 so not far off her intended 25 year hull life.

      • So even without the Rolls-Royce Marine Olympus TM1A engine failure, she was coming to the end of her hull life which would’ve been 1998 although she’d probably still end up as a harbour training ship

  9. Good Morning All
    Whilst it is disappointing to see a great capability lost technology has moved on and we were in no position to support the capability (in the Sentinel form) post the end of the Afghanistan campaign (where the RDEL funding came from). It is a shame that HMG decided to make a mess of their disposal, it makes them look as though they are hiding something.

    We should be looking at different platforms to provide us the capability these aircraft delivered over their years of service.
    We have Protector coming into service, a game changer (10hrs + airborne), which can be loaded with a variety of sensor payloads (come on DASA get the competitions going).
    We have P-8 which, if deployed with the newly conceived “pod” will enhance the platforms versatility.
    We have the Shadow upgrade (£110m) and an extra 2 aircraft.
    We have RC-135W and the capabilities that provides.
    Project NEXUS and BABLEFISH out of the RAF RCO is making great strides (utilising A330 as a C2 node etc).
    We have F-35B with MADL – just a shame they can only utilise MADL on F-35B, the UK has yet to make the investment extending the system.

    Question is how do we balance this out to make a cohesive ISTAR capability?
    You will have seen I have left E-7 out.
    We either do something (Airborne AEW and C2) properly or we don’t.
    With 3 aircraft I would suggest we are purchasing something that will not give us the capability we (or our allies) require.
    Wouldn’t it be better to sit down with Boeing and say “we would rather have 6 more P-8 (equipped with pods) built to a sovereign baseline and you (Boeing) can take E-7 and put it into the USAF to replace E-3.
    You have to remember that the E-3D isn’t an integral part of UKADGE (if it was it wouldn’t have been retired leaving a gap), we provide our AWACS capability to NATO.
    As SofSD stated at the last HCDC hearing “we can trade capabilities in NATO, we couldn’t deploy a battlegroup to the Balkans but we traded that and provide NATO more maritime capability”.

    With 15 P-8 (6 with pods) we could forward deploy 3 to Oman (reducing the US burden), we could forward deploy to other locations – all of this without affecting our ability to support the CASD and ASW requirements over the GIUK gap.

    If we increase our Protector buy to 24 we could, using NEXUS at the data platform, truly start to process data, exploit information (at the edge) and disseminate the intelligence across the network is a secure manner so that the decider gets the right intelligence at the right time to help make the right decision.

    • The E3D was bought to work alongside IUKADGE to plug the many low level radar gaps that exist and was partly manned by IKADGE controllers. Ground based radar cannot fill these gaps whatever is claimed by some, the curvature of the earth has to be taken into account Ground based radar are also venerable to first strike and terrorist activity given they are often sited in remote locations difficult to hide and defend. For the same reason NATO countries bought 18 E3As to fill the gaps in European radar coverage. The E3 also pushes the radar coverage far out over the North Atlantic, Iceland Faeroes Gap and into the Norwegian Sea where no radar coverage exists. The gaps still exist but everybody chooses to ignore then. Filling the most important UKADGE gaps would take a fleet of 6 E7s and possibly more if 24/7 coverage was needed for more than a few days. This is why so many who understand the value of AWACS are so dismayed by the gap in capability which now exists and will only be partly addressed with a flight of 3 E7s. Also don’t forget these aircraft havn’t been delivered yet and apart from the Voyager programme I cannot recall a UK programme which has delivered to the original contracted timescales .

  11. The 2010 Defence Review has a lot to answer for when it comes to the poor state of current and ‘planned for’ defence capability and equipment: anything that needed addressing was kicked into the long grass which has created numerous capability gaps in all three services.

  12. The USMC were happy to get our Harrier fleet and I’m sure the US army will be happy to get our Sentinel fleet for next to nothing, When will we learn!!

    • The military have probably done a risk/benefit analysis and decided that the risk that its features are likely to to needed during the years that will pass before a drone replacement is available is low and there are more vital items to spend the money on..

      • Where are all these operational drones that are replacing exiting kit
        Every time I read about drones replacing existing kit…. Where is taking place…. Prince of Wales ….Drone ship….. not up to Turkish drone availability

    • The US have an excellent history of upgrading aircraft and keeping them operational. The B-52, KC-135 and C-5A are good examples and even some older American designs are kept flying, albeit in secondary roles. It’s a pity that the British government and MoD have never gone in for upgrading aircraft, instead of their get-rid and buy new policy.

          • Greetings from the USA..The USA has had its fair share of mistakes. However, one of its better ideas is that there are huge reclamation fields in the Southwestern states that keep all parts of all aging aircrafts.

            For example the B52…all the dozens of previous 52’s that have been scrapped are kept in as good of condition as possible to keep parts and repairs possible. F16s, F15…hundreds and hundreds of planes kept in good condition for parts.

            This allows older aircraft the ability to be kept flying…The best of those planes are kept even in better condition and can be restored to active duty within a relatively quick time…This idea also involves tanks, transports, helicopters…The hundreds extra that we have are kept for parts and the best conditioned ones are able to refurbished into action if needed. Even the navy has ships that are decommissioned yet preserved in good condition, to be restored to active duty if needed.

            For example the USS Missouri, battle ship served in WWII/Korea…then inactive for years, yet refurbished and upgraded in 1980s with advanced missile systems …and served in Persian Gulf wars in early 1990s…To be decommissioned (now is a museum; however, reports are even now she could be, if needed, be refurbished and ready for Navy use within 1 year).

  14. Can Protector pick up the strain here, pick up the information and send it back to base? Split the collection and analysis between the airframe and home, so to speak. Or is there just not enough being ordered to cover this, AEW, MPA, strike and making the tea?

  16. In no place in the IR or command paper did I notice priorities for a national flagship, numerous private jets & for a voyager to be painted in Union Jack colours. It is still completely underhanded that the decision to scrap the R1 was made prior to any review

  17. New defence equipment costs the price of a caviar and champagne banquet. … Second-hand defence equipment has the value of, in the words of an ex-USA president, “…used bubble-gum…”, … “you kind of don’t want it back after it’s been used”.

  18. I am rather skeptical of the report that these aircraft, if indeed they are being sold, are destined for the US Army. There is an agreement between the US Air Force and the US Army as to what type of aircraft each service will operate. The US Army only operates turboprop airplanes and has no jet powered aircraft. Even if the US Army should acquire them it has no logistics and mechanical support units to support them. The mission flown by the Sentinel is a US Air Force mission. I doubt the US Air Force would relinquish it without a nasty, bloody fight.

      • I should have also mentioned that these airplanes cannot be acquired without an appropriation from the US Congress and there has been no reporting in the US that such a purchase is even being contemplated. Certainly if Congress has been consulted it would be in the press.

        • There is no restrictions on power plants. Only weights and capabilities. Aerial reconnaissance has been a capability the US Army has retained from the establishment of the USAF and the Key West Agreements. If the Army can fly a C-37 Gulfstream why couldn’t it fly another business size jet for a misson it is authorized to have? Is there a reference I should read?

  20. This all sounds alot like awacs all over again, as they are going to the USA soon. They have it the right idea.
    They still use assets like awacs, the airframes they use are from the 70s. Shocking what our government is doing to the armed forces.
    Tornado gone could have been upgraded
    Awacs gone could have been upgraded
    Sentinal gone could have been upgraded
    Tristar gone and left on a old airfield could have been used longer
    VC10 gone airframes were good for many years instead, gone
    We rent out tankers pay over the odds for them why didn’t we just buy them.
    C130s soon to go too, hold on yanks are buying them too USN have one for blue angels …. Hold on the Germans have just got new ones???
    Harrier sold to the yanks for penny’s and tonka scrapped just so we could get f35….. Yes that’s been well used hasn’t it???
    What next ohh I know our typhoon fleet are in a bad way but not to worry we can relax in the thought we don’t need any thing like that anymore. We can just buy from the states like we did in the 70s after tsr2, that could have been still flying today if it wasn’t for the narrow minded government we had, OK It cost a fortune and had design faults but what a perfect airframe to modernise, but even the Canadianswanted it after they also screwed up after the avro arrow…. Ohh yes they also bought American(f101 voodoo, f18 hornet ) . Instead we paid money for f111… Then cancelled that idea due to cost and then got phantom only to buy ones that had RR engines in that cost way over what they should have due to all the airframe modifications that were needed to fit the spey in it. then we bought old f4j’s that were ex Vietnam vets. Least we had the buccaneer.Why can’t we just go back and have British aerospace And show the world we are world class in the design and manufacture of military aviation.
    It all stopped after the lightning and the vulcan. We were the laughing stock once they disappeared. Sorry iam ranting and I know I will get people saying iam wrong but look at it from a point of view that we have always screwed up with hardware.

    • The defence budget only goes so far. And we have some excellent equipment in service today. And another 190Bn is being spent on new kit fit for the 21st century over the next 10 years. Clinging onto old kit just drains resources for current and new kit.

  23. Yet another military asset lost due to improper financial management. So what are we using now for long-range, wide-area battlefield surveillance, intelligence gathering and target tracking?
    Cadets on bicycles. But they must buy their own smart phones.

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