MPs recently raised serious concerns over the UK’s air surveillance capability as the RAF’s E-7 Wedgetail programme faces continued delays and questions mount over its strategic resilience.
Leading a Westminster Hall debate recently, Conservative MP for Dumfries and Galloway John Cooper warned that the gap left by the retirement of the E-3D Sentry aircraft has created a “credibility gap” in British air power.
“The RAF has a problem: it cannot offer a complete package,” Cooper told the chamber. “We could be reliant on NATO allies to give us extra cover.” He noted that while one Wedgetail is due to fly at this week’s Royal International Air Tattoo, none of the three UK-ordered platforms is yet fully certified for military operations.
Labour’s Tan Dhesi, a member of the Defence Select Committee, said the current state of the programme was “wholly inadequate” and criticised the 40% cut to the original five-aircraft fleet, made to achieve just 12% in cost savings. “Somebody needs to get a grip on this programme,” Dhesi said, calling for urgent closure of the UK’s early warning capability gap.
The E-7 Wedgetail, based on the Boeing 737 and equipped with a powerful Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar, is already in frontline use with the Royal Australian Air Force. But the UK programme, announced in 2019, has slipped by at least two years. Cooper stressed the platform’s importance in providing “real-time 360-degree situational awareness of the battlespace” and compared the current deficiency to “relying on the mark one eyeball.”
Conservative MP Mark Francois used the opportunity to welcome Air Marshal Harv Smyth’s appointment as the new Chief of the Air Staff. “He is what the Americans would call a warfighter,” Francois said. “He and Sir Rich Knighton will provide a powerful team in the defence of the United Kingdom.”
Labour MP Dr Zubir Ahmed spoke on the economic importance of the Wedgetail programme, highlighting the role of Thales in Glasgow, which is producing the aircraft’s threat warning system. “Will [the Member] celebrate the contribution of Scottish firms to the defence of our realm?” Ahmed asked.
Cooper welcomed the industrial impact but launched a scathing attack on the Scottish Government’s lack of support for defence innovation. He claimed that ministers in Edinburgh had refused to fund a new Rolls-Royce welding centre of excellence in Clydebank, while the UK Government was prepared to “back it to the hilt.” He called the SNP’s defence posture “fifth-columnist” and “quite remarkable.”
Cooper also addressed concerns raised in Washington about the survivability of the Wedgetail platform in a contested airspace. He quoted US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth describing the aircraft as “not survivable in the modern battlefield.” With the US reportedly exploring alternatives, including legacy E-2D Hawkeye aircraft and future satellite constellations, doubts remain over Wedgetail’s longevity.
Concluding, Cooper said he hoped the Minister would “give the House some assurance that it is not the Ajax of the skies.”
A formal ministerial reply is expected following the summer recess.
Well that’s one in a very longggggg list of serious concerns.
one at Boscombe Down now so hopefully will get some progress?
Don’t hold your breath, systems testing is the real hurdle the E7 has to complete. This system although not a new design must contains some new elements which were necessitated by the time since the the RAAF completed their last aircraft some 10 years ago. It has been my experience that we continually underestimate the resources and time it takes to complete advanced systems testing. Problems will be found in the software which require fixing and for that a knowledgeable software team needs to be available, sometimes 24 hrs /day, to generate the fix, integrate it into a new build and confine its efficacy with regression testing. All of this takes time and patience but it is the activity which always gets cut back in programme scheduling because all the previous elements of the project have eaten much of any contingency built into the programme. Of concern must be that size and knowledgeability of the software team given the E7 is not a new aircraft and the Boeing team who built the Wedgtail will have dispersed by now and Boeing will be under pressure on costs so it might not have the ‘A’ team available particularly now given the Trump Administration’s termination of the USAF E7 programme (subject to Senate confirmation). Also in the background the UK MAA will want to understand and approve all safety related changes to the flight software so having an aircraft available for external photographs and display flying is one thing but not perhaps the biggest challenge of getting an aircraft into Service.
It takes some nerve for a Conservative MP to criticise how this programme is running.
Politicians have short memories and a large capacity for hypocrisy
It has the smell of doom about it!
TWZ did a very interesting piece the other day. Basically an AEW mounted on a Reaper type of platform giving a fleet/overland coverage at a fraction of the price of manned systems. Numbers, endurance and affordability. Given what I read about long range AAM developments? Are AEW aircraft now obsolete?
Every thing we buy is cost cut to save money, which means we have pay more to fix it, years delayed, is there any one in the MOD who knows what they are doing? Oh well lets see whats ordered in the Winter then cut/changed, delayed, gapped, etc etc, a farce that has been going on for years.
I would wager that the MOD is at the whim of the smoothbrains in the Treasury who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Any budget decision that seems truly staggeringly stupid is invariably from the Treasury. They don’t care if the total cost of anything quadruples over its lifetime as long as they can temporarily reduce the balance sheet now. Treasury Brain is one of the many infirmities that plague modern Britain.