NATO allies are jointly procuring up to 10 Saab GlobalEye airborne early warning aircraft to replace the alliance’s E-3 Sentry fleet, in the headline announcement of a series of multinational procurement projects unveiled at the Ankara summit.
Secretary General Mark Rutte said the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System fleet has been NATO’s eyes in the skies for decades, deployed from northern Norway to southern Türkiye, but the aircraft are reaching the end of their lives. The GlobalEye purchase, he said, “will ensure we keep NATO’s owned and operated surveillance and early warning capability strong and credible for decades to come,” describing the Saab system as proven, with a demonstrated ability to detect, track and identify complex threats including drone swarms, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and providing simultaneous surveillance across the air, maritime and land domains from a single platform. Alongside the joint buy for the NATO-owned fleet, several allies launched a separate multinational project to cooperate on procuring more airborne early warning aircraft such as GlobalEye against their national requirements, with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson taking the stage for the announcement.
GlobalEye combines Saab’s Erieye ER radar with a Bombardier Global 6000 business jet airframe, pairing Swedish mission systems with a Canadian platform, and is in service with the United Arab Emirates and on order for Sweden, with the type having beaten alternatives to the alliance requirement under the Alliance Future Surveillance and Control effort.
The selection settles the future of NATO’s collectively owned fleet on a different platform from the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail chosen nationally by the United Kingdom, whose first aircraft are entering RAF service, and by the United States before Washington’s wavering over its own programme.
The alliance is also adding up to five Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, long-endurance uncrewed aircraft to its ISR Force, which currently operates the RQ-4D Phoenix fleet from Sigonella in Italy. Rutte said the Tritons will provide persistent surveillance over large maritime areas day and night, helping the alliance “detect threats early, protect our sea lines of communication, and support operations in demanding regions, such as the High North,” with Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway among the participating nations.
The Triton is the maritime derivative of the Global Hawk, able to remain airborne for over a day while surveying vast ocean areas, and its addition follows a period in which the protection of undersea infrastructure and the monitoring of Russian naval activity in northern waters have risen sharply up the alliance’s agenda.
In the air mobility domain, allies confirmed the forthcoming delivery of the tenth Airbus A330 MRTT to the Multinational MRTT Fleet, the pooled tanker and transport force operated from Eindhoven and Cologne on behalf of its member nations, bringing the fleet a step closer to its full strength of 12 aircraft, while a new multinational project was launched on the A400M airlifter with Belgium, Croatia, France, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom participating.
The UK operates 22 A400M Atlas aircraft from RAF Brize Norton, and the project offers a route to deepen cooperation between operators of the type on availability, support and future development, although the announcement did not detail the project’s scope.
Rutte described the announcements collectively as capabilities “Made in NATO,” with the contracts to be signed through the summit worth billions of dollars across the transatlantic industrial base.
Why did we not buy it, its chaper, faster to build and we would have them in service by now instead still trialing one AWACs with just two to follow in a year or more,
We have been too busy trying to keep America sweet – buying its gear and pretending we can act as mini US.
No doubt a few more, rather than just 3.
Because its less capable. 200km less official radar range and isn’t built from the ground up with integration with the F35. Turns out thst the inverse square law does actually apply
Theres nothing wrong with a diversity of aircraft. The E7 is a very good aircraft
We need to get the E7 wedge tails in the air so they can prove their worth. It will be interesting to see how long this aircraft is in service for with all the new technologies coming on stream.
New technology doesn’t change the inverse square law. A radar 1/4 quarter of the power will have 1/16th of signal strength any given range, which makes a huge difference when facing aircraft with reduced radar cross section