NATO AWACS take part in Exercise Nordic Response

Apparently E7 is a complete game changer over E3. E7 is rumoured to be able to to land management way better than JSTARS and provide massive electronic attack capabilities.

you know in war, there is something called risk. Even in 1945 when the tank was the supreme force on the battlefield, they where still extremely vulnerable to a angry tube that could be easily carried by a 10 year old. Unfortunately everything in war is at risk to something, it is the nature of the beast.

If anything Ukraine has shown how valuable such aircraft will be. Russia has the 2nd largest air force in the world and yet it can not even gain air supremacy over its much weaker neighbour, largely due to its inability to amass and coordinate strikes.

Yes we can, we are getting 3 which is just about enough for us but 5 would be way better.

The only AEW platform the UK currently has in service, is the Navy’s Crowsnest. Which has yet to reach FOC. I don’t know how many Crowsnest role kits have been bought? But all 30 of the Navy’s HM2 Merlins are being modified to be able to fit Crowsnest. Not forgetting their primary role is ASW, so only a few will ever be roled with Crowsnest.

The Searchwater radar that Crowsnest uses, is still a pretty good X-band radar. However, it is still a legacy pulse-doppler mechanically scanned radar. It is very good at spotting sea skimming missiles and very small targets on the sea. Plus it has a very good mapping mode. However, it could be significantly better. When they upgraded the Merlin with Crowsnest, It was supposed to be an evolution of the ASaC used on the previous Sea Kings, primarily to keep down costs and speed up its in-service date. They replaced the back end processing, updated and improved the display system and HMI. Sadly they kept the Searchwater, instead of replacing it with the same company’s Seaspray 7500 AESA. But they also had software integration issues which has delayed it coming in to service.

When Wedgetail does come into service, its MESA radar is a technological step above what Crowsnest can achieve, regardless of the additional detection range it can provide. This is primarily due to the radar being an electronically scanned array. This type of radar array has many advantages over a traditional mechanical scanned radar.

However, to answer you question, “can we stand alone”, in a Ukraine type of conflict I presume? Yes, to a certain degree. It depends on the opponent. BUt even if its not Russia, it would be bonkers to place a Merlin with Crowsnest in a Ukraine environment, where its expected to keep an eye on Russia air, land and sea movements. Russia’s ground based air defences such as S300 and S400 outrange the detection range of the Searchwater radar. So it would be better to keep the Merlin/Crowsnest significantly behind the lines. To coordinate air defences around key infrastructure.

Instead, we would use the F35 in an ISTAR role, instead of the Reaper/Protector, due to its better stealth and electronic surveillance measures (ESM). It would operate passively to hoover up information. Especially air defence radar locations and communications nodes. As these will indicate where air defence batteries are located, but also HQs. These positions will be targeted by both F35s and Typhoon in the Strike role. This will be conducted using Storm Shadow and Spear-3. Spear-3 is due to be trialled first on Typhoon, so I’d expect it to be expedited to get it into combat as soon as possible, as both are UK manufactured assets. The F35 is Lockheed Martin IP, so we may still struggle getting it integrated in time.

The RAF will primarily try to degrade and suppress an enemy’s air and ground defences, otherwise it will struggle to support the Army. Although the RAF doesn’t operate HARM. The missile has been cleared for use on Typhoon. So I’d expect a UOR put to the US for HARMs for our Typhoons. Plus the newer AARGM/AARGM-ER is being integrated on F35 and Typhoon, which would help again.

If your enemy does not have an AEW platform, it makes life for the RAF a whole lot easier. As the enemy will be relying on ground based radar. Which for a F35 especially, will be easy meat!

On this side of the Pond, there were 29 E3 Sentry. originally, since reduced to 25, then to 18 when we scrapped ours.

Most of these are in a joint NATO force, comprising 15 European countries, which has 14. They share the cost and each contribute flight crew. 2 squadrons, based in Germany, with forward bases in Italy, Greece, Turkey and Norway.

The French operate their own AEW squadron with 4 E3 Sentrys.

13 E7 Wedgetails are on order from NATO Europe countries so far, 6 for the jount NATO force. 4 for Turkey and our planned 3.

Is 3 enough for us to do our own thing? 3 means one in the air for a few hours, then maybe a second one for another 3-4 hour shift, but we wouldn’t be able to keep that sortie rate up for any length of time.

If we’re looking at defence of the UK and its sea area, the range of the AESA radar is important. Its look-up range, which I guess is mainly spotting missiles – Davey will correct me here – is 375 miles, so one AEW somewhere over Lossiemouth would see most things heading our way from mother Russia.

The look-down range gives a good idea of capability and need – 230 miles for a fighter-size interloper, 150 miles for a frigate-size surface vessel. If we assume the NATO and French AEWs are covering central Europe and southern England, then we would I guess need 2 AEWs in the air to spot incoming aircraft from the north-east and north-west.

S Korea has ordered 4 Wedgetails, Turkey 4, Australia 6, our 3 looks on the light side. The RAF has said we might increase to 5 in time but, looking at the cost, which is £600m per aircraft, and looking at the yawning black hole in our equipment budget, I doubt we will see more than 3 arrive.

Our Wedgetails are very safe and survivable they are in bits in a hanger, with no danger of flying near a combat zone soon.

Hi David, it really depends on your opponent. In a peer vs peer war, on paper China would be a worse opponent to face than Russia. Mainly due to China investing in long range air to air missiles, like the PL17. Which has a similar role to Russia’s R37, but is likely to have better electronics. In that the PL17 and R37’s primary targets are AEW platforms. These missiles have a reported range of near 300 miles.

The E2C/D, E3 and E7 have a radar detection range of a fighter sized target of over 300 miles. But that is a fighter the size of a Su-27/F15. Which has a huge radar cross section (RCS), when compared to something like a Typhoon or Rafale. Something like a Chinese J20 or even a Russian Su-57, which are supposed to have a smaller RCS than the European fighters, may only be detected between 200 to 300 miles. Which is dependent on whether its carrying external ordinance like a PL15/R37. As these missiles are too big for the internal weapons bays.

Both the PL17 and R37 trade range/speed for manoeuvrability. So a fighter will likely be able to outmanoeuvre it. A big lumbering converted airliner, not so much.

This you would think raises a problem for an AEW platform. The aircraft could get to within launch range before its detected. However, due to the way radar works, in that a radar transmission can be detected at least twice as far as the object can be detected by the radar. An aircraft like a J20 should be able to detect an AEW platform long before it comes into the platform’s detection range. The J20 does not need to activate its radar, just listen for the AEW radar. When it detects the radar, it launches the PL17 which homes in on to the AEW aircraft. Against a E3, a PL17 would be a deadly adversary. As the AN/APY being a PESA radar cannot change its base transmitting frequency as quickly or within as wide of a operating band as an AESA. such as the AN/APY-9 on the E2D and the MESA on the Wedgetail. Sadly a Crowsnest Merlin would not fare well, unless the crew saw the missile very close and managed to dump the collective. Where its descent rate is more than the missile’s turning radius.

With the Wedgetail and E2D, its AESA radars have the ability to switch base operating frequencies in microseconds. But also to randomly jump these frequencies within it whole operating band. This makes life for the radar receiver within the missile very hard. It may loose lock a few times and drift off course. Thereby loosing energy each time it needs to correct when it locks on again. At some point the aircraft will detect the missile, so it may switch off the radar. At which point the missile will be flying blind. It will need a mid-course update from the launch aircraft. The launch aircraft will need to try and search for the AEW aircraft by using its radar. Which will give away its position.

The SOPs for operating an AWACS is that it is shepherded by a pair of fighters. Plus it’s in communication with other aircraft flying CAP. as soon as the launch aircraft lights up its radar, everybody within the vicinity will detect it. Whoever is closest will investigate and chase after it. Therefore, to escape being illuminated itself, the launch aircraft will likely turn tail and run. Meaning the Missile will not get a mid-course update and just fly a ballistic path until it hits the ground. It may activate its radar when it gets to where it thinks the AEW aircraft should be. But the AEW aircraft would also have turned away on a different heading and altitude. If the AEW platform uses expendable active decoys like Britecloud, then the Missile will have a very hard time finding the platform.

The big question is when does the AEW platform detect the incoming missile. In some respects the Searchwater radar of the Crowsnest, will have a slight advantage. As it operates in the X-band and will get a solid return off the Missile. However at 6m long for the PL17 and just over 4m long for the R37. These things aren’t small. So they will be detected by Crowsnest, Sentry, Hawkeye and Wedgetail likely over 100 miles away. Thus giving the crews plenty of options on how to counter the threat.

Neither of these missiles have a dual seeker as far we know. To be truly effective an IR seeker needs to get with 30 miles. A heat source beyond this range is generally too small for a seeker to be able to differentiate from the background noise. Plus it will depend on the fidelity of the IR seeker. Russia for example don’t have a seeker that compares to ASRAAMs. The Chinese may have, but its not publicly known how the PL10 WVRAAM performs. The missile’s active/passive RF seeker is likely to be not to be as advanced as those used in AMRAAM, MICA and Meteor. Their detection range may not be great, perhaps something like 5 to 10 miles.

To conclude, these very long range missiles are not a done deal, when fired against an AEW platform. There are lots of things that need to line up before the missile gets a lock on the aircraft. Plus the aircraft has a say in these events. through switching off the radar, manoeuvring away and using passive and active countermeasures.

Yes, Prince of Wales has a number of Crowsnest equipped Merlins. In one of UKDJ posts of aircraft operating from POW. You can see one in the background on the flight deck.

Crownsnest, and F35B for all other roles and more. Especially air dominace and ISTAR.