The advantage of having a potent eye in the sky, close to active combat zones or near dangerous enemies, has proven invaluable over the years for the American military. It will probably continue to do so in the coming ones as well, and the importance of aerial surveillance platforms is growing even bigger now, with rogue Russia going berserk over in Europe.
At the time of writing, there are several such platforms flying missions for the world's militaries, but few are as famous as the E-3 Sentry. We Average Joes know this modified Boeing 707 is used by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) as the AWACS - Airborne Warning and Control System.
The Sentry first flew back in 1972, at a time when threats and the world, in general, were entirely different than they are today. Despite several upgrades being performed over the years (the last one in 2020), the AWACS is not only growing old but also obsolete, so soon it will have to be replaced.
USAF chose another Boeing machine as a replacement for it. Exactly a year ago, we got word of the E-7 Wedgetail as being that new choice, an airplane based on the 737 that should step in and take up AWACS’ surveillance roles for American military needs as soon as this year.
There are a number of things setting the two planes apart, the most visible being the shape of the external hardware they pack. Whereas the AWACS became a USAF icon thanks to the massive dish radar mounted up on the fuselage, the Sentry uses a wedge-shaped, elongated radar that runs in the same direction as the fuselage and is attached directly to it.
Photo: Boeing
We've known for a while now that the plane’s main weapon, if we can call that, is something called the Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA). It’s a radar made by Northrop Grumman, and capable of covering, at the same time, pretty much everything that moves in the air or on the sea.
The thing works its best at an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,200 meters), from where it can have a look at huge distances. It gives its operators a 360-degree view of more than 340,000 square miles (547,000 km) of space around the plane, at rates of over 30,000 square miles (48,200 km) per second (10-second scan rate). Just to give you an idea of what that means, that’s like looking at an area the size of Pakistan or Venezuela in one go!
MESA is so sensitive it can spot targets as small as low-flying missiles and fighter aircraft from hundreds of miles away, and can track close to 200 of them at the same time.
We brought the thing back into the spotlight because earlier this week Northrop Grumman announced it started rolling off assembly lines the MESA radar for U.S.-bound Wedgetails, meaning we'll probably see the first ones fly under American colors soon.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News