NATO picks Boeing for next AWACS reconnaissance jets fleet

Aviation giant Boeing won the call to provide NATO with a new fleet of the military alliance announced on Wednesday (15 November).

NATO owns and operates a fleet of 14 Boeing E-3A aircraft for surveillance in and from the skies.

Named “AWACS” – for “Airborne Warning & Control System” – the jets have been in service since the early 1908s and are reaching the end of their lifespan.

NATO will start to replace them from 2030 to retire the entire fleet by 2035.

NATO’s ‘eyes in the sky’ regularly patrol international events’ airspace, such as the European Political Community (EPC) in Moldova, the NATO summit in Madrid last year, or the Olympics.

The AWACS must be able to scan the sky and ground, identify, track, report activities, communicate effectively with the ground, and use high-level connectivity to keep data updated while on a mission.

It also must be interoperable with NATO members and, if possible, partners such as Australia and South Korea.

Boeing’s legacy 

Boeing’s E-7 Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) aircraft was selected by the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) to fulfil that role in the fleet’s next generation. 

Other aircraft designers competing for the project included the Swedish company Saab.

Building the military plane will take around four years: Two for the commercial base and another two to turn it into the military version called E-7. 

After that, the aircraft will “maintain security and relevance, for decades to come – around 40 years – because of the continual investment in this improvement cycle,” Tim Flood, in charge of global business development in Europe and America, told Euractiv in an interview over the summer.

Without surprise, Boeing, which already provides the current AWACS fleet, courted the contract, using the E-7 plane’s abilities as its main argument.

The E-7 provides 360-degree radar and sensor coverage by Northrop Grumman, which avoids blind spots and can observe both the sky and the ground to detect vehicles, for instance, Flood said.

The jets also have an air-to-air refuelling capability to increase their endurance capacity and extend missions to several hours, which can be completed with a Boeing KC-46 or a European-made Airbus MRTT, Flood said.

Conscious of the push to develop European manufacturing capacities, Flood also said Boeing could establish factories in the EU, as they already did in the United Kingdom, Australia, Korea, and Turkey. 

American push

Boeing has also benefited from the publicity the US government gave the new aircraft.

The US Air Force signed a contract with the aviation giant for 26 new planes to replace its own E-3A Sentry AWACS.

“The Boeing E-7 is the only platform capable of meeting the requirements for the Defence Department’s tactical battle management, command and control, and moving target indication capabilities within the timeframe needed to replace the ageing E-3,” the Pentagon said.

E-7 operators also include the air forces of South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and have flown with the Australians in the Middle East, “proving the capability in a contested environment”, Flood said.

“When the Turkish Air Force flies them, it would be fair to say that they are probably using them today in policing the Eastern flank [of the NATO military alliance to Russia],” he also suggested. 

The Koreans have also been flying them, which means they are most probably used in the South China Sea or around Japan.

The contract comes as the American company has been facing difficulties in its defence sector over the past few years, collecting losses and delays in programmes.

Last autumn, the company reorganised its defence department following a reported loss of $2.8 billion and a total of $3.3 billion in the third quarter of 2023 across all services.

Ageing aircraft need modernising

The “driving factor” to replace NATO’s fleet is “the ageing aircraft” since its introduction in the early 1980s, the NATO official said.

“The maintenance needed to operate them is constantly increasing,” they said. “So there is a point where the investment is cheaper than maintaining an ageing fleet – this is an economic assessment as every civilian airline would also do”.

“To understand this decision, you have to separate the aircraft itself from the mission system in the back of the plane, which is constantly updated and provides military value,” the official said.

In the meantime, the AWACS aircraft are undergoing the Final Lifetime Extension Program, where Boeing is also in the lead.

The company partnered with over 16 European aviationers to implement upgrades in the systems, including Leonardo (Italy), Indra (Spain), Airbus (Germany), Thales (Belgium), Jacobs (The Netherlands), and Kongsberg (Norway).

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

Read more with EURACTIV