E-7 Wedgetail
ICAO E737The 737-based AWACS replacement, with a fixed radar bar instead of a rotating disc. Live E-7 Wedgetail positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No E-7 Wedgetail is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Boeing
- Role
- Airborne early warning and control
- Class
- L2J — Landplane, 2 jet engines
- Crew
- 6 to 10
- First flight
- 20 May 2004
- In service
- 2009
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the E-7 Wedgetail
The Wedgetail does the same job as the E-3 with a quarter of the crew and a radar that does not move. Instead of a rotating disc it carries a fixed dorsal bar housing an electronically scanned array, which can look in several directions at once and has no mechanical parts to wear out.
Australia developed it first and has flown it operationally for over a decade, including deployments to Europe. The United Kingdom, Turkey and South Korea also operate the type, and NATO has selected it as its E-3 replacement.
The fleet is small — well under thirty airframes worldwide — so this page will usually show none or one. When an Australian or British aircraft is working over Europe it tends to stay up for a long time.
Callsign prefixes
- ASY
- Aussie — Royal Australian Air Force
- DINGO
- A recurring RAAF Wedgetail block
- RRR
- Ascot — Royal Air Force
How to recognise it
- —A 737 with a flat vertical fin standing up from the rear fuselage — the radar bar, sometimes called the top hat.
- —No rotating disc, which separates it immediately from an E-3.
- —Long orbits at a constant altitude, the same profile an AWACS flies.
Common questions
+ Why does the E-7 not have a rotating radar?
Its radar is electronically scanned, steering the beam without moving the antenna. That means it can look in several directions effectively at once, and there is no mechanical rotation to maintain or fail.
+ Which countries fly the E-7?
Australia, Turkey and South Korea operate it now; the United Kingdom is introducing it, and NATO has selected it to replace the E-3 fleet from around 2031.
+ Is the E-7 better than the E-3?
It is newer, needs far fewer crew and has a more capable radar, on an airframe that is still in production and therefore supportable. The E-3 carries more people and more workstations, which mattered more in an era before data links did the sharing.