Five months ago, the U.S. Air Force expected the E-7 Wedgetail’s top-mounted radar to be a bottleneck in production of the next-gen command-and-control aircraft. Now Northrop Grumman says it has a plan to build the radars three times as quickly. Steven Wert, the Air Force’s program executive officer for digital services, mentioned Northrop Grumman’s plan at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference in July. Northrop said production of the plane’s multirole electronically scanned array, or MESA, radar isn’t holding up the program and that the company will be able to make six a year when it needs to. Boeing is currently completing the UK’s three-plane order, and NATO wants the first of its six E-7s delivered by 2031.
Boeing said it will build four per year when the program gets going, but there are talks to bring that up to six, a cadence Northrop said it can match. Northrop needs to build more of the structures that hold up the massive radar, called a “top hat” for its distinctive shape, and sees no reason for concern about its own suppliers. The Air Force has not been shy about needing its E-7s as quickly as possible, and has been pushed by Congress to speed up production. The Pentagon announced in February that Boeing was awarded a $1.2 billion contract to jump-start E-7 development, with negotiations still ongoing about the final price of the aircraft.
