Podcast: What’s The Buzz At RIAT? E-7 Wedgetail, Sixth-Gen Fighters And More

Editors gather after GASCC on the eve of the Royal International Air Tattoo to discuss the latest developments in air power as U.S. budget season impacts programs.

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Robert Wall (00:34): Welcome to Check 6, where today we catch up on the E-7 Wedgetail and sixth-gen fighter programs as we wrap up the Global Air and Space Chiefs conference and prepare for the Royal International Air Tattoo, which will have kicked off by the time you hear this here in London. Today is Brian Everstine, our Pentagon editor who joined me for the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference and is headed to RIAT, and Tony Osborne, our man about RIAT, who's already in Gloucestershire. I'm Robert Wall, Aviation Week's executive editor for Defense and Space. So let's start with the E-7. The first UK Wedgetail is making its RIAT debut this year, but before Tony catches us up on that program, Brian, why don't you go over where things stand and what you heard from Gen. Allvin in your exclusive chat at the GASC event.

Brian Everstine (01:23): Yep, of course. So I guess a little bit of the background is we reported a couple months ago that the Pentagon was planning to cancel the Air Force's planned procurement of 26 of the Wedgetails, which was kind of a bit of a surprise and has morphed into a little bit of a fight both within the building and on Capitol Hill. We're seeing the proposed defense policy and appropriations measures making their way through the Hill, and we've seen some lawmakers really step forward and try to defend the program. For example, the House Armed Services markup, which just wrapped up about a day, day and a half ago preserves at least the prototyping effort. There are two prototypes being built and there's some money being thrown back into the program and it's been pretty clear that there is a little bit of a disagreement on the way ahead.

(02:09): So earlier this week we saw a group of pretty senior former Air Force generals, 13 total generals, a good handful of former chiefs of staff write to Congress urging them to keep the E-7 program going. So with that context yesterday I sat down with Gen. David Allvin, the chief of staff, to kind of talk through what his perspective is on all of this. And his takeaway really is it's not a problem with the aircraft, it's capable in his idea, it's survivable, it's just a budget move, it's just too expensive. If they had the money they'd love to proceed, but it's just not affordable right now at the moment. So we'll see how it all plays out, but it's clear that there are a lot of E-7 defenders coming forward on the Hill and in the building.

Robert Wall (02:56): And just to make clear, I mean one of the arguments the Pentagon made when they put out the budget where they zeroed out the program was it was one, they complained about cost growth, which I think the manufacturer is disputing, but they also said they were concerned about survivability of the platform. So Gen. Allvin is kind of taking issue with that to some extent.

Brian Everstine (03:19): He really emphasized that the E-7 is just leaps and bounds far better than what the Air Force has in the E-3 right now. It's more applicable in a fight as we're looking in the Indo-Pacific and you had raised the cost, I think the latest figure, I saw the White House put out a statement of administrative policy kind of going against what the House had said. They had said it was $2.7 billion I believe for the two prototypes. And again, raising the issue of survivability. So I mean, we're not seeing the CAPE analysis publicly about it, but there is some dispute about how survivable the Wedgetail really would be.

Robert Wall (03:57): Yeah, very interesting. Tony, obviously the RAF here is a customer now are seeing their first aircraft flying at least to some extent. Where do things stand here right now?

Tony Osborne (04:11): Greetings from the Royal International Air Tattoo where it's quite noisy, but I mean the Wedgetail program has been something of quite a controversial deal, not only because it was yet another deal for Boeing after various buys of Chinook and Poseidon, but obviously now since COVID there have been various supply chain issues. So the aircraft is now particularly late. I think we're sort of now looking towards entry into service next year, and I think we'd originally planned for that to be in 2024. I seem to remember some months. In fact, probably two years ago there was a very interesting parliamentary defense committee discussion sit down with the head of Boeing at the time, and she talked that some components of this airplane were being received 200 days late because of COVID. So the program is sort of progressing but much more slowly than we would like given that we have a gap.

(05:03): Our airborne early warning capability, having retired the E-3D two years ago, obviously the aircraft is making its debut here at the airshow. We are buying three aircraft, but we have five radars because we cut the number of aircraft that we were buying down from five to three. But in this duty defense review, there is an ambition to try and restore that number back up, possibly back to five or four or five because frankly three is not a sustainable number. We have three Rivet Joints and one flies regularly, but not every day. That would be a real struggle to achieve that with an airborne early warning platform. So the ambition is there, but obviously with the U.S. sort of move maybe to proceed or not proceed that presumably put the willies up a few of RAF chiefs here. And of course there's also the question of what NATO will now do with its interim or initial AFSC program. So that was the plan to buy six of those aircraft, but that has been very slowly moving forward as I think Robert, you've been reporting.

Robert Wall (06:16): Yeah, yeah, I was talking to someone who was involved with that program and they're expressing some concerns because since that announcement now a year ago that you wrote about the six aircraft, nothing's really has happened. And in fact the U.S. in October I think, or towards the end of the Biden administration, did not sign up to the MOU to actually move forward on the procurement. And I think the argument at the time was explained to me was they didn't want to lock, basically leave it to the next administration. Well the next administration is in and nothing's happened and now there's this concern, well, the U.S. going to be is a huge part of that program financially if the U.S. isn't in it, what happens? And the clock is ticking. The NATO E-3s are old, all the E-3 E-3s are old, but the NATO E-3s are particularly old.

(07:12): They have the old Pratt & Whitney engines, they've got all sorts of obsolescence headaches and the airplanes will be out of service in 2035. And even if things went smoothly, the concern was expressed to me the first NATO E-7s would show up probably if they're lucky in 2031. And so the lead time is not short. And so generally there's that concern interesting to me was I kind of asked the question because the French obviously made the decision they're going to go with Global Eye, it's available, UAE is buying it, the Swedes are buying it. Then the NATO person was not so keen on it to be honest. They felt there are not enough workstations there. Obviously that is much larger on the modified 707. And so there was concern about that and also the in-flight refueling capability and concern about that. So again, concerns on the E-7 in a slightly different front than what we are hearing in the U.S. and even the UK, but certainly situation is far from clear. And I'm curious, Tony, maybe what are you hearing about people here saying about buying more? Obviously as you point out it was in the strategic defense review, the ambition to go back up, but if there is no U.S. buyer,

Tony Osborne (08:46): I think that's the big question. I mean we have the two radars. We would just need I guess the mission equipment and maybe the two airframes to stick on somewhere, but obviously there is a company here in the UK that's converting them. So we are doing this in country. We wouldn't necessarily at least have to necessarily rely on the Boeing production line, which is I presume one of the difficulties here because so many countries have ordered this aircraft in a very short space of time. I mean AWACS orders are few and far between. We're few and far between for decades and then suddenly the U.S. Air Force order and the NATO order and the UK order all come in a very short time. And it was of course the UK that restarted production of E-7 in the first place. It would be, I think the UK probably needs to start understanding what they can do with Wedgetail and start using it and before it makes any further decisions. They're probably watching like hawks what's going on in Washington, but the appetite is clearly there. It's understood that the need is there, but I think until these things are actually operating and in service and doing their daily duties, I think that will be when the decision is made.

Robert Wall (09:58): Well maybe the U.S. has some cheap aircraft to offload now that they don't want 'em. But Brian, back to you briefly. I'm just kind of curious. You talked about the HASC mark generally, what's your sense right now? What's the trend do you think? Can you handicap it, you think it's more likely at this point the program will survive or not?

Brian Everstine (10:22): I think it's likely that the prototypes at least will continue to buy the Air Force sometime. I mean we got the two in work in Renton right now. The reconciliation package added funding looks like the upcoming NDAA and appropriations bill will continue some funding. So I think that these two prototypes are likely to continue and I think that's really what the Air Force wants for now. Let's get these out there, let's see how they work and maybe that can cause a spark to continue the program going or maybe they can offload 'em somewhere. Another thing that's been interesting that we haven't touched on yet is this relatively new idea of joint E-2s to fill in the gap and this kind of took a lot of us by surprise and we're not really seeing other than some public statements, not really seeing that much in the actual budget for these, where they're going to come from, where they're going to go.

(11:12): And talking to Gen. Allvin about this idea, it also seemed to be coming up as a little bit of a surprise within the building. For example, I'll just read exactly what he said and I asked him about this. He said, I know that was part of the Department of Defense's mitigation strategy for being able to cover down on that. I don't know what the analysis was done to look at the size of geography versus range versus loitering opportunity versus time on station. I was not a part of that particular analysis, but I know that was part of the deliberations when the department made that decision. And we know that E-2s have been picking up some of the slack. I mean the Air Force's E-3s are very tired. Their mission capable rate is pretty atrocious. So there has been a little bit of a joint pickup. E-2s already,

Tony Osborne (11:55): Of course some of them have already been retired as well. I mean I think we've already seen what four or five already leave the fleet and that's

Brian Everstine (12:02): Set to continue. So it is really kind of crunch time for this decision

Robert Wall (12:07): And NATO kind of told me the same thing. The NATO folks told me the same thing that fleet has just shrinking and basically it will come down to what can we salvage to keep them going. In fact, I think they're looking at can they get some companies to build some of the spare parts that are now out of production and work something out with Boeing in terms of licensing the IP. Tony?

Tony Osborne (12:31): I was going to say, I mean it's a really interesting time. Increased use of these assets in Europe and yet the number of aircraft available is shrinking. The only sort of light at the end of the tunnel is that more nations are buying their own AEW assets. You've got countries like Italy buying these platforms in terms of the Gulfstream, you've got Sweden buying more of them and also joining NATO and Poland also sort of looking to acquire this capability. But otherwise the number of AEW assets available is actually getting smaller again.

Robert Wall (13:04): Yeah. Well let's transition from very inelegantly from 707 discussions to sixth-gen fighters. Tony, why don't you kick it off this time there's been more information that you've gleaned on GCAP, the Global Combat Air Program and where things stand there and where things are headed here on there. Very, very, very aggressive timeline to get something into service by 2035,

Tony Osborne (13:32): Extraordinarily aggressive. So we finally given a sneak preview of what the UK Combat Air Demonstrator, this is the aircraft that the UK will build. It's the first clean sheet aircraft built in the UK for 40 years that they will go and test some of the technologies and de-risk some of that work around to support the Global Combat Air Program. And that's those listeners who are perhaps unfamiliar with GCAP. It's the joint program with UK, Japan and Italy to build a sixth-generation combat aircraft. So this aircraft is two-thirds of the way through build. It should fly by the should be ready to fly by the end of 2027 and it will go off and test the UK approach to low observability launch a missile from a weapons bay, which if you look back at the UK history, we actually haven't never launched a missile from a British built aircraft with a weapons bay.

(14:31): We had the Buccaneer, which dropped bombs. The Vulcan launched Blue Steel, but that just dropped from the bottom. It wasn't actually in a bay. So this is an interesting area which we need to go and study and make sure we do right because I think we're going to have a slightly different approach to the bay. It might be quite a deep bay and so on. This aircraft is going to be EJ 200 powered. It's going to look a little bit like an F-35 of a Delta wing. At least that's what we see from the image that you'll probably see on our website. But interesting, some of the other interesting features is it has a very broad nose which suggests that this is going to have an enormous or it is got to be representative of the GCAP shape. So the demonstrator will have a very broad looking nose.

(15:16): It'll also have sort of a raised canopy position, which anyone who's looked at the Turkish Aerospace Industry's Kaan will notice that the cockpit is slightly weigh slightly higher above the nose possibly to improve visibility, but also perhaps to give the pilot a look back. And then we have canted tails and probably a couple of widely spaced engines, those aforementioned EJ 200s. And so yeah, as mentioned this aircraft will be ready in 2027, but it all starts to give us an idea of the vision for the GCAP shape even though the actual final shape is yet to be determined, obviously because the GCAP shape can hold for a bit longer. I think the plan now according to an Italian general is that the prototype of GCAP will fly in 2030. That's a new date that came out this week at the Global Air Chiefs Conference.

(16:07): So there will only be potentially two years between a first flight of the demonstrator and a first flight of the GCAP. So things are really moving ahead, but they really, it is all about hitting that 2035 timeline, which Japan has deemed immovable because it wants a new aircraft to replace those Mitsubishi F-2s. So yeah, really interesting week in terms of seeing serious progress on the demonstrator program and it's quite exciting as a Brit to see a new platform emerging from the hangers of Warton, especially at a time when Typhoon production is either ramping down or about to ramp up depending on who you speak to.

Robert Wall (16:49): Absolutely. I mean, one interesting thing as you point out, a lot of developments on GCAP, obviously also on the industrial side as you reported kind of the new industrial team JV being created. Of course, yes. But also I think interesting that the program seems to be pretty healthy, especially if you compare it to the Franco-German-Spanish situation. But it does seem there are still a few things to be ironed out. It's not all smooth sailing between here and 2027 or 2030 seems to be still some disagreement between the countries. Do they want a fighter that can turn and burn really or focus a bit more on payload? As someone described it to me, are we really looking for a mini B-21? So I mean it does seem that governments and the industry, they're minded to get this done, but I think we're not quite out of the woods yet in terms of potential areas of dispute.

Tony Osborne (17:50): Yes, I mean certainly we saw mention of that in previous months with Italy where we had, I think the Italian Minister for Defense Crosetto saying that he was unhappy with the amount of work share they were getting and issues around information sharing, which the head of Leonardo at the Paris Air Show later said, well, actually none of this is insurmountable. We're working towards this. It was quite interesting. You mentioned the industrial JV with its unusual name, which I don't think we've spoken about before on the podcast Edge Winging, which sounds I guess a bit, I reckon. I reckon there's a certain Japanese link there. It sounds like the name of one of those strange robots that feature in Japanese cartoons. That was always my impression. Anyway, I forget the name of the style that is used there, but maybe my fellow podcasters can point that out. But yeah, that's the JV formed of BAE Systems, Leonardo and an offshoot of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Robert Wall (18:49): Yeah, very good. Well, of course the U.S. has to also have some sixth-gen fighter developments or not developments as the case may be. We know what's going on, kind of know what's going on with F-47 and its flight path. But FAXX is still pretty murky. And again, particularly the questions around the budget, what was in the budget request from the Pentagon and what Congress will do with it. So Brian, back over to you,

Brian Everstine (19:21): The FAXX drama is definitely continuing. I mean, go back to the Pentagon's request. They were just calling for only $74 million for the program. There's a pretty much a tiny amount of change in the scheme of things to finish the designs from the competitors and it said leave it as an option for the future, but Congress is not really having that reconciliation added, if I recall correctly, 750 million to that total with the direct goal to accelerate the program. We're seeing some language in all the authorization proposals, demanding reports from the Deputy Secretary of Defense who reportedly really the one who's put the brakes on it, trying to explain his actions and push ahead. And we saw this, the White House kind of push back again this couple days ago in that statement of administrative policy raising. Again, the concern about the industrial base, the Pentagon has said that the F-47 is a priority and if they're forced to go ahead and make an award and proceed on FAXX, that would delay the higher priority F-47.

(20:25): And that has obviously produced a lot of debate. We have industry coming forward pretty strongly saying that is not true. Boeing Defense and Space CEO, Steve Parker said that the company put together their proposals for both NGAD and FAXX with the design to be able to produce both at the same time. So back to the E-7, if I were going to place any bets, I think Congress will have more forceful language in their bills to try to push the Navy forward to make an award and continue. But there has been some questions raised about following Congressional intent and the Navy has asked to be able to reprogram some of this money to shift it to some other priorities.

Robert Wall (21:10): Absolutely. And F-47 seems to be, for now at least progressing, it's got congressional support budgets there.

Brian Everstine (21:20): Yeah, absolutely. Plenty of support. I tried to get anything I could about Gen. Allvin on the program and reiterated the plan to have it fly by 2028, really sang the praises of how they're putting this program together saying he wish he could go back in time and do the same approach for other fighter programs with a big focus on government reference architecture. The government owning a lot of the rights to the aircraft to be able to compete and bring on additional components so they don't have to go back to the original equipment manufacturer to get their permission to make some upgrades that that's something the Air Force can do themselves. They can go to say he was talking about any company that is tiny, they do one thing really well and get them to participate in the program instead of having to contract that out through the prime.

Robert Wall (22:10): That's great. Well, I guess if you're into new aircraft flying, we're in for a busy time with F-47 GCAP demonstrator, then the GCAP prototype should be fun. Tony,

Tony Osborne (22:25): I was just going to say $74 million for FAXX. That must be just the stationery budget, surely

Robert Wall (22:32): Just for the classified stamp

Brian Everstine (22:36): That just pays for a couple hotels and Pax River. That's about it.

Tony Osborne (22:41): I was just going to briefly say that if you are at the Royal International Air Tattoo this weekend, pay special attention to the Pakistani JF-17s, which are making their debut here at the show. They're marvelously painted, and of course the Pakistanis are making a very big deal of this. These is the first appearance of a Sino-Pakistani jet at the air tattoo, but it's really worth a look alongside the Russian-built tanker that's parked alongside them. Really quite interesting to see these aircraft parked up alongside Eurofighters and F-35s.

Robert Wall (23:18): All right, well, there you have it. Look forward to being there tomorrow and see you there, Tony. Thanks both of you for jumping on this call and thanks to our listeners for their time and attention and look out for what Tony Brian are writing from GASC and from RIAT, and thanks again for everyone. Remember to log on to your Apple Podcast or Spotify and give us a review there. And remember also to check back soon for another episode of Check 6.

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