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Credit: UK Royal Air Force
LONDON—Differences between the Royal Australian Air Force’s E-7 Wedgetail and the variant being acquired by the UK have led to “significant delays” in the program, British defense officials have revealed.
Rupert Pearce, the UK’s newly appointed national armaments director, told a hearing of the Parliamentary Defense Committee on March 17 that the Defense Ministry had initially expected the Boeing 737-based airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft to be “largely proven out of Australia” when it signed a £2.15 billion ($2.7 billion) contract with Boeing in 2019.
However, the gap between the Australian and UK configurations “has meant a much higher level of obsolescence management and certification of new components,” Pearce said, which has contributed to delays.
Details of the issues around the program emerge as the RAF prepares for the arrival of the first of the three aircraft being procured into RAF Lossiemouth, Scotland, later this month. Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth, the service’s chief, told the Royal United Services Institute’s Air Power Conference on March 12 that the platform would “provide the RAF with world-class airborne early warning and battlespace management capability,” adding that the platform would be central to the control of the air.
The UK Wedgetail program has been controversial due to delays and cost pressures. The planned fleet was reduced from five aircraft to three, with only a modest cut in cost to £1.89 billion—a move lawmakers described as “extremely poor value for money.”
Development has also been affected by post-COVID supply chain issues and delays in approving the program’s full business case.
The first RAF aircraft made its public debut at the Royal International Air Tattoo in July 2025. The E-7 was scheduled to enter RAF service in 2024, but initial operating capability is now expected later this year.
Pearce also described Boeing as a “troubled partner.” While acknowledging the company’s efforts to bring the aircraft into service, he said Boeing had faced “difficulties inside their own aircraft programs” that had resulted in increased scrutiny within its certification processes.
The program has also drawn criticism from former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who described the procurement of the aircraft and associated radar systems as one of the “worst examples of dishonesty” he had seen from the armed services.
The UK program marks the first conversion of a “green” 737-700 into an E-7 in more than a decade, following the last conversion completed for the Republic of Korea Air Force by Korea Aerospace Industries. The UK aircraft are being modified by STS Aviation in Birmingham, England, which currently is the only E-7 conversion site in operation. The company also has been contracted to work on two prototype aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, although funding for the next phase of the U.S. E-7 program is yet to be secured.
The UK E-7 is intended to fill the capability gap left by the retirement of the RAF’s Boeing E-3 Sentry fleet in 2021.
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