How long before they put the E-2D dome on a multi engine MQ-X?
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E-2D Advanced Hawkeye - Less than a year out.
- Thread starter snake020
- Start date
I was wondering about that myself. When you’re parked in the Hummer Hole the nose was right up against the foul line as it was.
Oh yeah no, fuck that. My back and butt were dead after five hours, the seats suck.
Probably a long time, especially if you are talking about replacement and not supplemental. A LOT of issues to wade through before that becomes practical, and even then there would be considerable risk.
From NAVAIR E-2D page:
"Aerial refueling-equipped aircraft will also feature new endurance seats, fuel system enhancements, and new exterior lighting. Aerial refueling increases the range and persistence of the E-2D AHE. The "eyes of the fleet" will see further and wider, equipping the warfighter for ever-evolving threats."
Digging the wood ejection handle
As far as I recall, the requirement with the AR plumbing modifications only stipulates that the new "endurance" seats are for the front end folks. Us window lickers are fated to suffer through the same old fart-soaked seats we've always had. Better use some squadron funds to buy some inflatable camp cushions!
Additionally, the probe on the early model -Ds (forget if this was AA-1 or -2) looked like it could use some Cialis....was just a little too droopy.
The Pax Bros were always bummed it didn't turn out as proud and majestic as it could have been.
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We all knew the “seat improvements” promises were going to be bullshit. The last time they “improved” the seats we got the hard as fuck seat pans that fucked up everybody’s backs. Nothing like walking to the plane carrying our foam seat cushions and looking like even bigger dorks in front of the rest of the air wing than we already did.
Yeah, not exactly a big veiny triumphant bastard. Did they ever solve the problems with the sight picture for the left seat flying to contact with the drogue? I rode along for one or two early dry plug flights in Pax and the pilot was having to contort his neck and practically lay on the yoke to see the drogue. I honestly walked away thinking “this thing is never going to fucking work.”
I spent about half my flying career in VAW and the other half in UAS, and personally I’m confident that the last community they’d ever transition to unmanned is AEW/ABCC. (I also think the whole “the last manned aircraft pilot has already been born” thing is nonsense but that’s a whole other discussion) There are just too many tech hurdles and inherent vices to ever make unmanned AEW a more practicable solution than a manned one. UAS comms/network relays and sensor platforms augmenting the E-2, maybe; the EQ-4s did a lot of good work in CENTCOM. But you’d lose a lot and gain not much by going to UAVs.
Supplemental. Like an MQ-25 but souped up enough to mount a radar dome and enough loiter time to make it worth the investment. Piloted by AVO warrants (7370), with a complement of typical E-2 aircrew except they’re doing their AEW jobs from a computer terminal on the carrier.
UKR has now downed 1-2x RUS AEW aircraft to date, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for that surface to air or air to air threat to be posed in a future conflict with a peer competitor (even IRN or DPRK)
The problem with that idea is bandwidth and lag time. Going BLOS from the Boat means you’d have to do it by SATCOM and moving all the data taken in by the E-2 currently would necessitate an enormous (and expensive) data pipe. Plus whenever you’re not in the sat footprint, you’re out of luck. And you’re vulnerable to jamming - the Russians among others are doing a lot of work in fucking with UAS in the EM spectrum. The lag time with satellites seems like it wouldn’t be a problem but it really can be, enough to make a difference in AIC. And while not risking a crew in a high threat WEZ sounds good, the reality is you’re not going to send a big, expensive AEW UAS into that threat area either.
So as I say, it’s more expensive, more technologically difficult, you lose a lot, and the advantage would be questionable at best.
Some smaller, less expensive, more easily replaced UAS to augment manned AEW is worth looking into, however.
Can confirm. I've done some BLOS work, and it's a tricky bastard.
We have become network-centric (I would argue too much so), which makes us susceptible to EA, and our enemies know it.
I don't think we should use Russian AEW&C operations as a window into competent war fighting ideas.
Fester covered the details well but it just isn't realistically feasible right now, and won't be for a while. One thing to note, the option you propose would likely cost more than the AEW assets we have now when everything is said and done.
As for the threat to AEW and support assets, that's a significant problem and getting worse but something the smart folks out there are well aware of and taking into account. The simple fact is that we will likely not the full and complete coverage that we gotten used to in the past 30 years against near peer threats, even if we had supplemental unmanned AEW coverage.
Yes and no. I was also thinking about the shootdown of our BAMS-D in 2019.
I’m aware of the technical hurdles and limitations of satcom for A-ISR including foreign countermeasures. I’m guessing an AEW radar suite would require similar bandwidth to an MQ-9’s HD FMV plus other data, but that is a guess.
According to wikipedia, the MQ-25 is testing carrying AGM-158C munitions with a newly mounted E/O sensor ball, so the Boeing execs are at least thinking about BLOS ops and other uses for the Stingray. The LRASM weighs over 2,700 lbs per wikipedia so the lift is apparently there with the MQ-25’s Rolls Royce engine for a mini dome of similar weight.
Maybe the juice isn’t worth the squeeze to develop an unmanned tailhook AEWC, but I would say it’s more likely than not we’ll see it by the 2040s when the E-2D service life is expected to get closer to its end.