The Air Force’s plan to buy 26 new E-7 Wedgetail radar planes is in jeopardy as the Pentagon shifts its focus to space-based surveillance, the defense secretary said Tuesday.
The service has already spent more than $1 billion to develop and begin production of its first two E-7s, which it has long argued are the more capable, more survivable successors to the decades-old E-3 AWACS needed for airborne domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific. But the program may be in trouble amid a Pentagon-wide review of major defense acquisition programs and a push to do more from space.
“If we have systems and platforms that are not survivable in the modern battlefield or they don’t give us an advantage in a future fight, we have to make the tough decisions right now…so the E-7 is an example of that,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a House appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.
Instead, Hegseth said, the Pentagon will fund “existing programs” more robustly—but it’s unclear whether he was talking about upgrading today’s AWACS aircraft or accelerating efforts to orbit satellites that can do intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But he did say that DOD is funding programs that will “surpass” airborne ISR capabilities, and predicted that in the future, most ISR would be done from space.
Hegseth said he’s “willing to continue to review” the E-7 program, but that “investments in existing systems that carry forward that capability, alongside even bigger investments in space-based ISR, gives us the kind of advantages we need on a future battlefield.”
Meanwhile, some lawmakers remain bullish on the program. The House Appropriations committee added $500 million to the program in its 2026 draft defense spending bill, even though the Pentagon has yet to release its full 2026 budget proposal.
A cut or cancellation to the E-7 program would be a major blow to Boeing. The company and the service reached a deal last year for two test aircraft, after negotiations dragged on for over a year. The price tag for the first two Wedgetails, which are expected to be delivered in 2028, at a whopping $2.6 billion.
While Hegseth’s comments don’t bode well for the E-7 program, the Air Force’s budget hasn’t been released yet, so it’s unclear how much the program will be cut. An Air Force spokesperson said they don’t have further details. Boeing declined to comment.
Last month, Air Force Chief Gen. David Allvin testified that the E-7 is currently the only platform that can fill the role of the E-3, and that the service can’t resurrect the E-3 because it is a “dying platform.”
Asked about migrating ISR to space, Allvin said “we just need to ensure that we’re adequately covering all parts of that as we do that migration before we just go from one domain to another.”
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman reiterated Allvin’s point during the May 6 hearing and said no one system will be able to fill the “full spectrum of operations” so there needs to be “a mix of systems.”
