AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 281 / 285

Plate 281 of 285 · Modern age · Airborne early warning and control aircraft

Boeing E-7 Wedgetail

Wedgetail AEW1 (E-7A), WT001, painted as WT001 ‘01’, a Boeing Wedgetail AEW1 (E-7A) of the Royal Air Force’s No. 8 Squadron, the first of the RAF’s airborne early warning aircraft, converted from a second-hand Boeing 737-700 by STS Aviation Services at Birmingham: a twin-engined airliner with a low swept wing and plain tips without winglets, two CFM56-7B turbofans in flattened-bottomed nacelles on pylons under the wing, and the Northrop Grumman MESA ‘top hat’ radar on the rear fuselage, a flat-sided array on a pedestal with a long beam along its top carrying a dark radome at its nose, two ventral fins canted outward under the rear fuselage, a row of blade aerials along the spine, sensor fairings under the nose and in the tail cone and a refuelling receptacle on the crown behind the flight deck: light grey overall with most cabin windows blanked, a small Union flag and dark grey ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ titles above the forward cabin, ‘WT001’ above the No. 8 Squadron crest on the nose, a low-visibility roundel between yellow, pale blue and pink squadron bars and ‘WT001’ on the rear fuselage, ‘01’ and the squadron’s jambiya badge on the fin above a small pale red and blue flash, and the forward doors and overwing exits outlined in yellow, as photographed between its roll-out at Southend in October 2024 and its arrival at RAF Lossiemouth in 2026 (shape from Boeing’s own airport-planning drawing of the 737-700; the radar’s width and thickness and the ventral fins come from photographs, some of Australian E-7As; the small stencils are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as WT001 ‘01’, a Boeing Wedgetail AEW1 (E-7A) of the Royal Air Force’s No. 8 Squadron, the first of the RAF’s airborne early warning aircraft, converted from a second-hand Boeing 737-700 by STS Aviation Services at Birmingham: a twin-engined airliner with a low swept wing and plain tips without winglets, two CFM56-7B turbofans in flattened-bottomed nacelles on pylons under the wing, and the Northrop Grumman MESA ‘top hat’ radar on the rear fuselage, a flat-sided array on a pedestal with a long beam along its top carrying a dark radome at its nose, two ventral fins canted outward under the rear fuselage, a row of blade aerials along the spine, sensor fairings under the nose and in the tail cone and a refuelling receptacle on the crown behind the flight deck: light grey overall with most cabin windows blanked, a small Union flag and dark grey ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ titles above the forward cabin, ‘WT001’ above the No. 8 Squadron crest on the nose, a low-visibility roundel between yellow, pale blue and pink squadron bars and ‘WT001’ on the rear fuselage, ‘01’ and the squadron’s jambiya badge on the fin above a small pale red and blue flash, and the forward doors and overwing exits outlined in yellow, as photographed between its roll-out at Southend in October 2024 and its arrival at RAF Lossiemouth in 2026 (shape from Boeing’s own airport-planning drawing of the 737-700; the radar’s width and thickness and the ventral fins come from photographs, some of Australian E-7As; the small stencils are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (2.6 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Wedgetail AEW1 (E-7A)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Wedgetail AEW1 (E-7A), WT001 modelled here.

History

The Wedgetail AEW1

In the late 1990s Australia set out to buy its first airborne early warning aircraft, and under Project Wedgetail, named after the wedge-tailed eagle, the country’s largest bird of prey, it chose Boeing’s proposal in 2000. Boeing based the aircraft on the 737-700 airliner, strengthened as for the Boeing Business Jet, and instead of the rotating radar dish of the older E-3 Sentry it carries a fixed radar, Northrop Grumman’s Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA). Its antennas sit back to back in a flat, upright structure on the rear fuselage, nicknamed the ‘top hat’, with a long beam along its top that looks forwards and backwards, so the radar can steer its beam electronically and watch any part of the sky without turning. The first aircraft flew with the radar fitted from Boeing Field in Seattle on 20 May 2004.

Making the radar and the mission systems work together proved far harder than planned, and the programme ran years late. The Royal Australian Air Force accepted its first two aircraft in 2010 and all six by June 2012, and the Wedgetail reached initial operational capability that November. It has since flown over Iraq and Syria and, from Germany, watched the airspace around Ukraine. Turkey bought four as the Peace Eagle and South Korea four as the Peace Eye, and in 2022 the US Air Force chose the type, as the E-7A, to replace its own E-3 Sentries.

Britain’s six E-3D Sentries were old and costly to keep flying, and in March 2019 the Ministry of Defence ordered five E-7s, to be converted from second-hand 737-700 airliners by STS Aviation Services at Birmingham Airport. The 2021 Integrated Review cut the order to three, and the Sentry was retired that September, leaving the RAF without an airborne early warning aircraft of its own for several years. The first RAF aircraft, Wedgetail AEW1 WT001, was rolled out in its RAF scheme in October 2024 and flew to RAF Lossiemouth on 21 May 2026 for test and evaluation, before handover to No. 8 Squadron, the unit that flew the Shackleton AEW.2 and the Sentry before it.

This airframe

Wedgetail AEW1 WT001

WT001The airframe modelled

WT001 is the first of the RAF’s three Wedgetail AEW1s, serials WT001 to WT003, all second-hand Boeing 737-700s converted by STS Aviation Services at Birmingham Airport. No Wedgetail is in a museum, and WT001 was chosen because it is the only RAF Wedgetail well photographed in full markings, from both sides: at its roll-out at Southend in October 2024, in flight, at Birmingham and at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2025, and on its arrival at RAF Lossiemouth in May 2026. The model shows it as those photographs do: light grey overall with most cabin windows blanked, a small Union flag and ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ above the forward cabin, ‘WT001’ above the No. 8 Squadron crest on the nose, a low-visibility roundel between the squadron’s yellow, pale blue and pink bars on the rear fuselage, ‘01’ and the squadron’s jambiya, a curved Arabian dagger, on the fin above a small fin flash, and the forward doors and overwing exits outlined in yellow. Unlike Australian Wedgetails it has plain wingtips, with no winglets or wingtip sensor pods. Its shape comes from Boeing’s own airport-planning drawing of the 737-700 and photographs of WT001; the width of the radar, which no photograph shows head-on or from above, and the ventral fins were checked on photographs of Australian E-7As. The small stencils are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The RAF’s Wedgetails are based at RAF Lossiemouth with No. 8 Squadron and none is in a museum.

All 285 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.