Acquisition Catastrophe
Pete Hegseth is a drunken dipshit.
The U.S. has been using the Boeing 707 E-3 Sentry aka the AWACS for airborne activity and we have 21 still in service.
The Air Force was expecting 26 E-7 Wedgetails. This is a 737 based system, which is a tiny fraction of the airliner that the 707 is, but that’s fine, because electronics are smaller, lighter, and cooler than they were fifty years ago when the AWACS came into service. I have concerns about replacing the four engined 707 with twin engined variants and that’s across the spectrum - tankers as well as airborne C&C/intel systems.
What is the Air Force getting? Five Navy E2-D Hawkeyes. This is a very capable plane if the mission is supporting a carrier air wing flying from the same flight deck. It’s a cramped, slow, underpowered thing compared to the Wedgetail.
I hope Congress slaps the shit out of Hegseth over this nonsense. The Air Force will famously piss money away on large, fast, pretty airplanes that can’t do their assigned job *cough* F-35 Fat Amy *cough*, so this move is just absolute crazypants.
This isn’t a starting point for negotiations, this is a “Let me discredit myself even more” on the part of Hegseth. He’s not fit for the role of our top military official, he’s a TV show host with a substance abuse problem, and he needs to be sent back to Fox News, where his incompetence will not endanger all of us.