AWACS Still Matters: Why an E-3 Near Venezuela Should Worry Everyone
This is actually two stories in one. An E-3 creeping around Venezuela... and people worried that the E-3 is too old to be creeping around Venezuela.
This is actually two stories in one. An E-3 creeping around Venezuela and people worried that the E-3 is too old to be creeping around Venezuela.
Let’s talk about the news first: An E-3 Sentry showing up on public flight tracking near Venezuela sounds like a small detail, the kind of thing you scroll past while your coffee cools.
It is not a small detail. It is the kind of airborne chess piece you only bother moving when you want the other guy to notice you are done playing checkers.
The War Zone tracked an E-3 sortie operating close to the Venezuelan coast, visible on FlightRadar24, after a stretch where these aircraft were either absent or simply not showing themselves on public feeds.
The optics matter. The United States does plenty of things quietly in the Caribbean. This was not quiet. This was a deliberate choice to be seen.
In the same reporting, the E-3’s appearance sits inside a broader pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s regime, with publicly trackable US Navy sorties also hugging the edge of Venezuelan airspace. That is a signal you send with intent, because you want Caracas, and everybody watching from Moscow and Beijing, to understand that the US is building a picture in real time and coordinating force in the open.
Now take that scene, an elderly but still dangerous E-3 prowling off Venezuela and put it next to what is happening back home in procurement land.
I’ve made my distaste known regarding the Pentagon’s plan to scrap the E-7 Wedgetail and replace the geriatric Sentry with Hawkeyes… The Navy’s little AWACS.
Because of that, NATO nations have reportedly scrapped their plan to buy the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail because without US supporting the same platform, the economics just didn’t make sense. Now, in Washington, Congress has been throwing lifelines at the Wedgetail effort even after the program took hits, because everyone involved knows the same uncomfortable truth.
We are not ready to live without airborne battle managers. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.
Jesus, it’s like an on again, off again romantic comedy: The Pentagon wants to hurt national security by crippling our command and control and Congress found the balls to save it.
So let’s talk about what the E-3’s return to the public stage actually means, and why the fight over the E-7 is really a fight over how modern wars get coordinated.
