Sweden Just Turned a Reaper Drone into an AWACS

This might be the perfect solution to US AWACS drama

The MQ-9B SkyGuardian. General Atomics and Saab

General Atomics and Saab just lobbed a grenade into the airborne early warning market, and honestly, it was about time.

If you’re a longtime reader, you know how angry I was at the US Air Force for canceling its E-7 Wedgetail program (as its replacement for the geriatric E-3 Sentry), in favor of some yet-to-be-funded “space-based” Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) solution.

So, today’s headline is more than welcome. Saab just revealed the new airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) version of the MQ-9 Reaper; the drone that’s been circling the globe for a decade, now with eyes and ears big enough to make even the Royal Navy perk up.

This platform is poised to fill a yawning gap left by Western fleets trying to replace the legendary but aging E-3 Sentry. The E-3 is my 707-based flying dinner plate that kept the Cold War orderly and let American and NATO pilots sleep at night.

The Paris Air Show Surprise: AEW&C MQ-9B Goes Global

There’s no better place for a stealthy plot twist than the Paris Air Show. It’s a venue famous for champagne, billion-euro arms deals, and a schedule packed tighter than a French commuter train.

Here, General Atomics and Saab dropped the kind of surprise that has defense attachés and industry bloggers sweating through their tailored suits: an MQ-9B drone, now rolling off the assembly line with more airborne early warning gear than most countries can fit on a business jet.

General Atomics, for its part, had brought every flavor of MQ-9B for the occasion: the SkyGuardian, the SeaGuardian, even the new STOL (short takeoff and landing) prototype that could theoretically leap from a ski jump on Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.

The pitch was direct: forget waiting a decade for a manned Wedgetail or ponying up for custom AWACS conversions. The MQ-9B AEW&C is shipping to anyone with a checkbook and a defensible patch of sky.

But what really set tongues wagging was the word “persistent.”

The MQ-9B’s multi-day endurance suddenly makes persistent AEW&C coverage as routine as weather balloons (and a lot more useful). For countries like the United States, locked in procurement purgatory, it looked like an off-the-shelf answer to the E-3 Sentry problem (minus the 1970s vintage, the high operating costs, and the never-ending search for spare parts from museums).

Add to that the pitch-perfect timing: The Royal Navy is publicly sweating the retirement of its Crowsnest helicopter system, the US Marines are still chasing their MUX unicorn, and half the world’s air forces are on the rebound from AWACS sticker shock.

If you stop and think about it, this is an interesting twist on the larger US drones that dominated the Global War on Terror. A good friend I served with in the Air Force went on to become a Reaper drone pilot, dropping Hellfire missiles on terrorists in Afghanistan while sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada.

Once Ukraine introduced the smaller quadcopter-style drones as weapons on the battlefield, suddenly the larger Global Hawk and Predator drones of the last decade looked downright ancient.

The AEW&C MQ-9B is actually an elegant solution to both NATO’s massive fleet of long-endurance drones and its sudden AWACS shortage.

It never occurred to me, but Saab just showed the world that the future of airborne early warning is less about custom airframes and more about plug-and-play modularity; anywhere, anytime, at a price point that won’t induce political heartburn.

Suddenly, the idea of persistent, networked, globe-spanning airborne radar coverage makes perfect sense.

In Paris, as the ink dried and the cameras flashed, one thing was clear: The AEW&C MQ-9B went mainstream the moment it was unveiled, and a lot of procurement officers are now wondering if their “interim solution” just arrived five years early.

The MQ-9B SeaGuardian. General Atomics and Saab

Smarter, Cheaper, and Uncrewed

Let’s be honest, the global AEW&C scene has always been dominated by flying dinosaurs: lumbering jets packed with a dozen operators, a coffee maker that hasn’t worked since the Clinton administration, and maintenance crews with more job security than most monarchs.

The MQ-9B AEW&C flips the old equation on its head and asks a new question: What if you could field world-class radar coverage without a flight deck full of graybeards or a billion-dollar sustainment tab?

The first thing that jumps out at me is the price. Traditional AWACS solutions, whether it’s the E-3 Sentry, Wedgetail, or even newer business jet conversions, are not just expensive to buy; they’re wallet-shredders to operate.

Hangars, flight crews, special runways, and a platoon of IT specialists to keep the radar blinking (that was my job in the USAF).

None of that comes cheap.

By contrast, the MQ-9B arrives with a running cost at a relative bargain. You want all-day coverage? You just launch another one. No crew change, no hotel bookings, no “duty day” limitations. You can scale up as needed, or scale down when the threat dies down and the bean counters come knocking.

But “cheaper” doesn’t mean dumber. This drone is a high-altitude brain on wings, loaded with Saab’s gallium-nitride AESA radar tech that’s better at picking out targets than a Swedish customs officer with a grudge. Instead of a human crew dozing through shifts at 35,000 feet, you have ground-based operators watching feeds, sharing data, and, most importantly, staying out of missile range.

When the sensors pick up a new low-flying drone swarm or cruise missile, they can send alerts straight to interceptors, ground crews, or a ship somewhere over the horizon via the upgraded Link-16 connection.

If you’re a military planner for a country not named the United States, you’ve probably got more threats than spare parts. The MQ-9B’s plug-and-play design means you can fit it with whatever comms, weapons, or sensors you need.

Need persistent radar coverage over a strait, a forward base, or a fleet? No problem.

Want to bolt on an EO/IR sensor and turn it into a multi-mission ISR workhorse? Done.

The days of buying single-mission, gold-plated platforms that must be treated like a Fabergé egg are fading fast; this drone is about fielding a network of “good enough” assets everywhere you need them.

And then there’s the fact that nobody’s risking lives to put this thing in the air. AEW missions are high-value, high-risk: every enemy planner wants to knock them out first.

Russia even invested in a nuclear air-to-air missile to reach into the “backfield” where an AWACS lives during a fight, presumably, just to blind NATO. I’ve written about that recently.

But when your early warning eyes are flying uncrewed at 40,000 feet, suddenly you can take risks you’d never allow with human aircrews. If you lose a drone, you replace it, not hold a national day of mourning and a congressional inquiry.

For Western nations caught in the awkward adolescence of replacing the E-3 Sentry or desperately seeking an “interim” solution that won’t become a permanent budget sinkhole, the MQ-9B AEW&C is something new: a modular, scalable, truly persistent airborne early warning tool.

Why the Brits Are Interested (And Everyone Else Should Be)

The Royal Navy’s dilemma is a familiar one: how do you keep up with the Joneses (or the Russians, or the Chinese) when your only AEW platform is a helicopter that was designed when Top Gun was in theaters?

The Crowsnest Merlin is set for retirement by 2029. The Brits have already started talking about “hybrid air wings” with drones and long-range missiles alongside their F-35Bs, but they need airborne radar that can keep pace.

Well, Saab just gave it to you blokes.

General Atomics is ready to sell a STOL (short takeoff and landing) MQ-9B STOL variant, theoretically able to operate from big-deck carriers or even amphibious assault ships: think more Bay of Biscay, less Battle of Midway.

And if weight proves an issue, the British have “Project Ark Royal” brewing, aiming to fit carriers with catapults and arresting gear for launching heavier drones. The point is, the AEW&C MQ-9B can slot into almost any concept of operations without breaking the bank or the logistics chain.

America’s Own Search for the Next Early Warning Bird

I don’t want to rehash my earlier rant about the insane cancellation of the E-7 in the US Air Force. Suffice it to say, with the ancient E-3 Sentry fleet coughing through its final flight hours, the search for America’s next airborne early warning workhorse has turned into a bureaucratic relay race.

The original plan? Slide gracefully from the creaky E-3 into the digital embrace of Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail, with its new-school radar and a little bit of that Pacific “pivot to Asia” personality. The Royal Australian Air Force is already flying these bad boys, and my sources say they love them.

But the current Pentagon circus has a knack for tripping up even the best-laid plans, and now, with E-7 procurement under threat, the Air Force’s AWACS future is suddenly as fuzzy as the reception on a 1980s UHF TV.

Meanwhile, the Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye still rules the deck for carrier air wings. It’s tough, reliable, and about as easy to relocate as an offshore oil rig. But the Hawkeye is a boutique solution, not a mass-market fix. You’re not putting E-2Ds on every airstrip from Guam to Greenland, especially if you want something that can loiter over remote islands or play sentry above NATO’s flanks for days on end.

This is where the MQ-9B AEW&C suddenly looks less like a novelty and more like a pragmatic answer.

With the Air Force eyeing distributed operations and “Agile Combat Employment” in places where concrete runways are optional and hangar space is a fantasy, drones that can persist for 24 hours and relay targeting data over satellite comms start to look a lot more attractive. The real promise here is scalability; being able to deploy five or six of these at a fraction of the cost and have them networked into a live sensor grid that sees everything from cruise missiles to “Russian army” Toyota convoys.

For US homeland defense, it’s another problem entirely.

The last few years have made it clear that low-flying cruise missiles and, now, swarms of cheap attack drones represent an existential headache that legacy platforms can’t watch for everywhere at once.

Plugging those gaps with affordable, high-endurance AEW&C drones? It’s an option the Pentagon can’t afford to ignore, especially as the clock runs out on the E-3s and the debate over the E-7’s sticker price drags on.

The MQ-9B SeaGuardian. General Atomics and Saab

An MQ-9B AEW&C package could be the ultimate sandbox for future tech. Modular sensors, digital comms, AI-assisted battle management, all riding on a platform that’s already flying in half a dozen allied air forces. That’s more than “gap-filler;” it’s a blueprint for how the US and its partners could decentralize airborne early warning across theaters and continents.

The US Air Force currently operates around 206 active MQ-9A Reaper drones. These are part of a larger MQ-9 fleet that the Air Force plans to maintain through 2035, topping off at around 140 airframes post-retirement of some older blocks.

As of September 2024, there were 206 active MQ-9A Reapers in service.

In total, the USAF has procured over 300 MQ-9s, though not all remain operational.

According to Air & Space Forces reporting, plans include retiring older Block 1 variants by 2024, followed by select Block 5 airframes through 2027. After that, the service will stabilize its fleet at 140 Reapers through 2035.

So, right now, you're looking at roughly 200–210 fully operational MQ-9A Reapers in the US Air Force arsenal.

So, while Congress debates and Boeing counts its lobbying chips, don’t be surprised if the next “eye in the sky” isn’t a jet bristling with radomes, but a family of drones orbiting quietly overhead, sending data to wherever America needs it, no flight suits required.

But I believe the biggest takeaway here is survivability and redundancy.

In a future fight, where adversaries have long-range missiles, hypersonic weapons, and a talent for mischief, survivability is about being everywhere and nowhere at once.

Shoot down one drone, and the others pick up the slack. Lose a single, manned AWACS, and you’re suddenly flying blind over half a continent. With distributed sensors, coverage gaps are a thing of the past, and the enemy’s targeting calculus just got a lot harder.

It’s also about reach, literal and figurative. A single MQ-9B can park itself on the edge of a battlespace for the better part of a day, peering down over mountain passes, ocean straits, or contested borderlands.

String a few of them together, and suddenly you’re not just watching one front, you’re surveilling entire theaters: the Baltics, the Taiwan Strait, the Black Sea, all at once. This isn’t the world of limited sortie rates and aircrew rest cycles. It’s the age of persistent stare.

Then there’s integration. A drone-centric AEW&C network means your sensors are fusing data with ground radars, satellites, naval ships, and fighters in real time.

Targeting data from a SeaGuardian off the coast of Norway can cue a Patriot battery in Poland or a destroyer in the Mediterranean. This is what every general has been mumbling about for years: “multi-domain awareness.”

Now, it’s an achievable, upgradable architecture; one that’s a nightmare for any adversary thinking about a surprise attack.

Finally, survivability isn’t just about dodging missiles; it’s about logistical resilience. Drones can fly from remote airstrips, need less maintenance, and don’t demand a crew rotation or a VIP room at the O Club.

If you want a sensor that doesn’t call in sick, complain about the chow, or need to be rescued behind enemy lines, you’ve found your candidate.

This drone is coming online at a perfect time: just as Western air forces face a fork in the road. The old E-3s are flying on borrowed time. Wedgetail’s fate is tied up in American budget politics. The E-2D Hawkeye is a niche platform. Space-based alternatives are years away from operational reality.

The MQ-9B AEW&C might not be the “forever solution,” but it’s the bridge, the insurance policy, and the combat enhancer the West needs right now.

If you’re in the market for an airborne radar that’s tough, flexible, and doesn’t need a hotel room at the end of a 12-hour mission, Saab has you covered. As the landscape of air defense shifts, this is the kind of tool that lets smaller countries get in the AEW&C game and lets the big players keep their sky-sentinels flying until the next revolution comes along.

For the Royal Navy, for the Marines, for every NATO country biting its nails about E-3 retirement… here’s your sign: the future of airborne early warning might not have a cockpit at all.

Just a satellite link, a radar pod, and a Reaper that doesn’t know how to quit.

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