One of the big holes in the Air Force’s ISR plan has been the wide area surveillance mission since the cancellation of the E-10 program in Fiscal 2007. The E-10 was the planned successor to the E-8 Joint STARS as well as potentially E-3 AWACS and RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft. Col. Dash Jamieson, director of ISR transformation at the Air Staff, told the Precision Strike Association gathering in Washington yesterday that the Air Force will re-examine the mission as its builds its Fiscal 2010 program objective memorandum, but she did not specify where the mission would lead or what platforms are being considered. “As we continue down the air dominance domain, it is going to be a factor to get through all the data that we’ve come upon,” she said. Despite the E-10’s cancellation, USAF has continued to fund development of the sophisticated ground-surveillance radar, or MP-RTIP, that was to go on the aircraft. A smaller variant of this radar is being integrated with the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. It could also be installed on the Joint STARS, industry has said, if the Air Force opts for that.
“Military history shows that the best defense is almost always a maneuvering offense supported by solid logistics. This was true for mechanized land warfare, air combat, and naval operations since World War II. It will also be true as the world veers closer to military conflict in space,” writes Aidan…