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This article originally appeared in the March 26, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine.U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson calls it a “bold move”: cancel a $6.5 billion purchase of high-tech ground surveillance aircraft and shift that mission to a network dubbed “advanced battle management system.” The argument the Air Force makes in its 2019 budget request for not buying new aircraft to replace the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, is rather straightforward. It can’t survive modern air defenses. The Air Force in 2011 started a five-year study that looked at options for replacing the aging fleet of...

Joint STARS aircraft undergoing work at a contractor facility may have been sabotaged. A tersely worded statement issued by Robins Air Force Base on Tuesday indicated that workers at Northrup Grumman’s Lake Charles, La., facility have discovered severed wires on an E-8C jet. “To ensure the integrity of the maintenance process, we are working with Northrop Grumman to get to the root cause,” the statement added. “The matter is currently under investigation and more details will be released as they become available.”

The US Air Force has completed an analysis of alternatives (AOA) for its next generation ground moving target indication (GMTI) radar aircraft fleet, but top service officials say the service can't afford to implement the study's recommendations. "The reality is there is not enough space to undertake a new start business-class ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] platform," USAF chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz told the US Senate Armed Services Committee on 20 March. "We simply don't have the resources." The USAF approved the study in January and forwarded it on to the US Department of Defense's office of Cost...

Former Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne wants the Air Force to get rid of large surveillance and reconnasisance aircraft such as AWACS and JSTARS, which are vulnerable to attack because of their huge radar cross-sections, and take the money saved and shove it into the Joint Strike Fighter program. Wynne made his arguments on the website Second Line of Defense, run by the international defense consultant Robbin Laird. I spoke with Wynne this morning. His essential argument is that large aircraft such as these, while possessing excellent capabilities, are so vulnerable in time of war that the enormous amounts of...

Afghanistan, American aircraft equipped with radar (that can see what's on the ground), are tailing Taliban suspects driving through remote areas. Operators in these JSTARS aircraft can track movement of ground units, or individual vehicles, over a wide area. Operators can also use the detail mode to pick out specific details of what's going on down there, like tracking the movement of vehicles fleeing the scene of a battle, or meeting with Taliban leaders. JSTARS is real good at picking up trucks moving along highways on flat terrain, but the equipment has now been tweaked to deal with the mountains...

Since early 2005 the US Air Force has been using a new tool in the battle against IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). The US Air Force Joint STARS (JSTARS) E-8 aircraft have been constantly active in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and has been doing a lot more than just looking at vehicle traffic on the ground. Last year JSTARS radar aircraft were used to track down terrorist bombers in Iraq. This is done by using the JSTARS radar to track where the attackers go after an attack. Many of the attacks take place in sparely populated places, and at night....

/24/2006 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- High over Iraq, an E-8C Joint STARS aircraft surveys hundreds of miles of the country at a time, looking for insurgent activity, controlling those situations and taking action if needed. The aircraft's crew ultimately keeps ground troops safer by communicating with convoys and directing air power to quell the enemy. The Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System mission has two parts. The first is to radio relay with convoys throughout Iraq. Through radio and a text-messaging system, convoys can contact Joint STARS for help. Air National Guard Maj. Thomas Grabowski, senior...

The Pentagon's internal watchdog has begun investigating two additional contracts handled by convicted former Air Force official Darleen Druyun and could add three more deals to its growing list of possibly tainted procurements, the Pentagon said on Monday. Druyun is serving a nine-month prison term for violating federal conflict-of-interest laws by negotiating a $250,000-a-year job with Boeing Co. while still overseeing its business with the Air Force. She also admitted steering contracts to Boeing as far back as 2000. "In the course of our review, in an effort to be as thorough as possible, we decided to take a look...

Anti-missile system to use blimp 25 times larger than Goodyear's The United States has been developing what could become a new concept in destroying enemy ballistic missiles in their boost phase. The concept calls for stationing a huge blimp out of enemy aircraft or missile range that would detect preparations for and launch of any enemy ballistic missile. The blimp would then relay the information to fighter jets that would shoot down the enemy launcher or missile. The project has been sponsored by the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency. The agency has awarded Lockheed Martin a $40 million design and...

Now that another of the low-numbered cards is off the table, Vince Brooks's doomsday deck is now short one card. But this poker game is not over, and the most valuable cards are still missing. The capture of Aziz al-Najim, a ranking Baathist, only means that he wasn't bright enough to slip away to Syria when the limos pulled out of Baghdad. The Abu Dhabi film of Saddam--supposedly filmed on April 9, the day his statue was pulled down and Baghdad fell--is meant only to revive the concern of the average Iraqi that Saddam is still alive. So long as...

Rising JSTARS High-Tech Radar Plane to Coordinate Gulf Ground War By Paul Eng March 20 — When it comes to fighting in Iraq, military planners and analysts anticipate fleets of jets dropping thousands of precision-guided bombs will produce a swift and decisive blow from the air. The E-8 JSTARS' radar, seen in the bulge underneath the front of the plane, will help allied commanders spot moving Iraqi tanks and other threats to coalition forces advancing on Baghdad. (AP Graphics) Whether such massive air attacks in the opening days of the war will produce the desired "shock and awe" effect to...

Thermobaric, thermoshmaric: The Battle of Shah-i-Kot Valley has established what should have been perfectly plain from the beginning of the American action in Central Asia, which is that victory--that is, the destruction of the forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the subsequent stabilization of Afghanistan-- is not possible without the commitment of American ground troops. The momentous mistake of Tora Bora, where the climax of Operation Enduring Freedom turned into its anti-climax, as we gave control of the porous border with Pakistan to a bunch of lethargic and corruptible Afghan irregulars-- that mistake was corrected at Gardez. There...