All-Seeing Airborne Base

The E-3A Sentry, with its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), is not outwardly impressive: an unremarkable Boeing 707 with a rotating disc, 30 ft. in diameter, mounted gawkily on its fuselage. The Sentry is outfitted with not a single gun or missile, and as jets go it is neither very fast (530 m.p.h. maximum) nor maneuverable. But packed on board is an incredibly sophisticated computerized radar system that makes each Sentry a $150 million mobile air-traffic control center. A state-of-the-art AWACS can, in any weather, track all aircraft and naval vessels (though not trucks or tanks) within 250 miles. A Sentry can stay aloft, at 30,000 ft., for eleven hours--and twice as long with mid-air refueling. As an all-seeing airborne base from which fighter and bomber strikes can be orchestrated, the AWACS has revolutionized aerial combat.

Work on the AWACS began eleven years ago, although the first Sentries were not flown until 1976. Boeing started with the airframe of a basic 707, strengthened it and replaced its four engines with more powerful jets. The plane's crucial external modification is the revolving radar disc, the 6-ft.-thick aluminum and fiberglass rotodome attached to the fuselage by two 11-ft. pylons. The radar was designed to work in tandem with an onboard high-speed computer, and its data is displayed on nine or more separate consoles inside the plane. It is this computer phalanx, with a program that can be amended in flight, that makes the AWACS a surpassingly powerful military tool.

The AWACS radar is a breakthrough as well, according to experts. All ground-based radar suffers a serious blind spot: if enemy planes fly low enough, they escape detection. Any craft flying within the Sentry's electronic swath, however, is spotted within moments of its takeoff, and AWACS will not (as does most other airborne radar) confuse trees and houses with aircraft. From each Sentry the positions of scores of planes and ships--enemy and ally alike--can be tracked automatically, and this information can be interpreted by a crew of 14 specialists. The Saudis' Sentries would be even more advanced than most of the 24 on duty with the U.S. Air Force: on the newest models, the storage capacity of each AWACS computer is quintupled.

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