Chief of Staff Brown, who had initially expressed some reticence about buying E-7s earlier this year, makes clear the service now sees the Wedgetail as “an option to be able to get the capability much faster than if we were to start a new start from scratch.”

At the same time, however, he said that any purchase of these planes would “gives us a path” to what the service apparently really desires: a new space-based radar capability, which the General suggested

could be less vulnerable than a system based on a commercial airliner.