Boeing has successfully conducted the first flight of the United Kingdom’s E-7 Wedgetail aircraft, marking a significant milestone for the Royal Air Force (RAF) programme.<\/p>\n
A Boeing flight-test crew performed functional checks during the inaugural flight from Birmingham Airport, as part of the aircraft’s test and evaluation phase.<\/p>\n
Stu Voboril, Boeing vice president and E-7 program manager, said the flight was an important step in ensuring the E-7 delivers on promised capabilities.<\/p>\n
“Our team is committed to ensuring the E-7 delivers the safety, quality, and capabilities we’ve promised to our customer as we prepare for delivery of the UK’s first E-7 Wedgetail to the RAF,” Mr Voboril said.<\/p>\n
The aircraft is one of three 737 NG planes undergoing modification in Birmingham by a team of over 100 people at STS Aviation Services.<\/p>\n
RAF Group Captain Richard Osselton praised the milestone as representing outstanding effort from all parties involved in the programme.<\/p>\n
The E-7 Wedgetail will provide the RAF with advanced Airborne Early Warning and Control capabilities, including long-range detection and tracking of multiple airborne and maritime threats.<\/p>\n
Maria Laine, president of Boeing UK, Ireland and the Nordics, highlighted the company’s commitment to delivering the crucial capability to support UK national security.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to delivering this crucial capability to support the UK’s national security and contribute toward regional stability,” Ms Laine said.<\/p>\n
The future UK E-7 fleet will operate from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, where infrastructure facilities are nearing completion.<\/p>\n
Boeing is also building E-7 aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, while Australia, South Korea and Turkey currently operate the platform.<\/p>\n
The aircraft will undergo further flight tests and evaluation before receiving its RAF livery later this autumn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boeing has successfully conducted the first flight of the United Kingdom’s E-7 Wedgetail aircraft, marking a significant milestone for the Royal Air Force (RAF) programme. A Boeing flight-test crew performed functional checks during the inaugural flight from Birmingham Airport, as part of the aircraft’s test and evaluation phase. Stu Voboril, Boeing vice president and E-7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3494,"featured_media":96907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[227],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96911,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96910\/revisions\/96911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofaviation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}