Australien — Boeing Wedgetail Aircraft Accepted Into Royal Australian Air Force Fleet

RAAF BASE WILLIAMTOWN — The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny [NYSE: BA] today announced that the Com­mon­wealth of Aus­tralia has accept­ed the first two Project Wed­getail 737 Air­borne Ear­ly Warn­ing and Con­trol (AEW&C) air­craft into the Roy­al Aus­tralian Air Force (RAAF) fleet.

The air­craft were accept­ed dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny today at RAAF Base Williamtown, the main oper­at­ing base for the Wed­getail fleet. 

“This major mile­stone demon­strates that the 737 AEW&C sys­tem is ready for oper­a­tional train­ing and use. It also rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of years of design, devel­op­ment, mod­i­fi­ca­tion and test­ing by the Boe­ing-led team to bring this com­plex sys­tem — the first of its type — to our first AEW&C cus­tomer,” said Mau­reen Dougher­ty, Boe­ing vice pres­i­dent, AEW&C Program. 

Accep­tance of the two Wed­getail air­craft means ground and flight oper­a­tions and main­te­nance of the air­craft are now ful­ly under RAAF con­trol. Boe­ing deliv­ered the two air­craft last year and has been sup­port­ing RAAF famil­iar­iza­tion train­ing on the AEW&C sys­tem, which includes the air­craft as well as the Oper­a­tional Flight Train­er, Oper­a­tional Mis­sion Sim­u­la­tor and Mis­sion Sup­port System. 

Boe­ing will deliv­er three more Wed­getail air­craft to the RAAF by the end of this year, includ­ing one upgrad­ed in the final AEW&C con­fig­u­ra­tion with Elec­tron­ic Sup­port Mea­sures. All air­craft in the Wed­getail fleet will be upgrad­ed to the final con­fig­u­ra­tion in ear­ly 2011. 

Project Wed­getail includes six 737 AEW&C air­craft, plus ground sup­port seg­ments for mis­sion crew train­ing, mis­sion sup­port and sys­tem main­te­nance. Based on the Boe­ing Next-Gen­er­a­tion 737–700 com­mer­cial air­plane, the 737 AEW&C air­craft is designed to pro­vide air­borne bat­tle-man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty with an advanced mul­ti­role elec­tron­i­cal­ly scanned radar and 10 state-of-the-art mis­sion crew con­soles that are able to track air­borne and mar­itime tar­gets simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The mis­sion crew can direct offen­sive and defen­sive forces while main­tain­ing con­tin­u­ous sur­veil­lance of the oper­a­tional area. 

Boe­ing also has AEW&C sys­tems in pro­duc­tion for Turkey and the Repub­lic of Korea. 

A unit of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is one of the world’s largest defense, space and secu­ri­ty busi­ness­es spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive and capa­bil­i­ties-dri­ven cus­tomer solu­tions, and the world’s largest and most ver­sa­tile man­u­fac­tur­er of mil­i­tary air­craft. Head­quar­tered in St. Louis, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is a $34 bil­lion busi­ness with 68,000 employ­ees worldwide. 

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Con­tact:
Dave Sloan
Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty
+1 253–657-8008
david.a.sloan@boeing.com

Ken Mor­ton
Boe­ing Inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions — Aus­tralia
+1 (61) 2–9086-3330
ken.morton@boeing.com

Text- / Bildquelle (source):
Boe­ing Defense, Space & Security