Although our military's large-scale "Joint Sword-2024A" military exercise has come to an end, our military's patrols, training, and patrol operations around the Taiwan Strait are still continuing and have entered the normalization, which is really very exciting. According to the news quoted by the global network as a source from Taiwan media, within the 24 hours from 6 a.m. on 27 June to 6 a.m. on 28 June, 18 sorties of our military planes and six warships were active around the Taiwan Strait.
What people did not expect was that the Americans would come over to stir up the situation in the actions of our navy and air force at our own doorstep. It is reported that just as the Chinese Air Force was carrying out operations around Taiwan Island, the US military brazenly dispatched an E-3B airborne early warning plane through the Bass Strait and into the airspace southwest of Taiwan.
It is very likely that the US military dispatched early warning planes to carry out activities around Taiwan Island to stir up the situation in the Taiwan Strait and to reflect the US military's "sense of presence." This move is undoubtedly a blatant provocation and makes people outrageous. However, having said that, although the U.S. military seems to be menacing, it actually once again embodies the "paper tiger" essence of the United States' "lustful inwardness", and the reason why the author will say this is because although the E-3 early warning aircraft dispatched by the U.S. military this time seems to be advanced, it has actually lagged behind the same type of equipment of our army for at least 20 years!
The E-3 early warning aircraft, nicknamed "Watchtower", is an early warning aircraft developed by the US military in 1970 with the Boeing 707 aircraft as a platform, the first flight time was in 1975, and the US Air Force has more than 30 E-3 series early warning aircraft. This type of AWACS aircraft has been around for nearly 50 years and is still the main AWACS aircraft of the US Air Force.
This kind of early warning aircraft, in the Cold War era, can be said to be quite advanced, but now it seems that it is actually far behind the times. Although the E-3 early warning aircraft has undergone many improvements, the most essential radar system is still a very "old" AN/APY-1 S-band pulsed Doppler radar. As a comparison, even the Air Police-200 early warning aircraft, which our army uses for the nature of "coordination assistance", have already installed active phased array radars, not to mention the rest of the more advanced Air Police-500, Air Police-2000, etc. Considering that the Air Police-2000 early warning aircraft, which is equipped with active phased array radar in our army, has already made its first flight and entered service at the beginning of this century, it has been almost 20 years since then. Therefore, we can say without exaggeration that this E-3 AWACS aircraft of the US military is no longer at the technical level of our army 20 years ago.
In addition to the backwardness of the radar itself, the body of the E-3 AWACS aircraft is already quite old. Although the E-3 AWACS aircraft is still in service in large numbers, many have been in service for 40-50 years, and because the Boeing-707 itself has been discontinued in 1988, it is becoming more and more difficult for the E-3 AWACS aircraft to obtain spare parts for maintenance. According to the statistics of the US Air Force itself in 2022, among the more than 30 E-3s in the US Air Force, the proper rate, that is, the proportion that can be dispatched, is only about 59%, and this number is bound to decline in the foreseeable future. To put it mildly, this time the US E-3 was able to come to the Taiwan Strait, which is really a bit "embarrassing for it".
According to the plan of the US military, the first early warning aircraft installed with an active phased array radar in the US Air Force, the E-7 early warning aircraft will not be delivered until at least 2028, although the radar used by this early warning aircraft has basically caught up with the advanced phased array radar of our army in terms of technology, but it uses a vertically installed phased array radar + top balance beam antenna, which has certain deficiencies in the field of vision, and is not as good as the air police-500 early warning aircraft designed by our army's three-sided array.
At a time when the radar of our army's early warning aircraft has been fully phased array, and the advanced Air Police-500 early warning aircraft have been put into service in batches, the early warning aircraft of the same level in the US military have not yet been put into service, which reflects the huge technological gap between the Chinese and US air forces in the field of early warning aircraft. In addition, it is very likely that our military has already begun to develop a new generation of advanced early warning aircraft based on the Y-20, so it is very likely that the US military's E-7 will face the dilemma of "falling behind when it enters service." After all, the technological gap between the Chinese and US militaries in the field of early warning aircraft for at least 20 years is not something that the US military will be able to catch up with in a moment and a half. As for the more backward E-3, it is even more "old-fashioned", and daring to come to the Taiwan Strait to provoke is just a joke.