The U.S. Air Force this week confirmed that is looking at various options to continue the critical ground surveillance mission performed by its four-decade-old E-8 Joint Surveillance Targeting Attack Radar System (JSTARS) jets.

Acknowledging the critical role the aging planes play in monitoring wide swaths of insurgent territory, the Air Force has kicked off two interrelated efforts aimed at finding the best way to “continue supporting the JSTARS mission,” reads a Dec. 8 e-mail from Air Combat Command (ACC) officials.

ACC will start looking at “a wide variety of possible approaches to the JSTARS mission area for the future” when it begins work on an analysis of alternatives in March 2010. The analysis is expected to be complete by mid-2011.

The ACC study will look at everything from upgrading the E-8s to replacing the fleet with a new aircraft and radars including the multiplatform radar insertion program known as MP-RTIP. The powerful active electronically scanned array was originally developed by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon for use on the now-canceled E-10 surveillance plane. A smaller version of that radar is now being put on the Block-40 version of the RQ-9 Global Hawk.

Meanwhile, Air Force Materiel Command’s Electronic Systems Center is looking at what it will take to sustain the jets in their current state as well as the options for installing numerous upgrades to the 17-plane fleet, according to the e-mail.

Designed in the late 1980s to spot Soviet tank columns in Europe, the E-8’s powerful radars are now being used to spot individual insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The planes have led to the discovery of hundreds of improvised explosive devices, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said Oct. 1.

However, the hot climate of the Middle East is making it increasingly costly to operate the 707-based jets, which are powered by early-1960s Pratt & Whitney JT3D engines. The planes burn so much fuel in a hot climate that they must immediately refuel from a waiting tanker after taking off from bases in the Middle East.

While Congress and the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, Ashton Carter, want the Air Force to purchase new engines for the JSTARS fleet, the air service has cut procurement money for the effort.

“You need to ask, if they don’t want to re-engine the JSTARS, what do they have to replace it with,” Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson said.

While the service has no immediate plans to replace the plane, the Air Force acknowledges that the E-8 “continues to present challenges in the realm of sustainment and modernization,” and this AoA is a step toward addressing those challenges.

Source: Defensenews.com