Last week the House Armed Services Committee issued its Roles and Missions Panel’s report, which may seem a tad short on substance with its short essays meant to provoke critical thought. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), panel chair, writes, “The panel’s report does not attempt to give full answers. … The job of the panel was to break some ground and plant a few seeds.” Jointly, the panel members call the report “a small first step in serious consideration of the roles and missions of not just our military services but our entire national security organization.” (Congress has directed DOD to conduct a new roles and missions review every four years, beginning this year.) However, in one essay, the panel chastises the Air Force for almost single-handedly creating the electronic warfare gap beginning in 2012. It berates the Air Force for its lack of foresight on the now-cancelled B-52 Stand-off Jammer program and its failure to move more quickly on the Core Component Jammer, which, combined, “creates a capability gap beginning in 2012, when the Air Force had committed to begin performing part of the airborne EW missions.” And, it chastises the service for not providing the necessary funding to upgrade both the airframe and mission systems for the EC-130H Compass Call communications jamming aircraft, which the panel notes has become a critical asset in the war on terror. The panel urges the Air Force to “step up with its role and commit to an [airborne electronic attack] solution.”
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.