Fresh off the first combat deployment of its new EA-37B, the Air Force is nearly doubling the planned number of new electronic attack jets and projecting more than $3 billion in spending on the program in the next five years.
The aggressive expansion will bolster USAF’s electronic warfare abilities and potentially help it counter Chinese defenses.
In its 2027 budget request, the Air Force included $660 million to buy three new EA-37s, with plans to buy seven more through 2031—those 10 aircraft would expand the fleet to 22 total. The service has already acquired 10 of the modified Gulfstream G550 business jets and had planned to stop there despite a stated requirement of 12, but Congress gave it funding to acquire two more in its 2026 appropriations bill.
The EA-37 can jam enemy communications, navigation, and radar, and suppress enemy air defenses. Those effects allow users to disrupt enemy kill chains.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in written testimony for a congressional budget hearing that the decision to go to 22 jets will “expand our electronic attack capability.”
The first five jets delivered to the Air Force had a Baseline 3 configuration, while remaining aircraft will have Baseline 4. Baseline 3 includes the Advanced Radar Countermeasure System. Baseline 4 adds on the System-Wide Reconfigurable Dynamic Architecture, which allows the aircraft to receive future electronic upgrades.
The Compass Call flies at nearly 600 miles per hour and up to 45,000 feet with a range of 5,000 miles, according to Air Combat Command. Its ability to jam and disrupt enemy communications networks from high altitudes is important for disrupting advanced air defenses like that of China.
The Air Force jet complements the Navy’s EA-18 Growler, an F/A18F Super Hornet derivative that also performs electronic warfare.
Vital Asset
“The bottom line is it is a hugely important airframe and mission capability in the modern era,” Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
The U.S. military cut funding for electronic warfare aggressively after the Cold War. New, highly advanced adversary anti-access/area-denial systems are driving the need to rebuild that muscle across the services.
“And the cuts weren’t just to the equipment, it was to the human capital and the knowledge that understood it,” Birkey said. “We’ve got to recreate it fast.”
The 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., is the only group to fly the EA-37. The group’s 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron flew the plane’s first mission sortie in May 2025.
The EA-37B carries a combat crew of nine people, down from 13 carried by its predecessor, the EC-130H Compass Call.
The Air Force tapped L3Harris Technologies in 2017 to replace the aging EC-130H. The first EA-37 aircraft arrived in 2023, and the service has moved to divest the older platform—as of 2025, the Air Force had retired 10 of its 14 EC-130Hs.
The Future of EW
The increase in the EA-37 fleet comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s massive $1.5 trillion defense budget. But some analysts believe Congress will look to make some cuts, and while lawmakers have been supportive overall of electronic warfare funding across the services, Birkey said it’s not always a sure bet.
He compared the small fleet of less than two dozen aircraft to that of fighter jets, which number in the thousands and enjoy greater political support due to their impact on jobs across various regions.
“It’s very hard to advocate for funding at scale for the electronic warfare capability, simply because they don’t have, as usual, the constituency,” Birkey said. “They’re smaller in number. You can’t see it as easily. It’s hard to understand. It’s very classified.”
Future efforts could see the EA-37B’s capabilities integrated into other platforms, such as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a drone wingman planned to escort fighters and conduct various missions.
But the host of capabilities onboard the EA-37B make it a critical asset for ensuring its partners can operate safely in contested airspace, Birkey said.
“So, it could be going after radars. It could be going after cyber things. I mean, it could be going after command-and-control centers, it’s where are these linkages and how do you break them up or add friction so that they can’t operate,” Birkey said.