NATO wobbles on E-7 Wedgetail order: Could Saab GlobalEye be in with a chance?
After the US Department of Defence proposed cancelling the US Air Force E-7 Wedgetail order, NATO has also begun to reassess its commitment.
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August 15, 2025
After the US Department of Defence proposed cancelling the US Air Force E-7 Wedgetail order, NATO has also begun to reassess its commitment.
Although senior US lawmakers have moved to keep the E-7 programme alive, the back-and-forth has created uncertainty in the long-term scale and price of the Wedgetail.
According to Euractiv, NATO is now re-evaluating the E-7 acquisition, with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) set to deliver a verdict by September.
NATO reconsiders E-7 Wedgetail in the wake of a potential US cancellation
NATO had committed to buying a fleet of 14 Boeing E-7 Wedgetails to replace its ageing E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.
There are currently 14 E-3s in service with NATO, and all are more than 40 years old.
The E-7 is a natural successor to the E-3, but as the US gets cold feet on the procurement of the platform, NATO is concerned about rising costs.
To buy the jets, the initial Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (iAFSC) Support Partnership was established in 2023. Eight member states are signed up to participate: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania and the USA.
Although the project is separate from the USA’s programme to acquire 26 E-7 Wedgetails to replace its own E-3s, NATO is concerned about whether the US will continue to support the programme financially, or if the funding of the E-7s will fall to the other seven member states.
Lower E-7 orders overall, caused by the potential US cancellation, could push up the per-unit price of the E-7 for the NATO members. A spokesperson told Euractive that NATO and participating countries are “evaluat[ing] the available options”.
Could the EU’s ‘buy local’ push see NATO reconsider the Saab GlobalEye?
If NATO does get cold feet on the Boeing E-7 deal, the window of opportunity for Saab’s GlobalEye could well reopen.
Saab’s platform was in the running for the NATO AEW&C aircraft replacement in 2023, when Saab submitted a competing bid against Boeing’s E-7 pitch. Reports suggest the Northrop Grumman E-2D was also under consideration, as was a business jet CAEW solution from L3Harris.
Ultimately, NATO picked the E-7 Wedgetail, saying that it was the only “currently available” system that could satisfy essential operational needs on the near-term timeline. The first E-7s are due to be operational by 2031.
But Saab lamented the ‘rushed’ procurement process, claiming that NATO never entered discussions with the company and had already made its decision by the time the Saab proposal arrived.
“I didn’t like that process,” Micael Johansson, CEO at Saab told Breaking Defense “We were asked to put in our offer, and then they didn’t really go into discussion with us, because they had already decided they had to go and buy Wedgetail, and they had to do it quickly because otherwise they wouldn’t get capability until 2032.”
While NATO doesn’t have the same ‘buy local’ priority that the EU employs, a shift towards “strategic autonomy” in defence procurement is already a theme. With many NATO members also EU nations, the Saab offer could be increasingly attractive.
GlobalEye marries the long-range Erieye ER AESA with a suite of maritime/ground sensors on a Bombardier Global 6000/6500, giving strong multi-domain coverage from a smaller, faster business-jet airframe that some argue is more survivable and cheaper to run than the Wedgetail. Combining a Canadian airframe with European technology certainly ticks some strategic boxes.
NATO could look to a compromise, maintaining a partial purchase of E-7 Wedgetails, but complemented by orders of the GlobalEye. Saab’s aircraft would operate under national flags but could be made available to NATO tasking under existing pooling and sharing arrangements, a model that Saab has been actively pitching.
At this stage, a full re-open of the bidding process is unlikely, as a formal reset of iAFSC would jeopardise NATO’s target of having new AEW&C capabilities by 2031.
NSPA expects to share an update on E-7 costs in September, by which time we may know if the US plans to stick with its order or not. Only then will the future of NATO’s ‘eyes in the sky’ become clear.
