Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told House appropriators on Tuesday that the Pentagon has sent a budget amendment to the White House after funding for the E-7 Wedgetail was zeroed out of the 2027 budget request. The move marks a sharp turn for a program that had been under pressure for two years and now appears headed back into the fight for money and priorities inside the Pentagon.
Hegseth said the early warning aircraft will be crucial for future conflicts, a notable shift from his position last year, when he echoed Air Force arguments that satellites, not the E-7, should replace the E-3 Sentry. He told lawmakers that the department has moved away from a “divest-to-invest” mindset and that some battlefield systems still need to be funded because “there are gaps that need to still be filled.”
The E-7 has been through a turbulent budget cycle. The Air Force asked to zero out funding for it in its 2026 budget request, but lawmakers later put back more than $1 billion after the service sought to eliminate the program. That fight came as one E-3 was heavily damaged during the Iran war and only a few E-3 aircraft remain, raising fresh questions about how the military will cover airborne warning and control missions if the aging fleet keeps shrinking.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink signaled last month that the service is not walking away from the aircraft. Speaking at Space Symposium in Colorado, he said the capability the E-7 will provide is important and added that the Air Force is still finalizing how to proceed. Late last month, he told House lawmakers that the Air Force is planning to buy five E-7s in addition to the two prototypes already under contract.
That leaves the Pentagon trying to reconcile two messages at once. An Air Force spokesperson said the budget request does not include Wedgetail funding, while the service also said it is evaluating options to resource the E-7 program in FY 2027 so it can deliver Rapid Prototyping aircraft and continue Engineering and Manufacturing Development activities. The contradiction reflects a broader budgeting contest in which the Air Force is also planning major spending on space-based systems, including $7 billion for a new airborne moving-target communication capability.
The debate over the E-7 sits inside a larger argument about what kind of warfare the Pentagon expects next. The aircraft is being discussed as a replacement for the E-3 Sentry, also known as AWACS, but leaders have repeatedly wrestled with whether satellites can shoulder more of the mission. Hegseth said the department now sees the aircraft as part of the answer rather than a relic to be replaced, telling lawmakers, “I think it has a future” and “It has a place on the battlefield.”
The question now is not whether the E-7 matters, but whether the Pentagon will fund it in time to keep a shrinking airborne warning fleet from becoming an even bigger gap. For planners already juggling missile threats, space systems and aging aircraft, the budget amendment suggests the fight over the Wedgetail is not ending — it is moving to the next round.
