AWACS
The United States Air Force began using the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft in 1977 following ten years of prototype design, development, and testing. The U.S. currently has a fleet of 33 AWACS, the largest in the world. NATO possesses 17, the United Kingdom has seven, Saudi Arabia has five, and France has four.
The AWACS plane is a modified Boeing 707 commercial jetliner characterized by the strikingly large thirty-foot rotating antenna mounted on its roof. This antenna can detect and track other aircraft within an area of 175,000 square miles (450,000 km2), flying at any altitude or over any terrain, allowing the AWACS to detect aircraft that remain hidden from ground radar. The planes’ mobility is a crucial feature, providing for the use of this sophisticated detection equipment whenever and wherever needed; AWACS can be deployed quickly into military conflict “regardless of intensity” according to Boeing, who claims AWACS are the “world’s standard for airborne early warning systems.”
The Saudi AWACS bear Arabic writing on their exterior with a translation below, “Royal Saudi Air Force”. The roof-mounted antenna is an AWACS plane’s dominant feature; it is a smooth black disk with a white stripe down the center, and it rotates constantly. The antenna is about a fifth of the length of the plane and it sits higher above the roof than the plane’s roof sits above the ground. Another noticeable difference from a commercial 707 is the lack of passenger windows. Colonel Walt Kowalik said about the lack of windows, "We don't want 'em... we don't want our people looking out of windows. We want them concentrating on what's in front of them." An Associated Press writer described blue carpet and “subdued” lighting, “as in a movie theatre.”
Read more about this topic: US/Saudi AWACS Sale