US Air Force’s nascent radar plane faces the axe

The Air Force’s plan to buy 26 new E-7 Wedgetail radar planes is in jeopardy as the Pentagon shifts its focus to space-based surveillance, the defense secretary said Tuesday. The service has already spent more than $1 billion to develop and begin production of its first two E-7s, which it has long argued are the more capable, more survivable successors to the decades-old E-3 AWACS needed for airborne domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific. But the program may be in trouble amid a Pentag