The stalwart E-8C Joint Surveillance Goal Attack Radar System plane flew its last operational mission Sept. 21, capping a three-decade profession as a military “eye within the sky” in conflicts from Operation Desert Storm to the war in Ukraine.
The sortie is a stepping stone on the airframe’s journey into retirement, because the Air Force reshapes its inventory for the demands of recent combat.
“It’s bittersweet,” 116th Air Control Wing boss Col. Christopher Dunlap said in a release Monday. “I’ve been flying this mission on this aircraft because the spring of 2003. There’s been a number of changes over time.”
JSTARS is a modified Boeing 707 that uses an extended sensor on the belly of the jet to trace the movement of ground forces around a region and share that information with other aircraft and troops below. Combat units depend on the fleet to focus on potential targets and stop friendly forces from veering into harm’s way.
Its final mission departed from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, a hub for U.S. military operations across Europe and points farther south. The Air Force declined to reply where the sortie took place or what it entailed.
“The aircraft’s sensors provided invaluable intelligence, guiding strategic decisions on the bottom and enhancing operational effectiveness,” the service said in the discharge.
The fleet’s exit from military operations signals the top of an era in battlefield intelligence.
E-8Cs have flown in military operations from Desert Storm in 1991 to Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, to the surveillance of Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border. They’ve also assisted in noncombat missions like transnational drug busts.
The fleet withdrew from U.S. Central Command in 2019 after an 18-year deployment supporting counterterror operations.
“The E-8C JSTARS has played an important role in countless operations, supporting troops and safeguarding nations,” the Air Force said on Facebook.
The fleet, which initially included 16 jets, has been managed by two Air Force units: the energetic duty 461st Air Control Wing and the Georgia Air National Guard’s 116th ACW, each at Robins Air Force Base.
Together, they’ve flown greater than 14,000 sorties since 2002, once they merged because the service’s first “blended” wing, the service said. The 461st ACW logged its last operational sortie in June.
Plans to sunset the JSTARS fleet have regularly come to fruition over the past several years.
The Air Force briefly launched an effort to solicit one other aircraft to exchange JSTARS but abandoned that program in fiscal 2019. After sparring with Congress over the fate of the fleet, the service began retiring E-8Cs in February 2022.
As a substitute of maintaining an unlimited inventory of jets which are purpose-built for highly specialized missions, the Air Force now wants to make use of a network of satellites, aircraft sensors and ground radars to gather the identical targeting and tracking data.
The service hopes that approach will make it more resilient against potential attacks on its command-and-control enterprise, get monetary savings on aircraft maintenance and use its airmen more effectively.
Two of the unique 16 aircraft remain at Robins, in line with the Air Force release. The last JSTARS is slated to depart for the Air Force’s graveyard of retired aircraft at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, in the course of the first week of November.
Airmen should still use the jet for flight proficiency training until it’s formally retired, Air Force spokesperson Capt. Dustin Cole said.
As its centerpiece fleet dwindles, Robins has began taking over latest missions that the Air Force views as more relevant in future wars.
Nine E-11A airborne communications relay planes will probably be based on the central Georgia installation, in addition to a command-and-control squadron, a bunch focused on electromagnetic spectrum warfare, and an office to handle the Air Force’s acquisition of future communications technologies generally known as the Advanced Battle Management System.
Some airmen are already working to open those units, while others are in training to staff them.
“You may’t expect a wing who has an extended history of excellence to sit down around and do nothing when there may be loads of work left to do,” Dunlap said in an emailed statement. “It is just not in our DNA.”
Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.