Wedgetail

The Wedgetail is an Australian-designed and built high-fidelity airborne early warning (AEW) and command and control aircraft. It is an advanced surveillance and command aircraft used by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The Wedgetail is an upgrade of the Boeing 737 airliner and was developed by Boeing Defence Australia in partnership with the RAAF.

The Wedgetail aircraft has a advanced radar system and is equipped with an evaluation system called the Automated Identification System. This system can track multiple targets and can track them over long distances. The aircraft is also equipped with aampa Attack Control Architecture which increases its effectiveness in command and control scenarios.

It was first introduced in 2003 and was initially used for ground strike reconnaissance and battle management. Since then, it has been used to fulfill a number of other roles including patrol, communication relay and as command and control platform.

The Wedgetail aircraft have the call sign of "Wedgetail" from which the name of the plane is derived. It is named after the Wedge-tailed Eagle which is the national bird of Australia.

As of 2014, six Wedgetail aircraft are in service with the RAAF with a further six more in development. In service it was operating by a crew of minimum four including one instructor and two trainee pilots, as well as two system operators.