Boeing Delivers 3rd Peace Eagle Aircraft to Turkey.

The AEW&C aircraft was delivered at Konya Air Base, the fleet’s main operating base. Boeing is scheduled to deliver the fourth aircraft for the program in 2015. In addition to the four aircraft, the Peace Eagle program includes ground support segments for mission crew training, mission support and system maintenance.

The Boeing 737 AEW&C is a twin-engine airborne early warning and control aircraft. It is lighter than the 707-based Boeing E-3 Sentry, and mounts a fixed, active electronically scanned array radar antenna instead of a rotating one. AEW&C aircraft elevate the radar 10,000 metres above the earth’s surface so that the radar can ‘see’ everything out to a range of hundreds of kilometres. Low flying aircraft can no longer ‘sneak up’ by approaching below the radar horizon. A Boeing AEW&C cruising at an altitude of 10,000 metres can maintain surveillance over a surface area of 400,000 square kilometres at any given time. Over a 10-hour mission, the AEW&C could cover over 4 million square kilometres. The radar is capable of simultaneous air and sea search, fighter control and area search, with a maximum range of over 600 km (look-up mode).