New Radar Shields China's Prized Battle Aircraft From US Attack

Those reports suggested the skirmish highlighted how airborne command hubs can become priority targets once adversaries recognize their central role in air battle management. However, the extent to which Chinese-origin systems shaped the outcome remains uncertain.

Shooting down an AEW&C aircraft, however, is notoriously difficult. We Are The Mighty noted in February 2023 that the problem with taking down an AEW&C lies in the fact that it knows the location of nearly everyone, friend or foe, and can position itself outside the range of enemy air defenses.

The article notes that if an AEW&C gets too close, it can detect ground radars the moment they power on and guide friendly fighters and other assets to destroy those sites. If enemy fighters manage to take off, they must hunt the AEW&C independently, without the aid of ground radar. The article further states that the AEW&C can detect attackers beyond the latter's radar range, evade indefinitely, or vector friendly fighters to intercept.

The threat calculus is changing as long-range air-to-air missiles and stealth fighters push the engagement envelopes outward. While the US AIM-120D-3 and C-8 versions are credited with roughly 160 kilometers of range, the highly classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM)-intended to replace the AIM-120-is designed to significantly out-range those variants.

It retains dimensions to fit inside F-22 and F-35 internal weapons bays, raising a significant standoff threat to large, slow AEW&C platforms, particularly China's, which would face the challenge of countering such advanced weapons.

The growing reach and discretion of such weapons compresses the time window in which a targeted command aircraft can detect, assess and defeat an inbound shot.

Despite that threat, China has expanded the operational weight of its AEW&C fleet accordingly. In an April 2023 article for The War Zone (TWZ), Thomas Newdick and Andreas Rupprecht noted that China's AEW&C aircraft are increasingly employed in power projection across critical areas such as the South China Sea, providing not only airspace surveillance but also a vital look-down capability that contributes to maritime domain awareness.

Newdick and Rupprecht wrote that this mix of wide-area sensing and command-and-control extends the reach of fighter and bomber packages well beyond coastal radars and patchy maritime sensors.

Yet dependence creates its own exposure. In a Taiwan contingency, the loss of a single AEW&C aircraft to US fighters armed with long-range missiles could leave China with acute gaps in air battle management and situational awareness.

The knock-on effect would be to push the PLA back onto coastal or island radars or carrier-based AEW&C, which offer less range, endurance and radar power than land-based command aircraft, reducing the depth at which China could sustain air and maritime operations.

The picture on the US side is not uniformly reassuring. Grant Georgulis wrote in Breaking Defense this month that while the US aims to move air battle management from aircraft to satellites, that capability is decades away from realization, meaning dedicated airborne platforms remain essential.

Georgulis also notes that even the advanced F-22 and F-35 cannot handle theater-wide air battle management during combat, underscoring the need to field the E-7 in sufficient numbers to shoulder command-and-control loads across a vast battlespace.

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In a separate July 2025 article for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Georgulis pointed to a widening AEW&C capability gap between the US and China. He wrote that while China has iterated through the KJ-2000, KJ-500 and KJ-600 over the last two decades, the US has produced no new-generation AEW&C in that period, with prolonged counterinsurgency commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan emphasizing US Army funding over the US Air Force.

Georgulis further noted that the US still relies on the 1960s AN/TPS-75 ground-based radar for detection, and that the 1970s E-3 fleet suffers from readiness problems and parts shortages. He added that the E-7 is unlikely to be fielded in sufficient numbers until the 2030s.

Georgulis cautioned that this could leave an outnumbered, under-resourced and inferior US AEW&C force vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the numerically superior PLA Air Force (PLAAF) in a Taiwan contingency, crippling air battle management and risking air superiority.

Similar to AIM-260-armed F-22s and F-35s, Chinese fighters armed with the long-range PL-17 pose a significant threat to US AEW&C platforms, though the missile's actual effectiveness in combat remains uncertain.

For now, both Chinese and US advances remain constrained by untested technology and aging AEW&C capabilities.

That warning sits uneasily alongside China's advances: one side is trying to blind the hunter, while the other fears it lacks enough hunters to manage the fight. Both militaries face steep hurdles in protecting their airborne command fleets, and in any conflict, losses on either side could quickly unravel air battle management.

The contest is not about who fields the fastest jets or longest-range missiles, but whether either side can keep its airborne command planes alive long enough to manage the fight - and neither can be confident of success.

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