The Air Force has zeroed out the E 7 Wedgetail from its 2026 budget, eliminating its only airborne backup for ground and air tracking while betting on satellite constellations that won't be operational until 2028. Nearly 20 retired general officers have urged Congress to restore…
The Air Force just canceled the only airborne system that could replace it — and the replacement doesn't exist yet.
The E-7 Wedgetail, an airborne battle management and targeting platform, was zeroed out in the proposed 2026 budget to free up funding for space-based tracking satellites. Nearly 20 retired general officers wrote Congress urging it be restored: the satellites are not ready.
They are right. And the consequences of being wrong extend further than the budget fight suggests.
The Wedgetail was supposed to replace the JSTARS fleet, the airborne radar system that tracked ground vehicles for decades before its retirement. It also filled a role called GMTI, ground moving target indication: the ability to locate and follow moving objects on the ground or in the air from an aircraft. The Space Force is now pursuing the same mission from low-Earth orbit, via a constellation the NRO is building. The first production GMTI satellites will not launch until 2028, according to a service spokesperson.
That is a two-year window where the coverage gap is not theoretical.
Prototype AMTI — air moving target indication, which tracks aircraft rather than ground vehicles — is already on orbit. General Gregory Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command, confirmed earlier this year that the service has a number of prototype systems in place. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at the Space Symposium that space-based AMTI is technically feasible and grounded in demonstrated technologies.
Prototype systems prove a concept. A constellation provides coverage. The gap between those two states is where the risk lives.
AMTI is also harder than GMTI: it must measure altitude in addition to position and velocity. "You not only have to provide the fighter pilot or the bomber pilot position of the threat, velocity of the threat, direction of the threat, but altitude of the threat," retired General Kevin Chilton told Air & Space Forces Magazine. "And that is a lot tougher mission than GMTI." An analysis of alternatives for AMTI is due this fall.
The budget numbers tell the scope of the bet. The FY2027 request includes $1.1 billion for GMTI procurement and $235 million for GMTI R&D, totaling roughly $3.3 billion for ground-tracking satellites over five years. For AMTI, the Pentagon is requesting $7.1 billion through a separate reconciliation package to expand a high-band radar satellite system, plus $140 million for complementary sensing approaches. Congress separately included $2 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for AMTI satellites. The Space Force total FY2027 request is $71 billion, up from $40 billion last year, with a procurement account that would increase to $19 billion — more than five times last year's request.
Nine companies hold base contracts through Other Transaction Agreements for AMTI work, a multi-vendor approach that spreads risk across contractors. It does not close the coverage window.
What the budget debate is not connecting is what this gap means for autonomous weapons. Real-time target tracking from orbit feeds the sensor layer that next-generation autonomous strike systems depend on. If that layer has a two-year hole, the weapons that were supposed to act on its data cannot be trusted to operate independently in the interim. The Space Force is building the brain. The Air Force canceled the eyes. Nobody in the budget fight is saying that part out loud.
The AMTI analysis of alternatives delivers this fall. If it endorses the space-based approach, the Wedgetail cut becomes irreversible. If it flags meaningful timeline risk, Congress may move to restore funding. The $2 billion in the reconciliation package is not enough to build the full constellation anyway. The five-year spending profile implies closer to $10 billion just for AMTI. The budget commits to a bet. Whether it pays off depends entirely on whether 2028 arrives on time.