The E-3 Sentry is the original AWACS — the Boeing 707 with the rotating dome that has been NATO's eyes in the sky since 1977. It quarterbacked the Gulf War, and is now an aging, shrinking fleet in a retirement crisis, its E-7 replacement in turmoil — a gap laid bare when Iran destroyed one in 2026.
The E-2 Hawkeye is the US Navy's carrier-based radar aircraft — the twin-turboprop rotodome plane China's KJ-600 copies. Six decades of iteration, an AESA-radar E-2D that quarterbacks the fleet and cues SM-6 missiles over the horizon, and the airborne command node over the Red Sea and Iran.
The KJ-600 is China's carrier Hawkeye — the first fixed-wing airborne early-warning aircraft to fly from a Chinese carrier, catapult-launched off the Fujian's electromagnetic system. It finally gives PLAN carriers the organic radar picture US carriers have had for decades.
The KJ-3000 is China's next-generation flying radar — a Y-20B-based heavyweight AEW&C in flight test since December 2024, which the Pentagon says will probably be the world's first with a digital radar. Beijing has never acknowledged it; every number is OSINT or state-media claim.