Originally Posted by
melmothtw
Are they allocated to, or are they the UK's contribution to? Because they are different things.
The former would suggest that they are indeed part of a bigger fleet, and so the 3 number isn't so important. The latter would suggest that they are a UK asset that we assign to the NATO mission as and when required, and so the 3 number means we probably aren't going to have too much slack to do that.
The UK Component of the AEW Force is routinely tasked by NATO, with all UK requests for AEW tasking having to go through the NATO tasking channel: the UK cannot just task an aircraft without permission from NATO. (Six of the 7 Sentries were allocated to NATO with the seventh as an in-use reserve. The NATO Tasking Allotment Group (TAG - used to be the Force Allotment Group, but the US members did not like being a member of FAG) meets quarterly and looks at AEW tasking requests and allots them accordingly amongst both the NATO Component at Geilenkirchen and the UK Component, formerly at Waddington and soon to be at Lossiemouth. At the moment, of course, all of NATO's AEW tasking falls to the Geilenkirchen squadrons with the UK Squadron joining in once it has reached IOC.