Yes, I Bit!!
Avtur..
Having over 200 operational missions under my belt (not as a FC though) I wonder how many near misses you would have had without any AWACS cover... Procedural separation is fine until every USN/USAF who arrives in theatre flies without reading spins (happened every time a new USN task group entered the adriatic - F14s off the deck straight up to F200 without looking). The problem is that most JJs are spoiled during small trg exercises - on Ops one cannot give full attention to each and every aircraft on console (usually anything up to 200 on ops not including the passing airliners - I remember a 100 page plus ATO) we don't have enough consoles on board. Especially true during Telic, although we were fairly safe being so far ahead of the F3 back-stop cap. Unfortunately, some-one in NATO has said that E-3s cannot deploy without a DAS, (duty of care and all that) and so until that nice man in the treasury pays for one.... you will get the other sort.
I will admit that ISTAR needs another operation. Having been on constant ops without a break from a few of months after entrering service (1992) to the end of Telic (2003), we need to be back leading where we belong. I miss flying 900 hours a year.