LJ,
As RA intimates, the pods have little effect upon lift induced drag in comparison to the E-3D's HF fairings. I don't believe that the MR2 chaps noticed any difference in fuel burn after they had YG retrofitted in the 80s. My understanding is that the D's HF fairings actually did act in a similar fashion to winglets; I've personally also never seen any noticable difference in HF performance between an E-3D and other variants.
As far as the op utility of YG goes, yes it is better than an RHWR but a C2 platform needs more than just an RHWR!! I would disagree with RA that its the amount it detects which causes the problems. If you put any modern ESM system at 30K it'll (hopefully!) detect a lot. There are other factors that dictate how useful or otherwise it is but as RA says, this is nor the forum to discuss such things. Hopefully EAGLE will improve things, but given current funding issues, I wouldn't bet on it.
Regards,
MM