Probably buy them, get them stripped out and leased to Ryanair like the Air Taker 330s!

Why no orders from the USAF?

Because their E-3 fleet is up to date having had full investment?

It'd be hard to operate 'closely' with the Ozmates if they were to 'customise' it's capability.

737 lacks the range to operate with the Aussies closely regardless of capability!
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I think what we are getting at here is that the RAF and RAAF will operate closely in Coalition type Ops (read ME) and given membership of the Five Eyes community, information sharing will be ongoing.

No, it's not. And there are no current plans to shut down the NG line - there are still commercial NG deliveries scheduled, and the NG will remain the basis for the P-7 and P-8 indefinitely.

NL

That is not the plan with the P8 so why this ac? Pity we chose PFI convenience over STANAG compliance.

Aren't AWACS short lived these days - not like the last one we had

Probably not a lot, It should come with a pie warmer as a standard fit. We were not big on the US Foreman grill. Hopefully the MOU has been written up properly and we can get a percent on FMS sales. To recover some of our developmental investment. We sunk a lot of money into it to fix it. It was a problematic programme.

The good news is that the yanks really liked it when it was deployed to the ME

I am a bit out of touch but assuming the E7 is purchased how many RAF aircraft will require a Boom for AAR?

But the MOD considers Air Tanker fit for purpose and the people whose promotions floated on Air Tanker are now comfortably retired and working as non execs somewhere in the MIC?

From a pedantic spotter PoV the "E-7" marketing name is annoying. The next in the official MDS sequence is actually E-12, but no US service has applied for that since none use this derivative.

Boeing should really have known that since the original E-7 was a 707 derivative, later redesignated EC-18B.

The MoD is actually contracting for five 737-7ES, which of course have a different airframe than the 737-8FV ( Poseidon ).

Spotting mode off.

As I've posted elsewhere, this strikes me as unalloyed good news. The Australians have spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years ironing out all the bugs and maturing the E7 into what by all accounts is a superb capability. Building on that, the aircraft is also currently being put through an A$580m upgrade programme, all the phases of which are due to be fully rolled out by mid 2022. Perfect timing. Unusually, we have (and are taking) the opportunity to step in at precisely the right time and benefit from all these hard yards having been done. It will deliver a huge uplift in capability - great outcome. Assuming of course that we don't b*gger it up by insisting on UK customisation (pie warmer aside), but I think that lesson has finally been learned (witness C17 and P8) and I doubt we'll have that problem here.