The sale of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia by the United States administration of President Ronald Reagan was a controversial part of what was then the largest foreign arms sale in US history. The sale saw objections from a majority of Americans, prominent US Senators, the State of Israel and the Israel lobby.
The sale included five E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft and eight KE-3 refueling aircraft, with spare parts and support, delivered between June 1986 and September 1987.
AWACS
The United States Air Force began using the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft in 1977 following ten years of prototype design, development, and testing. The U.S. currently has a fleet of 32 E-3s, the largest in the world. NATO possesses 14, the United Kingdom has seven, Saudi Arabia has five, and France has four.
The E-3 is a modified Boeing 707 commercial jetliner characterized by the strikingly large thirty-foot rotating antenna mounted on its roof. This antenna can detect and track other aircraft within an area of , flying at any altitude or over any terrain, allowing the AWACS to detect aircraft that remain hidden from ground radar. The planes' mobility is a crucial feature, providing for the use of this sophisticated detection equipment whenever and wherever needed; AWACS can be deployed quickly into military conflict "regardless of intensity" according to Boeing, who claims AWACS are the "world’s standard for airborne early warning systems."
The Saudi AWACS bear Arabic writing on their exterior with a translation below, "Royal Saudi Air Force". The roof-mounted antenna is an AWACS plane’s dominant feature; it is a smooth black disk with a white stripe down the center, and it rotates constantly. The antenna is about a fifth of the length of the plane and it sits higher above the roof than the plane’s roof sits above the ground. Another noticeable difference from a commercial 707 is the lack of passenger windows. Colonel Walt Kowalik said about the lack of windows, "We don't want 'em ... we don't want our people looking out of windows. We want them concentrating on what's in front of them." An Associated Press writer described blue carpet and "subdued" lighting, "as in a movie theatre."
Reaction in the United States
Only months old, the Reagan Administration announced its plans to sell five of the U.S.-made AWACS to Saudi Arabia. The proposal, part of the largest foreign arms sale ever, was not received warmly on Capitol Hill where Congressional consent was required. The AWACS proposal was also harshly rejected by Israel and disapproved of by a majority of Americans. Upon formal introduction of the AWACS proposal to Congress in the fall of 1981, many Senators reacted coldly. "This is one of the worst and most dangerous arms sales ever," proclaimed Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Donald Riegle said, "We are being asked to submit to a kind of blackmail; the price gouging of oil." These Senators feared that the AWACS sale was not designed to promote stability, as would be claimed by the Administration, but to secure U.S. oil resources. Such a deal would mean technology for oil access, and as Kennedy said, a potentially dangerous deal at that. Senator Bob Packwood, who as a Republican was a member of Reagan’s party, was also a leader of opposition to the AWACS deal in the Senate. Packwood spelled out the danger he saw in arming Saudi Arabia: "They have displayed a hostility that must be interpreted as their deliberate intentions to promote continued instability in the Middle East." Packwood questioned the choice of Saudi Arabia as an arbiter of peace saying, "Let’s think about which nations have been seriously committed to negotiating peace in the Middle East and which have not shared that commitment." With the recently ended American hostage crisis in Iran fresh in mind, Americans were reluctant to sell military equipment to anyone. In fact, a May 1981 poll showed that 52% of those surveyed opposed arms sales to any country, and only 19% wanted the U.S. to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia.