Sentry Over the Falls

A bit of 'airplanes over the Falls' randomosity today...

A NATO E-3 Sentry soars over WNY's most well-known water feature.

For those of our readership of right around zero to three who are unfamiliar with the type, here's the scoop: The E-3 Sentry is an AWACS bird developed from the Boeing 707 airliner. Now, I know what you're gonna ask: 'What's this AWACS business?' Well, lemme tell ya.

AWACS = Airborne Warning and Control System. Basically, these jets are equipped with BIG radars and other sensors, fly around in circles, often in areas of conflict, and keep an eye on... everything. Whether it's in the air or under the air, they see it. They are the prime command and control asset either on or above most any battlefield (oh, sorry, the current terminology is 'battlespace'). If they're tasked with protecting a given area and unknown aircraft approach, the folks sittin' inside these flying radar stations are gonna notice, and they're gonna tell their friends, and their friends are gonna go take a looksee and say, "Heeeyyyy... whutcha dooooin?" And then, well, the story can splinter into any number of random scenarios from there.

The TLDR is this: The E-3 can do everything from simple surveillance, to coordinating a multi-layer defense of the battlefie... errr... battlespace, to helping you find your car keys. Well, they probably wouldn't be tasked with the latter mission, but they're undoubtedly capable.

Anyhoo, as to the photo; we have no further info. We dunno who took the photo, why they took it, or when. However, the internet tells us that the pic may have come from the NATO archives. And of course, you can always believe everything you see, hear, and read on the internet, right? Well, that's probably a reasonable claim, and may very well be true. But until we discover more concrete info concerning this photo, we'll just leave it at that.

Photo source/credit unknown

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