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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Deployment to the Middle East felt truly real for RAAF pilot \u201cH\u201d a few weeks back when he saw missiles shooting across the sky in front of his hi-tech surveillance plane.<\/p>\n \u201cA little confronting,\u201d he told this masthead. \u201cDefinitely a sight that I never really thought I would see.\u201d<\/p>\n We are sitting in the cockpit of his E-7A Wedgetail, parked on the apron of an airstrip at a secret location in the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cOut the window, up the front here, as we were flying some of those missions, we were seeing some of those ballistic missiles coming out of Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are quite bright, and they go very high in the sky \u2013 very surreal seeing that from the air.\u201d<\/p>\n About 80 Defence personnel have been based here since early March, conducting more than 40 missions to detect Iranian drones and missiles to help protect the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n Squadron Leader \u201cH\u201d, as we have been asked to call him, is the commander of the task unit.<\/p>\n He always wanted to be a pilot and he has the quiet confidence of a man who must have sensed he\u2019d always get to live his dream.<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s what gives him maturity beyond his years. With a fetching charm and an Errol Flynn moustache, H has a family back home \u2014 a wife and two kids \u2014 but for the past 10 weeks or so, his family has been a crew of young professionals who are having the adventure of their lives.<\/p>\n Two-thirds are on their first deployment and most are in their 20s and 30s.<\/p>\n They have job titles that reflect the lingo of clinical modern warfare: air battle managers, mission aircrew, force protection and air surveillance operators. Others simply call themselves IT experts or electricians, but one nuggety fellow describes himself as an expert in survival, should there be an emergency on the ground or in the air.<\/p>\n The E-7A Wedgetail is at the heart of this deployment. A mission can be as long as 12 hours, with air-to-air refuelling.<\/p>\n But the surveillance secret of the plane is the ludicrously shaped dorsal fin on top of the modified Boeing 737.<\/p>\n Related Article Its technical name is a Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array, or MESA, but it looks like a giant surfboard connected to the fuselage by a near full-length fin.<\/p>\n The genius radar embedded in the surfboard and broadside fin can see 360 degrees both out and down, allowing air and surface threats to be quickly observed by the 10 specialists monitoring the signal on 10 consoles inside the plane.<\/p>\n As one of them puts it, the Wedgetail \u201cdoesn\u2019t get wet feet\u201d; its missions in the Middle East are largely confined to those above land on the southern side of the Arabian Gulf.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the operational strength of the E-7A Wedgetail: the aircraft doesn\u2019t have to venture across the water or over the Strait of Hormuz to see hundreds of kilometres into Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cThe radar\u2019s incredibly powerful, so it gives us really good coverage across the Arabian Gulf,\u201d Flight Lieutenant \u201cC\u201d says.<\/p>\n Defence Minister Richard Marles, who visited ADF personnel at their secret Middle East base, says the Wedgetail will be Australia\u2019s key commitment to a future multi-nation mission to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but says that other assets may be promised.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have said that we will commit the E-7 and we will also work with France and the UK who are leading that, as to what other contributions we can make,\u201d Marles says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are a maritime nation where an increasing part of our national prosperity is derived from seaborne trade \u2013 this waterway really matters to Australia, it matters to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Ridwaan Jadwat says he has been very impressed by the UAE\u2019s resilience in the face of unprovoked attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost 3000 drones and missiles have been fired at the UAE, and about 95 per cent of them were intercepted, so the UAE armed forces did an incredible job in defending the country.\u201d<\/p>\n He said restoring stability to the region is in everyone\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ignore the Middle East at your peril,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fuel crisis around the world has shown why the Middle East remains so important to average Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Scene](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b495b67bacb69a00a0e7600fcc8c85ae8946287c3a778cf1f57f444f05acc436.jpeg\")
Scene from the cockpit of the Wedgetail.Nine News<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ec69ca5eafccf79e3aaf1f31c58b42caa14fdccd.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Defence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b92ef7e153bb7dbc9b76d6a646ac29e8ab254626d1d51fccce913cdc54f5bc56.jpeg\")
Defence Minister Richard Marles meets with Australian Defence Force personnel deployed to the Middle East Region with the E-7A Wedgetail aircraft.Nine News<\/p>\n![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dc1765ab9bbc5d02ebad441b8ca081bbedb0bfd3.png\")
Andrew Probyn<\/a> is Nine Network’s national affairs editor, working out of the Federal bureau.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-683430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}