The recordWhat this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.
Record
Conflict relevance
This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.
Operators
Taiwan (Republic of China): Air Force airborne early warning
Battlefield role
Airborne early warning and air battle management: detecting and tracking aircraft and surface vessels at ranges a ground radar on a small island cannot reach, and directing the fighter response. In this system the aircraft is what converts a fighter fleet into an air-defence system rather than a collection of interceptors.
Strengths
Extends detection well beyond the horizon that limits ground-based radar, and can be moved — a mobile sensor is a very different survivability proposition from a fixed one on an island of Taiwan's size. Long integration with the fighter fleet and with allied systems.
Limitations
The fleet is small in absolute terms, which is the whole problem: a handful of aircraft cannot sustain continuous coverage indefinitely, and the airframes are old. Taiwan requested six E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes from the United States in 2025 to replace them, and even on an approved timeline the first aircraft would arrive in the early 2030s — a gap that is measured in years and that no procurement decision now can close. Aircraft of this kind are also large, slow and dependent on runways, and they are named in most published treatments as an early target.
Campaign relevance
Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.
- Sustained pressure below the threshold Intensifying since 2020
via ROC Air Force (Documented, high confidence)
Visual identification
A twin-turboprop carrier-type aircraft carrying a large flat rotating radar disc above the fuselage on a pylon, with four small fins on a wide horizontal tailplane. The disc-and-four-fins combination is unmistakable and is shared with no other aircraft in the region.
Documented conflict use
In Taiwanese service since 1995, upgraded to the E-2K standard in the 2010s, and part of the daily air-defence picture that produces Taiwan's published counts of PLA aircraft. One airframe damaged in a 2022 accident was not repaired. In February 2025 Taiwan decided to seek six E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes, a request driven publicly by the expansion of PLA air activity into the sector east of the island. Vigil records the fleet's existence and the replacement request and publishes no basing, sortie patterns or orbit information.
Branch & service operators
- ROC Air Force Documented
Documented formations
- ROC Air Force Combatant Command Documented · high confidence
Assessed as of2026-09Last reviewed2026-09-09