The Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye Clears a Design Hurdle for Its Biggest Upgrade Yet

On August 18, 2026, Northrop Grumman and the US Navy completed the critical design review for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye’s Block II upgrade. It is the most significant overhaul the carrier-based radar plane has received since it entered service, and clearing the review moves the program from paper design into physical aircraft retrofits and flight testing.

What a design review actually decides

A critical design review is a formal gate in Pentagon acquisitions, not a press milestone. A government-led board checks whether an aircraft’s finalized design, its “product baseline,” is mature and stable enough to start building and installing real hardware.

The Navy’s E-2/C-2 Airborne Command and Control Systems Program Office, known as PMA-231, ran the review alongside Northrop Grumman. Clearing it does not put a single upgraded jet in the fleet. It authorizes the next phase: integration, lab testing, and eventually cutting metal on retrofit kits.

What Block II actually changes

Northrop Grumman describes Block II as a near-total rework of the E-2D’s mission systems software and hardware. It adds a new cockpit architecture meant to cut crew workload, and substantially more onboard computing power to process radar and sensor data faster.

The bigger structural change is a shift to an “open mission systems” framework. Instead of software locked to one contractor’s proprietary code, the aircraft’s mission systems use open standards the Navy can update with components from multiple vendors, plus stronger built-in cybersecurity protections.

That openness targets a specific problem: the E-2D first flew in 2007, and its original electronics are increasingly hard to source, according to Navy program statements reported by DefenseScoop. Block II swaps in modular, commercial off-the-shelf hardware so future upgrades do not require redesigning the whole jet again.

Why the Navy is investing in an airborne radar plane

The E-2D is one of several specialized carrier-based Navy planes, and it is the air wing’s airborne early warning and battle management aircraft, often called the fleet’s eyes. Its rotating radar dome tracks air and surface contacts well beyond a ship’s own radar horizon and feeds that picture to Aegis destroyers, cruisers, and F-35s operating nearby. It succeeded the earlier E-2C Hawkeye 2000, which the Navy retired from frontline squadrons as the D-model took over.

Keeping that picture current matters more as adversaries field longer-range missiles and stealthier aircraft. It follows other recent Navy bets on airborne surveillance, including a $203 million MQ-9B Sea Guardian lease deal the US brokered for a regional partner. An open architecture lets the Navy insert new sensors and software as threats change, rather than waiting years for a single contractor to redesign a closed system.

Northrop Grumman says the Block II program supports more than 4,000 jobs across 411 companies in 40 states, according to its own release, though neither the company nor the Navy has disclosed a contract value for the upgrade.