little unclear what drove the E-7 thing - my impression is that accelerationists on the political side wanted to push for space-based defense, and drove the attempt to cancel.

it is a reasonable point that any airborne radar is an attractive target to long-range missile. and that if your radar is in space, it's a different, less available class of missile to attack it (and also that so far treating space as contested is taboo).

the recent loss of THAAD radar should also make people rethink how to make an emitter that survives the first round of missiles.