combat aircraft

O

VER THE SUMMER, various

unveri ed reports suggested

that Boeing has provided

the US Air Force with an

o er for an advanced F-15

Eagle. Dubbed the F-15X,

the  ghter would be based on the

F-15QA (Qatari Advanced) Strike Eagle

but in a single-seat con guration. The

Eagle would feature the same updated

avionics and radar and would be

capable of carrying 20 air-to-air missiles

or a combination of missiles and air-to-

ground stores.

Although details are scarce and Boeing

hasn’t commented formally on the reports,

it appears the F-15X is being touted

as a direct replacement for the current

inventory of air superiority F-15Cs.

The US Air Force retains three active-

duty squadrons of F-15C/Ds: one at RAF

Lakenheath, UK, and two at Kadena,

Japan. The bulk of the Eagle community

resides with the Air National Guard

(ANG), with squadrons at Kingsley

Field and Portland in Oregon, New

Orleans in Louisiana, West eld Barnes in

Massachusetts, Jacksonville in Florida and

Fresno in California.

In 2017, the guard tabled a motion to

retire the Eagle in favor of upgrading

some of its F-16s for the aerospace control

alert (ACA) mission. Maj Gen Scott West,

then director of current operations and

deputy chief of sta for operations, HQ

USAF, told the Senate House Armed

Services Committee that the ANG had

tabled a ‘pre-decisional’ consideration

of replacing the F-15C with the F-16C in

the homeland defense role. Although

Northrop Grumman is now installing its

AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar

(SABR) on 72 guard F-16Cs, talk of retiring

the F-15C subsided.

Meanwhile, the USAF continued with

modernization e orts for the Eagle. In

Combat Aircraft assesses the chances of the US Air Force buying

a batch of advanced F-15s to plug its air defense gaps.

REPORT Jamie Hunter

EAGLE VISION OR FAR-SIGHTED?

The missile-
carrying prowess of
the Advanced F-15
is demonstrated
by a Boeing F-15SA
on fl ight-test from
Palmdale earlier
this year. This
aircraft bristles
with 12 AMRAAMs,
but this can be
extended via the
AMBER weapons
racks that add a
further four missiles
on the shoulder
stations and a
‘quad-pack’ that
allows four more to
go on the inner wing
pylons. Richard
VanderMeulen

http://www.combataircraft.net // November 2018 47