Combat aircraft

Above: The

Seymour

Johnson F-15Es

feature two

Pratt & Whitney

F100-PW-220

turbofan

engines, which

deliver 25,000lb

of thrust per

engine in full

reheat.

Right top to

bottom:

The ‘last-chance’

check area at

the EOR (end

of runway) is a

hive of activity

as a wave

of missions

prepares to

depart.

Maintainers

prepare to load

inert (blue)

GBU-12 laser-

guided bombs.

being at the tip of the spear, targeting

high-value targets, including the highest

echelons of Al-Qaeda, was a very

rewarding experience for us.’

Finding the Suite spot

The raft of upgrades that have been

realized and are in train for the Strike Eagle

have been well documented, but Sage’s

perspective puts them into context. ‘We

call our upgrades Suites. When I  rst got

in the jet we were Suite 1; today we’re

Suite 8. When I started  ying [the F-15E]

we didn’t even have an arrow pointing

north on the targeting pod display. When

you are  ying close air support [CAS] and

talking to guys on the ground who are

saying things like, ‘the target is one click

east,’ you realize that CAS wasn’t originally

in our bag of tricks. We added that north

arrow and quickly became good at CAS.

It wasn’t long before we became experts

at it. Remember, the F-15 was originally

built for aerial combat. Our gun is canted

2° upwards because that’s helpful when

you’re shooting at an enemy aircraft. With

4TH FIGHTER WING | FEATURE ARTICLE

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January 2018 http://www.combataircraft.net

30-39 4th FW C.indd 33 23/11/2017 15:01