USAF Actually Buying F-15Xs?

a reply to: mightmight

This isn't about picking just any jet that you can hang an AMRAAM or heater on to do homeland defense. Believe it or not, there are capabilities that certain jets provide over others that make them more viable for this mission than others. The Eagle provides certain capes that have been identified as necessary.

There was a push a few years ago to throw some new radars on Block 30 Vipers and retire the Eagles, I wonder why that fizzled out?

I'm sure more people with rather not see an Eagle at the merge, instead of an F-35 or Viper.

originally posted by: justwanttofly
a reply to: mightmight

This isn't about picking just any jet that you can hang an AMRAAM or heater on to do homeland defense. Believe it or not, there are capabilities that certain jets provide over others that make them more viable for this mission than others. The Eagle provides certain capes that have been identified as necessary.

Please explain why said fabled capabilities are "necessary" to perform mission in the threat environment of the 2020 and 2030s.

I'm sure more people with rather not see an Eagle at the merge, instead of an F-35 or Viper.

Merging with whom?!
Nobody around to launch symmetric air raids againts the contiguous US.

F-35 has longer legs than an Eagle. The only other thing that matters is load out. At Block 3 (right now), you can get four AMRAAMs in the bays, and eight more under the wings with two AIM-9X. Block 4 should be six internal using the door statio n bringing you to 16 total. You can probably loadout a few more on the bigger EagleX, but to say the F-35 can't perform the mission, or that some large capability gap exists is ridiculous.
Russia can't support large waves of Sukhois coming over the pole with the Bears, Backfires, and 'Jacks. Noone cares about "the merge" in this situation because it isn't happening. A single F-35 vs single Su-27 WVR engagement in the arctic is not the scenario if the balloon goes up.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
Why not force them to buy more f35s?
Doesn't make much sense to buy the obsolete model.

Given the early term performance of the F-35, it might be argued that the $ would be better spent on a model with higher reliability.


In the end it doesn't matter, because it's the Pentagon, home of missing Trillions of Dollars.

From what I've read, the issue is that the air force wants more aircraft now. The F-35s are late.

And it is never about just buying a bunch of planes. The infrastructure has to be in place too. Pilots have to be trained.

The F-15 are not bought because of their special capabilities. They are a stopgap buy.

a reply to: moebius

And its a BS reasoning as RR has pointed out.

The problem is what's limiting the F-35 is spending the money.

This year, Lockheed will deliver (or should) 190 F-35s.

They are willing to go to the blockbuy and get the price down further. And they are more than willing to build them faster.

The ramp up will take the same amount of time as getting the F-15X built.

This is a blatant bit of pork even corruption given Shanahan's ties to Boeing for Boeing.

Maybe they could pitch an unmanned F-15

a reply to: anzha

To make matters worse, the F-35A is aiming to hit $80M in 2020:

www.flightglobal.com...

To be fair, Lockheed was saying 2023, but with a mongo buy it can happen faster.

WTH are we buying F-15Xs at $100M when we have $80M F-35s available?!

a reply to: anzha

It increasingly looks like Trump will nominate someone other than Shanahan to replace Mattis, but the budgeting process is already well underway, not sure if it would even matter.

Order down to 8 in the first budget, supposedly:

www.bloomberg.com...

This isn't making sense.
If they are saying the USAF only intends on buying 80 odd in total then this is every kind of stupid. Particularly if they are only going to buy 8-12 a year for best part of a decade. If this plan has ANY hope of making sense they need to buy at least 20 in the first year, then 50-60 a year for 3 to 4 years. And it needs to see first airframes delivered in a year or less to have a hope of being realistically viable. Otherwise they aren't really in an airframe deficit crisis, or they aren't being serious about fixing it. You tell me which one they are? Ordering just 8 in the first year is taking the piss frankly, not to mention diverting funding from something else.

USAF Secretary confirmed today that funding for F-15's or other additional 4-gen aircraft were not in the branch's budget request...

a reply to: thebozeian

You expect the Pentagon to make sense?

a reply to: Zaphod58
Hell no!..
But I would like to think that they could at least come up with a credible bull*hit scenario to sell it. This plan is both monumentally stupid and too late.

www.janes.com...

oh gawd.

Place your bets, folks.

What do you think will get ordered?

I'm tempted to place my chits on Growlers being force fed to the USAF.

a reply to: anzha

The only aircraft that makes sense, if they're being honest about not impacting the F-35, is the Block 70 Viper. The Air Force is not going to farm maintenance out to the Navy which would mean building an infrastructure for the Rhino or Growler.

lol they have to be trolling at this point

Lockheed is not going to build Vipers over Lightnings. And the Hornet line is doing very well with the upcoming Block IIIs.

Lockheed wouldn't care about ordering more F-16's. Same reason. The longer that line stays open, the longer they have to drum up customers who can't afford or can't get F-35's.
I'm fine with Growlers as corporate welfare, but they should just e given to the Navy.

Nothing else makes sense right now other than those two.

OR

If USAF was simply mandated to get 72 new tac air airframes a year to recap (and prefer Boeing to keep Boeing Def afloat), just make Boeing produce an armed variant of the TX proposal. Simple, cheap. Doesn't even need a radar. Just give it a datalink. Make all sensors pod-based. Open architecture so you can update as needed for new weapons and sensors. Carry AMRAAMs, AIM-9X to play flying magazine in conjunction with higher end fighters. Carry various PGM' or sensors for ISR, OCAS and COIN ops in permissive environments so you don't burn hours on more expensive assets. Kill OAX like you've always wan anyway. Should be under $25-30M.
Build as many F-35's and as few ATX as possible to get to 72 a year new-builds coming into the fleet.

Interesting opinion piece by General Loh. Big surprise, the F-15 buy was purely at the order of the OSD.

www.defensenews.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Interesting.

Same dude: www.defensenews.com... -standoff/. Defeating modern air defenses is achievable with smart strategies, not only stealth and standoff

I feel like he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. However, my reading comprehension is pretty bad.

Super hornets make more sense than a block 70 if we are talking replacing an air to air player with equal or higher capability. However, to get close to the desired performance they’d need to initially keep the air to ground crap off them and skip leg day with some smaller landing gear to get high and fast. Otherwise a shift in mentality for how the AF conducts “fighter sweep” will need to be done.

The X has been talked about for a while now. It hasn’t just sprung up. The chatter was just low enough not to get too much attention.

The S-400 super MEZ example is annoying like endurance comparisons. Different problem different tool. Not every jet in the inventory needs to take down an S-400. We have stand-off weapons for a reason. Give a C-model an SA-2 MEZ and it’s still going to stay out of it.