Meet Brand New F-15EX： Absolute Air Dominance!

While the whole world is chasing a sixth-generation stealth jet, the U.S. Air Force is ordering hundreds of aircraft based on a design older than the pilots who will fly them. It sounds like a mistake. But this old-timer has something many fighters would envy. More than a hundred aerial victories. And not a single loss in air combat. And when the Pentagon found itself facing a gap in its defenses, an uncomfortable question surfaced. Why wait for a new aircraft of the future when the one you need is already sitting in a hangar? Meet the F-15EX Eagle II. And here's why this half-century-old old-timer has suddenly become one of the most sought-after fighters in the U.S. Air Force. The aircraft that started it all first took to the skies back in 1972, when the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy was still considered a technological marvel and electronic warfare was measured in kilowatts of jamming transmitters. Although in reality, its story began a decade earlier. In the late 1960s, the American military was seriously concerned about the rapid development of Soviet aviation and the appearance of the MiG-25 came as a genuine shock to the West. This enormous twin-engine fighter could reach speeds above Mach 3 and climb to altitudes of more than 90,000 feet. Against the background of intelligence reports about new Soviet projects, the U.S. Air Force concluded that the country needed a fundamentally new air superiority fighter. That's how the FX program was born, and McDonnell Douglas won it with its YF-15A prototype. The engineers bet on powerful engines, a huge wing area, a large fuel reserve, and outstanding acceleration characteristics, deliberately refusing to make any compromises. Two Pratt & Whitney F-100 powerplants turned the F-15 into one of the most impressive fighters of its time, if not the most impressive. A thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one allowed it not merely to climb quickly but to almost shoot vertically into the sky, while still retaining the ability to accelerate even in the steepest climb. Its other characteristics were no less impressive. The Eagle's maximum speed exceeded Mach 2.5, its surface ceiling reached more than 65,000 feet, and its powerful AN-APG-63 radar could detect targets at distances of over a hundred miles. An outstanding figure by 1970 standards. Yes, the early F-14 Tomcat with its AWG-9 radar could also detect targets at very long distances, reaching hundreds of miles under ideal conditions. But let's not forget that it was a heavy carrier-based interceptor with a massive antenna. In effect, the F-15 became the embodiment of the famous formula associated with American Colonel John Boyd. Speed, energy, and the ability to impose your own terms of battle on the enemy. Over the decades, this fighter took part in numerous conflicts around the world and operated under very different conditions, and its combat record proved truly impressive. The F-15 Eagle family scored more than 100 confirmed aerial victories without losing a single aircraft in air-to-air combat, something that became almost unique in modern aviation. But the platform's true strength was not even in its combat statistics. It was in its enormous potential for modernization. Already in the 1980s, the McDonnell Douglas team rolled out the first major modification, the F-15E Strike Eagle, a multi-role fighter-bomber capable not only of destroying aerial targets, but also of delivering precision strikes against ground objects. However, by the mid-2010s, the legendary line had reached the limits of its endurance. The aircraft were more than 30 years old, fatigue cracks and corrosion demanded increasingly expensive inspections and repairs, and the continued operation of the old F-15CD fleet was becoming less and less rational. The United States began actively transitioning to fifth generation aircraft. The new F-22 Raptor entered service, and soon after that, one of the most ambitious aviation programs of the modern era began, the F-35 Lightning II. To many, it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that the era of the Eagle was coming to an end, but a little later it became clear that replacing the entire F-15C and F-15D fleet with the F-22 would not be possible. Production plans for the Raptor had been sharply reduced from the original 750 aircraft to a far more modest and rather dramatic 187 units, largely because of the aircraft's high cost. And the F-35A was not a direct replacement for the F-15C at all, because it had been developed around a different philosophy and had completely different strengths. Although stealth provided enormous advantages, it came at a price. Fewer weapons inside the internal bays and the aircraft's dimensions also imposed limitations on the size of future missiles. Not to mention the radically changed requirements for range and weapons load caused by rising tensions in the Pacific region. At that moment, the American military turned its attention back to the F-15. Because, let's be honest, why wait years for some hypothetical future F-45 when you already have an F-15 at home? Boeing, which had taken over McDonnell Douglas back in 1997, had a very interesting foundation for a new aircraft at its disposal. For many years, the company had been developing export versions of the Eagle for foreign customers. The F-15SA was created for Saudi Arabia, while Qatar received the F-15QA. Both versions received a wide range of modern technologies, which later formed the basis of the future F-15EX Eagle II. Yes, this modification was not created from a blank sheet of paper. But that was exactly what made it possible to significantly reduce development time, costs and project risks. And besides, beneath the familiar fuselage there was an entirely new fighter. At the core of the Eagle II lies a seriously reworked version of the advanced Eagle family with a reinforced structure and a designed service life of more than 20,000 flight hours, twice as much as standard F-15s. One of the key elements of the upgrade was the introduction of fly-by-wire, an electronic flight control system. In older aircraft, the pilot's commands were transmitted to the control surfaces through more traditional mechanical and hydromechanical systems. But with fly-by-wire, the lion's share of the control workload shifted to the computer, making it possible to use the airframe's capabilities even more effectively. For such a large guy as the F-15, this was especially important, because with the new system it became more predictable, more stable and more flexible to control. The F-15EX received a modern AESA radar, the AN-APG-82-V1. It scans the airspace faster, can track a huge number of targets simultaneously, better resists electronic countermeasures and provides high-precision terrain mapping. The aircraft's cockpits were also heavily transformed. Large touchscreen large-area displays, or LADs, were installed in both the front and rear cockpits, along with the new Advanced Display Core Processor-2, or ADCP-2. The pilots were also equipped with digital helmet-mounted targeting systems, turning the crew into operators of a complex combat node, where data from the radar, electronic warfare systems, weapons, communications and external sources all converge on one screen. Survivabilities handled by the AN-ALQ-250 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, its task is to detect, classify and locate threats, warn the crew and help disrupt the operation of enemy radars and missile systems. For the F-15EX this is especially important, since the Eagle II is not a stealth aircraft, its survivability relies heavily on a delicate combination of weapons employment range, situational awareness, electronic warfare, speed and operation as part of a shared network. At the same time, this new modification of the legend preserved its main trait, a large and powerful airframe capable of carrying what compact stealth fighters physically cannot squeeze into their internal bays. The powerplant only reinforces this feature. Two General Electric F-110-GE-129 engines produce about 29,500 pounds of thrust each in afterburner, giving the Eagle II a solid reserve of power, as befits a heavy multirole fighter. Combined with a maximum combat load of up to 29,500 pounds, this makes the F-15EX not just a missile truck, but a high-energy platform capable of operating an impressive array of missiles and large strike weapons at long ranges. The fighter's large payload capacity and a total of up to 25 hardpoints give it an impressive degree of flexibility. For example, in a typical air superiority or escort configuration, it can carry 12 air-to-air missiles, AIM-120 AMRAAMs, AIM-9 Sidewinders or AGM-88 HARM missiles, depending on the mission profile. Looking ahead, thanks to proposed expanded carriage systems such as the Advanced Missile and Bomb Ejector Rack or AMBER, as well as mounting points on the Conformal Fuel Tanks or CFTs, the Eagle II can carry 16 AIM-120s, 4 AIM-9s, and 2 AGM-88 HARMs. That, in turn, would make life much easier for a friendly stealth flight of F-22 and F-35 fighters. At the same time, the U.S. Air Force is exploring the possibility of integrating new beyond-visual range air-to-air missiles, or VVRAMs, the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, known as JATOM. These missiles are expected to be similar in size to the AIM-120 and are seen as a direct response to China's PL-15. All of this makes the F-15EX one of the most heavily armed fighters in the world, despite its rather venerable age. But the value here lies not even in the number of hard points. It lies in the fact that all of this weaponry can be used as part of a network. In modern warfare, an aircraft does not necessarily have to see the target itself, make the decision, and launch the missile based solely on its own data. It can receive information from other fighters, AWACS aircraft, ground-based systems, satellites, drones, and networked command structures. In such a scheme, a low-observable F-35 or a future sixth-generation fighter from the Next Generation Air Dominance Program, the Boeing F-47, could approach the enemy much more closely, detect it, and pass targeting data to the Eagle-2 missile carrier, which would play the role of a long-range squire. This is one of the main reasons why the U.S. Air Force was so interested in upgrading the F-15. It turned out that the old Eagle fits perfectly into the concept of distributed air warfare of the future. The F-15EX does not even try to be invisible. It brings range, speed, energy, and the widest possible weapons load to the fight, which is critically important in the Pacific theater, where distances are vast and bases are located far apart from one another, forcing aircraft to operate at long ranges. And the Eagle-2 fits into this puzzle almost perfectly. A separate advantage of the new modification was its move toward open architecture, similar to what's used in the newest fighters. In older combat aircraft, every serious modernization turned into a complex and insanely expensive budget-draining operation. New equipment had to be literally sewn into a closed system, software had to be rewritten, compatibility had to be checked again, and years had to be spent on integration. Open modular architecture turned this process upside down, greatly simplifying it. Now the aircraft is designed from the beginning so that new systems, sensors, and weapons can be added faster. In a sense, this has already stopped being merely a nice feature of new combat aircraft and has moved into the category of strategic advantages. After all, we live in an era where technology changes extremely quickly, where hypersonic missiles were being developed yesterday and combat lasers are already being created today. Of course, none of the above makes the F-15EX a cheap aircraft in an everyday sense, and a modern fighter is an extremely expensive system. But compared with creating an entirely new platform from scratch, the Eagle-2 looks like a much faster and far less risky way to close a specific gap in the US Air Force fleet. A fleet that needed the F-15CD replaced yesterday, not after 15 years of development. It's no surprise that the service quickly increased its initial plans for the total number of F-15EX aircraft from 129 units to 267. In an era when most countries are trying to develop exclusively new platforms, American engineers successfully breathed new life into a design that first took to the air more than 50 years ago. And most surprisingly, they did this not out of nostalgia for the past, but because even decades could not erase the fundamental strengths of the F-15. If anything, they made those strengths even more relevant. Created during the Cold War, the Eagle outlived the Soviet Union, witnessed the arrival of fifth-generation fighters, and adapted remarkably well to the demands of conflicts in the decades ahead. In doing so, it clearly proved that evolution can sometimes matter far more than revolution. So what do you think matters more? Novelty or reliability? Stealth or a pile of missiles under the wings? Combat lasers or enormous fuel tanks that allow aircraft to cover even the boldest distances without the help of tankers? Be sure to tell us in the comments. 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