Boeing’s vastly experienced F-15 chief pilot says he never went faster than Mach 2 while flying the F-22 Raptor within the Air Force. But when he took the Boeing F-15EX Eagle II on its maiden flight in 2021, he sure did.
“It was a clean airplane right off the production line in green primer [paint],” Matthew “Phat” Giese tells Popular Mechanics. “I did a maximum-afterburner takeoff, pointing the jet straight up, and wound up at 40,000 feet going Mach 2.5 [1,650 miles per hour]. That’s a hell of a primary flight.”
Giese’s experience illustrates what any pilot who has flown Eagles from the Nineteen Seventies up through today will inform you: no other Western fighter has the high-altitude smash of an F-15 Eagle. It’s a performance benchmark that the brand new twin-engine, two-place F-15EX enhances with thrust plus electrical and computing power to best its predecessor.
“The things that the F-15 has at all times done well—go high, go fast, stay airborne for a extremely very long time with an enormous payload [30,000 pounds of ordnance], and see further than some other fighter—are there today within the EX,” Giese says.
These attributes, including payload, usually are not hallmarks of America’s fifth-generation fighters. The F-35, for instance, can only carry 5,700 kilos of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons at shorter range and slower speeds than the F-15EX.
“Frankly, [F-15EX] can almost fill in where you would possibly not have as many bombers as you’d prefer to have. … This thing can carry a lot ordnance … very similar to you’ll with a bomber. In order that’s going to be quite effective,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of U.S. Pacific Air Forces, said through the Air Force’s annual convention in fall 2023.
The Air Force is starting to acknowledge how helpful the Eagle II may very well be. Nonetheless, it only currently plans to purchase 104 F-15EXs in total, down from an originally planned minimum fleet size of not less than 144. And yet, the state of worldwide affairs today is arguably as grave as when the F-15 first flew in 1972.
Then, as now, the U.S. needed Eagles.
Built Right the First Time
Former Eagle driver and current Boeing F-15 business development director, Robert “Mix’r” Novotny says he’s heard the F-15EX casually characterised as a 50-year old airframe. “I agree,” he tells Popular Mechanics. “Sometimes you get lucky and also you construct an exceptional airplane right the primary time.”
The F-15 was conceived for the Air Force’s F-X fighter requirement in 1968. Informed by America’s Vietnam experience and the revelation of the us’s Mach 2.8-capable MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor the yr before, designers from McDonnell-Douglas penned a twin-tailed, twin-engine Mach 2.5-capable air superiority fighter intended to out-rival anything within the air, including the Foxbat.
Chosen in late 1969, the primary Eagle delivered to the service was a two-seat F-15B trainer, handed over in November 1974. It’s an interesting historical footnote provided that the F-15EX is a two-seat airplane. Getting two-seaters in 1974 allowed pilots transitioning from the F-4 Phantom and other fighters/trainers to go aloft for the primary time with an instructor. Because the Eagle evolved, the back seat became the main target of added capability.
The primary single-seat F-15A destined for a combat squadron was delivered in January 1976. Longer-ranged F-15C and D models (with greater internal fuel capability) got here along in 1979. The Eagle spent the following three many years because the U.S. Air Force’s primary air superiority fighter, officially amassing a combat record of 104 kills and nil losses. (Nonetheless, the Iraqi Air Force MiG-25s claimed to have shot one down in 1991.)
An Air Refueling Squadron from Travis Air Force Base use a KC-10 Extender to refuel U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagles above Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, during Exercise Northern Edge 19, May 14, 2019. (Footage by U.S. Department of Defense/Milmotion via Getty Images)
So sturdy was its design, so powerful its engines (two Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220s with a maximum 23,450 pounds-thrust each), so long-ranged its endurance (1,061 nautical miles), that in 1979, McDonnell-Douglas and radar manufacturer Hughes privately teamed as much as develop a two-seat fighter-bomber version of the airplane that became the F-15E Strike Eagle.
Put simply: a line from the F-15A through E might be drawn to the F-15EX, nevertheless it’s not a straight line.
21st-Century Guts
Boeing’s Novotny says it’s difficult to “strip away whether the F-15EX is a pivot off the A, C, or E models. The truth is that they share a lot original DNA.” The EX also evolved from other, newer F-15s just like the F-15QA developed for the Qatar Emiri Air Force and the F-15SA built for Saudi Arabia.
The combo of ingredients that make up the F-15EX really goes back to 2013 when Boeing “completely gutted the airplane from the within out,” Giese explains. Minor structural changes were made to accommodate more powerful General Electric F110-GE-129 engines with a maximum 29,500 kilos of thrust. A Full-Size Determinant Assembly production technique (which reduces construct time by moving drilling to the component fabrication process) is used for the wings and the nose barrel.
A brand new digital backbone was designed for the F-15EX, including a fly-by-wire flight control system (FCS), a much more powerful Advanced Display Core Processor II mission computer, and more powerful electrical system. Nearly all the F-15C/Ds avionics were updated in a totally digital all-glass cockpit, which incorporates a ten x 19-inch large-area touch display (LAD) that’s fitted in each cockpits.
The massive-area touch display might be custom configured by either the pilot or weapons officer to present an array of knowledge, including inputs from the F-15EX’s AN/APG-82 lively electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar and its Eagle Passive/Energetic Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS) electronic warfare suite.
The previous allows the F-15EX to “see further than some other fighter,” Giese says, while the latter can do “unique digital things which are creative, and produce effects the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”
While Boeing is tight-lipped about EPAWSS’ specific capabilities, it has been described as enabling “cognitive electronic warfare,” a type of real-time identification of adversary waveforms, adapting and modifying them to make use of against the enemy. The Air Force’s Offended Kitten pod pioneered such capability. With EPAWSS, the F-15EX turns the fifth-gen fighter low observability equation on its head, Giese explains.
“As an alternative of being stealthy and managing a certain profile right into a goal area, we use badass power with the APG-82 and EPAWSS. In my view, that produces a battlespace effect that is bigger for the remainder of the airplanes [in a strike package] than one [stealth] asset,” he says.
Boeing’s Novotny agrees. “The EX has a fourth-generation outer mold line, but fifth- and sixth-generation sensors.”
Badass Power
Power pervades every aspect of the Eagle II—sensor power, ordnance power, and the facility of range. You simply can’t overlook its engines, nevertheless. We asked Giese, Boeing’s chief F-15 pilot, how flying the F-15EX compared with flying the Raptors, F-16s, and other Eagles he’s flown, plus the way it flies in formation with other fighters it has seen during evaluation at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
The jet flies very similar to a legacy F-15 but higher, he says. Its digital flight control system was designed to make transitioning from an F-15C or Strike Eagle easy.
“Where the EX differentiates itself is the acceleration and power of the GE-129s. An off-the-cuff drag race of an EX vs an E model at Eglin resulted in a straightforward win for the EX. On the subject of climb/turn performance, the powerful GE-129s again out-perform legacy engines. Also, addition of the g limiter and roll limiter make the jet extremely predictable, and protects the pilot and airframe.”
Single-engine fighters just like the F-16 and F-35 can’t match the F-15EX’s power, Giese says. “I actually have flown countless formation flights with F-16 chase aircraft during development and other mission system flight tests. My chase F-16 ended up in a 20NM trail after I flew a high-speed Mach-2.3 flutter test point. We started off in close visual formation. I’d expect similar results with an F-35.”
With a reported combat radius of 1,100 miles (the utmost distance a combat-loaded fighter can fly to and from a goal without refueling), the F-15EX can go further than some other U.S. fighter—including the F-35 (670 miles). That’s a huge advantage within the Pacific, where the Air Force could face off against China over vast distances with limited aerial refueling availability.
Novotny recalls his longest mission in a legacy Eagle was a 13-hour dusk-to-lunchtime combat sortie on night one in every of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The F-15EX will certainly be called upon similarly.
When that happens, it could actually carry virtually any aerial weapon within the U.S. arsenal on its nine wing pylons, from as much as 14 AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles to a mixture of small-diameter bombs, GBU-54 smart bombs, AGM-158 standoff cruise missiles, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
Pacific Air Forces commander, Gen. Wilsbach, told the media: “Among the weapons you could’t carry internally [on] a fifth-generation aircraft, you possibly can placed on the F-15EX.” Amongst those could be hypersonic missiles now in development, which the Eagle II can carry on its centerline pylon.
The 2-seat EX logically lends itself well to Air Force “Battle Captain” concepts, wherein the crew works with the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs, loyal wingman drones) the service is wanting to develop.
An Eagle II with a pilot flying into advanced tactical scenarios and a backseater who can operate offboard drones or weapons could make early semi-autonomous CCAs practical, while still holding a digital leash to such unmanned teaming systems.
So versatile is the F-15EX that purchasing it in small numbers and largely confining it to a homeland defense mission (because the Air Force says it intends) is not sensible. It’s a natural deterrent against China, a brand new badass to go with current fifth- and forthcoming sixth-generation fighters—all while upholding the Eagle tradition.
“The Eagle has remained that dominant over half a century,” Giese says. “Are you able to imagine knowledgeable sports team with a record of 104 wins, zero losses?”