WASHINGTON — The Air National Guard Base would receive two additional F-15EX Eagle II fighters under a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2024.
The amendment, proposed by Rep. John James, R-Mich., and accepted by voice vote on the ground of the House Wednesday, would increase the Air Force’s advance funding for the F-15EX by $30.6 million.
This may allow the Air Force to purchase two more Boeing-made F-15EXs, James said in a Tuesday House Rules Committee hearing. And the amendment would require the Air Force to send these two F-15EXs to an Air National Guard base that has A-10 Warthogs, but is without an identified aircraft to interchange them after the Air Force retires the A-10 by the top of this decade.
The 127th Wing at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, which is in James’s district, is one such unit.
“Bringing the F-15EX mission to Selfridge and increasing our capability to project combat power by solidifying our industrial base, increasing capability for these fighters, is in our vital national interest,” James said. “I cannot stand idly by while the A-10s at Selfridge are retired with out a substitute fighter mission.”
The proposed $30.6 million could be along with the $92 million increase prematurely F-15EX funding the House Armed Services Committee included within the NDAA in June, James said. That $92 million increase would allow the Air Force to purchase six more fighters in 2025. Those two increases, on top of the $228 million the Air Force originally requested, would bring the service’s total advance procurement spending for the F-15EX to $350 million in 2024.
The 2 amendments together would mean the Air Force would buy 32 F-15EXs total in 2025, and would increase the service’s total planned procurement from 104 to 112, Noah Sadlier, who’s James’s communication director, told Defense News.
And with the 48 F-35s the Air Force plans to obtain in 2025, it could mean the service would buy 80 recent fighters in total that 12 months. Air Force leaders maintain the service needs to purchase at the least 72 recent fighters annually to modernize its fleet and lower the common age of those planes.
The F-15EX is an updated version of the fourth-generation F-15, with advanced avionics similar to fly-by-wire controls and improved electronic warfare capabilities.
However the Air Force now has only two test F-15EXs in its possession, and production problems delayed Boeing’s delivery of the following six F-15EXs. That batch of fighters was originally expected to reach in December 2022.
The Government Accountability Office said in a June report supplier problems with the standard of a critical component of the fighters’ forward fuselage assembly was the primary explanation for the delay. GAO didn’t specify what that component was, but said it is required to make sure safety of flight and that the standard problems have now been fixed.
Boeing could start delivering the most recent F-15EXs later this summer, though a timeline has not yet been set.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.