Latest news with #EagleII
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
F-15EX Production Heats Up
TWZ's Jamie Hunter recently caught up with Robert Novotny, Boeing's executive director for F-15EX business development, who provided the latest on the U.S. Air Force's newest fighter, the Eagle II, which was recently the subject of high praise in the latest annual report from the Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E). Right now, Boeing is preparing to start to deliver Lot 2 of the Air Force's F-15EX order, and the first aircraft in this batch — tail number 9 — flew earlier this month. Meanwhile, delivery of the eight Lot 1A and 1B jets was completed in June 2024, with six of those aircraft going to developmental testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and two for the type's first operational unit, the 142nd Wing of the Oregon Air National Guard in Portland, Oregon. As Novotny discusses in the video, some of those Eglin F-15EXs recently took part in the latest edition of the Bamboo Eagle exercise off the California coast, which you can read about here. The large-force exercise series has quickly become one of the most important for the U.S. military, as well as key allies, and has a clear eye on preparing for a future coalition fight in the Pacific with China — a potential conflict in which the F-15EX would very likely play an important role. Novotny also alludes to teaming with unmanned aircraft and the F-15EX's ability to carry outsized weapons, which is something else that TWZ has looked at in detail in the past, as well as its current installation of the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System, or EPAWSS, which you can read more about here. Finally, there are some very interesting items on Novotny's 'wish list' for future F-15EX capabilities, namely smart expendables, a towed decoy, and enhancements to the infrared search and track sensor available to it. The video below, shot at the Air Force Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, last week, gives us the full view on where the F-15EX program is at right now. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Yahoo
F-15EX Nails Pentagon Test Campaign, Survivability Concerns Remain
In its latest annual report, the Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) provides an absolutely glowing assessment of the F-15EX Eagle II, the latest fighter to enter U.S. Air Force service. However, the assessment also offers a note of caution, especially when it comes to the survivability of the fighter when faced with potential future threats. In the report, the Pentagon provides an update on the status of the F-15EX, which was approved for full-rate production in June of last year. It also reinforces the fact that, at present, the two-seat F-15EX is primarily an air superiority platform, despite its multirole capability. The F-15EX could potentially take on a multi-role mission once it's established in service, but for now, the air-to-air mission is the priority. Specifically, the report notes, this includes missions such as offensive counter-air, cruise-missile defense, and defensive counter-air capabilities, including escort of high-value airborne assets. At this point, the F-15EX has only 'a limited capability to employ precision-guided, air-to-surface munitions.' With that in mind, the DOT&E report outlines the results of tests that assessed the F-15EX primarily against the kinds of threats it might encounter in the air-to-air part of its mission set. Here, the Eagle II appears to have passed with flying colors. 'Against the level of threat tested, the F-15EX is operationally effective in all its air superiority roles, including defensive and offensive counter-air against surrogate fifth-generation adversary aircraft, as well as basic air-to-ground capability against the tested threats,' the report notes. The reference to the F-15EX's effectiveness against fifth-generation threats is especially notable. While it's unclear exactly what kinds of threats are being referred to, a fifth-generation fighter will typically have a low-observable design, advanced 'sensor fused' avionics, and generally high performance, among other attributes. Prior to the F-35, the fifth-generation rubric often included extreme agility and supercruise, but definitions for generations of fighters are highly subjective and change with the times. You can read more about this reality here. Critics of the F-15EX have, in the past, suggested that the aircraft would not be able to compete on level terms with fifth-generation types, since it's after all a heavily upgraded fourth-generation design, the first prototype of which flew in 1972. Regardless, the report seems to put such concerns aside, at least in the air-to-air arena, and based on the currently available test data. Furthermore, 'The F-15EX was able to detect and track all threats at advantageous ranges, use onboard and off-board systems to identify them, and deliver weapons while surviving,' the report continues. While it has clearly excelled in simulated air-to-air combat, the F-15EX also wins plaudits from the Pentagon on account of meeting 'all its reliability, availability, and maintainability requirements,' and achieving 'nearly all objectives although maintenance technical orders were still immature.' This is a huge achievement as the reliability of modern fighters has become nearly as big of a concern as their basic capabilities, with fifth-generation types struggling in this regard. Compared with the 'legacy' Eagle, the F-15EX boasts a much-enhanced cockpit, including a large touchscreen display, which you can read more about here. The crew are each provided with Digital Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems (D-JHMCS). The cockpit environment is singled out for praise in the report, with survey data assessing human-systems interactions indicating that the pilots had positive opinions of F-15EX cockpit usability. However, the report does highlight some potential concerns that were raised during the initial operational test & evaluation (IOT&E). Here, the Pentagon notes that, while adequate for the current F-15EX mission set, the threat level was not representative of some of the kinds of higher-end threats that the aircraft may encounter in the future. 'The mission-level testing did not include some advanced, longer-range threat weapons becoming operational at the time of F-15EX fielding.' As a result, the report continues, follow-on testing will be required 'to assess the system against higher threat levels in more complex mission scenarios.' More details weren't provided, although the 'advanced, longer-range threat weapons' would appear to be a reference to one or more of the new Chinese air-to-air missiles currently coming online or poised to do so. China is known to be working on further-reaching air-to-air missiles, including the big PL-17, a very long-range missile that may well be intended primarily to target high-value assets, like tankers and airborne early warning aircraft. You can read more about this still-mysterious missile here. As well as the more specialized PL-17, there is also another new Chinese air-to-air missile, currently dubbed PL-16, the design of which seems to have been driven by the requirement for the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter to accommodate six longer-range missiles internally. In the past, Douglas Barrie, the Senior Fellow for Military Aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank told TWZ that the PL-16 will likely feature 'an active electronically scanned front end, Mach 5-plus fly-out, a lot of very capable onboard software, and be very resistant to jamming.' There's no doubt that China is making rapid progress in air-to-air missiles, with even the relatively well-established PL-15 thought to out-range the U.S.-made AIM-120C/D AMRAAM series. Indeed, the Air Force has publicly said that the emergence of the PL-15 was a key factor in the decision to start the AIM-260 program to provide a longer-range AMRAAM successor. It's notable, too, that the F-15EX has also been earmarked as a potential platform for the carriage of new and larger long-range air-to-air missiles, as you can read about here. The report points out that some of the difficulty in obtaining the required test data for the F-15EX has resulted from the limitations in existing open-air range infrastructure. This is something that will only become more acute as missile ranges increase — not to mention the need to conduct these kinds of tests away from the prying eyes of potential adversaries. With this in mind, the F-15EX test campaign may, in the future, make use of the Joint Simulation Environment (JSE). This is a facility offering a so-called 'software battlespace environment,' for testing and training that cannot currently be conducted on the Pentagon's major physical test and training ranges. With the F-15EX now in Air Force service, the generally highly positive results of its operational testing thus far will be a significant confidence boost for the service and for manufacturer Boeing. Time will tell how the F-15EX copes with the kinds of 'advanced, longer-range threat weapons' that it hasn't currently been pitted against in test simulations. But provided it continues to excel, this could be another strong argument for the Air Force looking to acquire more than the 98 F-15EX aircraft that it now plans to buy. Contact the author: thomas@
