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ORAC
23rd Mar 2017, 13:24
https://www.airforcetimes.com/articles/are-the-f-15-eagles-days-numbere

The Air Force is considering retiring its F-15 C and D fighter aircraft and replacing them with F-16s.

In a House Armed Services readiness subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, subcommittee chairman Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., asked Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, director of the Air National Guard, about plans to retire its 236 F-15 C and D Eagle fighters as a cost-saving measure, and filling their role with F-16 Fighting Falcons. Rice confirmed that was under consideration. Later in the hearing, Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said that proposal was news to her, and asked Maj. Gen. Scott West, the Air Force's director of current operations and deputy chief of staff for operations, if there had been any decision made on retiring those fighters.

West said nothing was official yet, but said the Air Force is looking for ways to maximize the use of its limited resources, and minimize the number of systems it operates while still accomplishing its mission. West and Rice both said the proposal to retire some F-15s is "predecisional." There was no discussion of the F-15E Strike Eagle. Rice said the F-16s potentially filling the role vacated by F-15s would receive radar upgrades. The Air Force is now planning for fiscal 2019, Rice said, but a decision on retiring the F-15C and D would probably not be made this year. Which means those planes would not retire until fiscal 2020 at the earliest........

"Clearly, these are two different types of aircraft with different capabilities," Wilson said. When asked if replacing the F-15 Eagle with the F-16 would have a negative effect on air superiority and present risks, Rice said it can be handled. "There's a risk in changing any of our force structure decisions," Rice said. But, he added, "there are capabilities we can add and provide on the F-16 that will [fill] a gap as we go into the future. Overall, our readiness and our protection of the U.S. will change, but I think overall, we will be OK."

McSally said that before the F-22 came online, the F-15C was probably the best air-to-air plane around. She compared the F-16 to a "decathlete" that can handle multiple types of combat at a lower cost, but said that even with upgraded radar, it wouldn't have the same air-to-air capabilities as the F-15C. She also expressed concern about what such a shift would do to aircraft readiness, considering that the Air Force is already facing a pilot shortage. "We're already in a readiness crisis," McSally said. "If you're now retraining everybody to another aircraft, in the midst of a crisis, that does have a bit of a short-term dip in readiness as well. With us being down to 55 fighter squadrons, we've just got to be careful on how that transition would happen, should this decision come to fruition."

West said there will be some "offline" time as the Air Force moves from one air frame to another. But the advantage the Air Force now enjoys over nations such as China and Russia is lessening, he said, and such a modernization shift must happen sooner rather than later.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek later said that eliminating the F-15 C and D is not a done deal. Stefanek noted that the Air Force has also proposed eliminating the A-10 in multiple budgets, but the Warthog has survived. "We're always looking at force structure options for the future," Stefanek said. "Until it is something that we put in our budget as a proposal, it's just another option that could be pursued. Just because it's an option doesn't mean we'll pursue it."

Just This Once...
23rd Mar 2017, 13:34
Somehow I don't see it happening. The F-15C (and F-22) guys know that they will probably have to resort to the gun when otherwise Winchester and recent discussions have been about adding additional missiles to the F-15C. The F-16's limited load will just will not cut it and you can forget about the high/fast adversaries.

ORAC
23rd Mar 2017, 14:13
Gotta find the savings to pay for the F-35A, KC-46, B-21 and new penetrating fighter somewhere....

glad rag
23rd Mar 2017, 14:28
If this is correct then hope May gets a (low) bid in quick!

We have taken on us kit before f4j for example..

Fonsini
23rd Mar 2017, 16:07
I suspect this has as much to do with maintainers as it does with the fast deteriorating F-15C/D airframes. USAF stated that the decision to retire the A-10 fleet was due to the necessity of retraining technicians and transferring them to the F-35 fleet, but Congress opposed the move if only because the A-10 falls into the same "beloved by the nation" niche as the B-52 and so USAF recanted for another 5 years or another 23 years depending on who you believe. Ditto the insanity that is going on with the M1A2 Abrams which continues to be built on Congressional orders (and special funding) and then moved directly into storage because the army doesn't want or need them.

As for the F-16, small agile fighters never seem to fall out of favour, and General Dynamics certainly made something special all those years ago. US fighter procurement does seem to be in something of a tail spin at the moment with no clear sense of direction but I suspect that Lockheed Martin is currently banging on the doors of the Pentagon with plans for the F-16V in their briefcase. On the other hand Pierre Sprey's advocacy for a stripped out ultra lightweight F-16 optimised for air defense and fitted with the F110-GE-132 engine is interesting, especially if you paired it with the Block 60 for ground missions.

Of course none of this is very 5th Generation........

TorqueOfTheDevil
30th Mar 2017, 12:59
before the F-22 came online, the F-15C was probably the best air-to-air plane around


But now the F-22 is 'online'. And F-15Cs/Ds are falling apart. We're not in the 1990s any more, you know.


With us being down to 55 fighter squadrons, we've just got to be careful


My heart bleeds. How much trade have all these fighter squadrons had in the last 25 years anyway? Apart from Blackhawks?

MACH2NUMBER
30th Mar 2017, 16:10
Having quite a bit of air combat training in F15 v F16. Give me the Eagle any day, but if it is really falling apart, common sense says Falcon.

ORAC
30th Mar 2017, 16:21
They all need new wings, longerons etc. The USAF held an open day to get some industry estimates of costs - but it looks unaffordable. See here.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/30/tens-of-billions-of-dollars-f-15-upgrades-project.aspx

"According to data from FlightGlobal's World Air Forces 2016 report, the U.S. Air Force currently has 416 F-15 fighters (models C through E) in its inventory. More than 180 of these are recent-model F-15Es. But Defense One reports that 235 of the planes are older F-15C and D models.

Now here's the problem: The basic F-15 design has been flying since the 1970s, and some of these C- and D-variant warbirds are getting a bit long in the beak, and need to be either upgraded or retired. To keep them flying for their full hoped-for life spans (which won't run out for another 25 years), the Air Force says it must spend at least $12 billion (Defense One estimates the cost at "tens of billions of dollars") to refurbish the F-15 fleet with upgraded electronics, new wings, bigger fuel tanks, and other structural replacements.

Even these upgrades won't succeed in transforming a fourth-generation F-15 into a stealthy fifth-generation combat jet, of course. But they'd increase the plane's range, endurance, lethality -- and life span. And over at Boeing, they're all for the idea. Steve Parker, Boeing's vice president of F-15 programs, contends that teaming up upgraded F-15s with stealthy fifth-generation F-22 fighters from Lockheed Martin would enable the Air Force to put a lot of metal in the air, and ensure air superiority "into the 2040s."

But at what cost?

At the low end of Defense One's estimated "tens of billions of dollars," $20 billion spent on upgrading 235 F-15C and D models implies an upgrades cost of more than $85 million per plane....... Looked at that way, the prospects of getting the Air Force to pay for upgrading the F-15 fleet -- or getting Congress to approve the funds -- seem pretty dim. The same money that would be needed to upgrade 235 older-model F-15s could instead be spent buying 235 brand-new F-35s from Lockheed........

A second alternative suggested by Defense One -- and this is an idea the Navy has been mooting as well -- might be to take the money the Pentagon would otherwise spend on F-15 upgrades and invest it into developing a sixth-generation jet. Tentatively titled the "Penetrating Counterair" fighter by some, and "F-X" by others, such a 6G jet couldn't possibly be ready to enter service before 2030......."

GeeRam
31st Mar 2017, 14:13
Why spend billions upgrading old F-15C's when the line is still open (last one not due for completion until 2019) so why not just continue the line and build a new batch of F-15X for want of a better term and replace/retire all the old shagged out existing F-15/16 fleet with a mix of these new build and F-35 to supplement the F-22...??

Although I guess the running costs of the 16 is somewhat less than the 15..?

:confused:

ORAC
3rd Apr 2017, 08:42
Center Fuselage Rebuild Could Be F-15C/D Achilles? Heel | Defense content from Aviation Week (http://aviationweek.com/defense/center-fuselage-rebuild-could-be-f-15cd-achilles-heel)

The F-15C may still have an undefeated aerial combat record, but the 38-year-old aircraft could be slated for retirement if the U.S. Air Force decides not to fund a major structural life-extension program.

Air Combat Command (ACC) chief Gen. Mike Holmes says it could cost $30-40 million per aircraft to keep the Eagle soaring beyond the late 2020s, including rebuilding the center fuselage section, among other refurbishments. “We’re probably not going to do that,” he tells Aviation Week. The better answer, he says, is to rapidly begin buying more fighter aircraft, at least 100 per year. That includes ramping up Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II output once the low-observable fifth-generation aircraft matures, but also successive purchases of air superiority jets under the service’s new Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) program.

The F-15C is operated primarily by the Air National Guard (ANG) in support of the homeland defense mission, capable of intercepting and shooting down adversary fighters, bombers and cruise missiles. ANG Director Lt. Gen. Scott Rice sent shockwaves through the F-15 community on March 22 when he admitted to Congress that plans are being hatched to retire the 235-aircraft single-seat F-15C fleet and the twin-seat D-model trainers in favor of Lockheed Martin F-16s upgraded with active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars. In December, the Air Force put Raytheon on contract to replace the mission computers in its F-16 fleet, providing “near-fifth-generation aircraft computing power” with twice the processing output and 40 times more memory. This upgrade is the bedrock on which future Fighting Falcon improvements will be based, including the radar upgrade. The Northrop Grumman APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar and Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar could compete for that work...........

Holmes says a minimum of 100 new fighters are needed per year to reverse this situation and begin rejuvenating the force. He wants to expand the F-35A build rate to 60 per year, but only after it completes development, to avoid upgrade costs. Air Force Assistant Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stayce D. Harris tells Congress that the service cannot afford to drop below the minimum operational requirement of 55 fighter squadrons, and would rather grow to 60, about 2,100 aircraft. But it would prefer a healthy force of 55 fighter squadrons with enough pilots and maintainers to support operations than a stressed and undermanned force of 60 units.

ACC says it must retire some fleets to unlock money and personnel to transition to the F-35 and future PCA platform, while still modernizing the F-16 and F-22 fleets. The F-16 and F-15E Strike Eagle are relatively young, with plenty of service life left. The Air Force tried and failed to retire the Fairchild Republic A-10 Warthog, so the F-15C is the next obvious cut. “We’re trying to work out that mix,” Holmes says. “One of those options is, what year does the F-15C go away?”.........