Boeing F-15EX and F-15CX

[adroth]

https://www.boeing.com/defense/f-15ex/

OVERVIEW

The F-15EX is a ready-now replacement for the F-15C that includes best-in-class payload, range and speed. Designed to deliver value to the U.S. Air Force, the F-15EX will be a backbone fighter for the service – not just today, but for the next several decades. Boeing engineers created hundreds of digital aircraft before cutting any metal, and flew thousands of hours before our first test flight. The result is an aircraft with a digital backbone, open system architecture and the capacity to carry hypersonic weapons, making it a key element of the U.S. Air Force’s tactical fighter fleet.

====

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x728yfiid0

The U.S. Air Force test pilots take to the skies for the first time in the #F15EX​, with its official U.S. Air Force livery. This marks the first time in 20+ years the U.S. Air Force has flown a new F-15.

[adroth]

The U.S. Air Force Is Buying New F-15s After All
The F-15X will complement the F-22 and F-35 in tomorrow's aerial battlefields.

BY KYLE MIZOKAMI
FEB 19, 2019

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a26413900/air-force-buying-new-f-15/

The U.S. Air Force will go ahead and buy brand-new F-15s even as it purchases large numbers of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Updated with the latest technology, the F-15X can carry nearly two dozen air-to-air missiles and will likely work together with stealth jets to take on fleets of enemy fighters.

An article at Bloomberg has revealed that the USAF will request eight F-15X fighters in its budget. The service plans to buy 80 fighters over five years. That's enough to fit out a wing of 72 aircraft, divided into three squadrons of 24 planes each, with eight spares. That's just the five-year projection, though, and the service may buy additional fighters beyond 2025.

The F-15X will come in two versions, a single-seat F-15CX and a twin-seat F-15EX. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, other than crew size the two jets will be identical.

< Edited >

F-15X is a thoroughly modern update of the F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter first introduced in the 1970s. Most of the updates it has are already flying in F-15s produced for other countries, with research and development already paid for by nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These include strengthened airframes for increased maneuverability and airframe life span, giving the advanced fighter an even greater dogfighting capability over the original F-15 and an impressive airframe life span of 20,000 hours.

The F-15X will also include large flat-panel displays for displaying aircraft information, conformal fuel tanks to give it a longer range, a digital fly-by-wire control system, a new APG-82 radar, and the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS) for protection from air-to-air missiles.

One thing the F-15X doesn’t have is stealth capability, at least to the extent of new or new-ish aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor and F-35. The F-15 airframe was designed before stealth became a thing, and there’s not much, other than using radar-absorbing coatings, that can be done to retrofit a reduced radar signature. So, instead of being hard to spot, the F-15X will be armed to the teeth. The plane will use new AMBER missile racks to nearly triple the aircraft’s air-to-air missile capability, from 8 to 22.

< Edited >