"Return"? Did they ever really go away? Fighters scrambled after flight restriction violation during Obama visit; booms reported around region
well, they have a lot of work to do as 1 F-22 downed 8 F-15s piloted by other F-22 pilots in an exercise without even getting painted.. seems like they may need a better platform.
That may well be the thought behind upgrading the radar systems in the older planes. I read the article and the upgrades appear to be geared around allowing the F-15 to detect a stealth aircraft rather than being stealth itself.
It's funny, the article mentions that the F-15 routinely carries more missles...uh...max A2A loadout of an F-15 is 8 air to air missles...that's the max amount an F-22 carries internally. Externally the F-22 can also carry 8 more bringing the total to 16 altogether which is double that of the F-15. In addition it's thrust to weight ratio is higher and manueverability superior. The one thing that the F-15 has over the F-22 is open source avionics. The F-22 is not open source so while the F-15 can integrate an HMS(helmet mounted sight) and make use of the full potential of the AIM-9X, the F-22 cannot integrate the HMS with AIM-9X...it can just fire the AIM-9X without using it's off-boresight capability. As for more endurance...the F-22 doesn't need to use afterburner to go supersonic like the F-15 does, and due to carrying internal missles, suffers less drag penalty than an F-15 loaded with external fuel tanks. Furthermore the F-15 never went away, in recent years the USAF has been upgrading some of its F-15C's into Golden Eagles...armed with AESA radars, HMS, and AIM-9X. The article(which also references some articles from 2007), makes it seem like the F-15 was going to go away but is now coming back. Also, Boeing is developing a stealthy variant of the F-15E dubbed the F-15SE, Silent Eagle, with canted out vertical stabilizers, and CFT's with internally mounted weapons, 2 per CFT.
This plus the F-22 and F-15s will prolly work in tandem. Personally, I'm glad they aren't getting decommed any time soon; still my favorite fighter jet.
That's actually the NATF, the navalized variant of the F-22 proposed but canceled. There is however, something called Tomcat 21: HOME OF M.A.T.S. - The most comprehensive Grumman F-14 Reference Work - by Torsten Anft!
