F-15X: A Few Billions Dollars Down the Drain (Why Not More F-35s Instead?)
Key point: America needs more planes in the air, and there aren't enough F-35s and F-22s available.
On December 21, Bloomberg Government reported that the Pentagon was planning to set aside $1.2 billion in the 2020 defense budget to procure twelve new F-15X fighters, a heavily upgraded model of the twin-engine jet first introduced into U.S. service in 1976.
If this leads to full-scale procurement, multi-role F-15Xs could replace around 250 aging F-15C and D air-superiority fighters based in the U.S., Japan and England which would either be retired or require expensive upgrades. The new Eagles would be produced by Boeing at its manufacturing line in St. Louis, which in recent years has built upgraded F-15s for export.
Earlier in September 2018, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told Valerie Insinna of Defense News the air force was not interested in the F-15X:
"In any of the fights that we have been asked to plan for, more fifth gen [stealth] aircraft make a huge difference, and we think that getting to 50-50 means not buying new fourth gen aircraft, it means continuing to increase the fifth generation.”
The air force believes non-stealthy F-15s and F-16s would have little survivability attempting to penetrate airspace defended by advanced air defense missiles like Russia’s S-400 system, unlike the fifth-generation F-22 and F-35.
Instead, according to Bloomberg’s sources, the F-15X order was pushed by the top brass in the Department of Defense, including both outgoing Secretary of Defense Mattis and his acting replacement, Patrick Shanahan.
