by Bill Carey - June 7, 2017, 12:09 AM
F-15 production is secure through 2019, and
planned updates will keep the U.S. Air Force flying the multi-role F-15E Strike
Eagle version into the 2040s, Boeing reports. The manufacturer also has a case
to make for extending the life of the F-15C/D air superiority version of the
1970s-vintage fighter, which faces a shorter time horizon.
“The last time we delivered a Strike Eagle to
the U.S. Air Force was in the mid-2000s,” Steve Parker, Boeing vice president
for F-15 programs, told reporters visiting the company’s St. Louis-area
manufacturing facility May 17. “Right now, over the last couple-year period, is
the most amount of budget that has been allocated to the F-15 for some time—in
excess of $12 billion of upgrades the U.S. Air Force is funding to take this
platform into the 2040s and beyond.”............
Meanwhile, Boeing has a “good, solid backlog”
of F-15 orders from international customers. The F-15s it is delivering today
have service lives exceeding 20,000 hours based fuselage and wing redesigns
over the last several years, as well as new technologies introduced by some of
those buyers, Parker said.
Boeing will complete deliveries this year for
another foreign customer that Parker declined to identify, but that AIN
understands is Singapore. Another possible buyer is Qatar. The U.S. State
Department approved the foreign military sale to that nation of 72 F-15QA
multi-role fighters—an estimated $21 billion transaction—according to a Defense
Security Cooperation Agency notification to Congress in November.
Related post:
F-15E: HERE
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