Unbeaten in air combat, the legendary F-15C/D gets vital upgrades, ensuring its dominance and readiness for global threats through the 2040s.
By Kris Osborn, Warrior
(Washington DC) It comes as no surprise that the US Air Force is preparing to extend the service life of its F-15C/D fleet for many years, given that the jet has a near perfect combat record, is among the fastest fighters to ever exist and is still very much in demand by Combatant Commanders around the globe.
The F-15 is famous for never having lost a dog-fight or air-to-air engagement in its entire history, and the platform is slated as capable of traveling at F-22-like speeds of Mach 2.2 or faster.
The F-15’s thrust-to-weight ratio may help explain its unparalleled air-war success. An interesting compilation from World Defense lists the F-15 as having a 1.29 thrust-to-weight ratio, right next to the Russian Su-35 at 1.30.The F-22, however, when outfitted with “round nozzles,” can hit a 1.37 thrust-to-weight ratio, according to the assessment.
The Air Force plan, as articulated in Air & Space Forces magazine, is to keep a number of its Platinum F-15C/D models for homeland defense as the majority of the active duty Air Force fleet transitions to more F-15Es and F-15EXs. The plans were included in an Air Force report to Congress required in the latest defense bill.
Upgrade Success
Perhaps the largest reason for the extension lies in the widely recognized reality that successful upgrades can essentially transform a legacy fighter or bomber into a modern, highly-capable, relevant aircraft equipped for major modern combat operations. Air frames themselves often remain viable for decades beyond an aircraft’s intended or expected service life, particularly if given some structural reinforcement. This has proven to be the case with the C-130, F-16 and famous Vietnam-era B-52, a classic aircraft which now has a new engine, new weapons bay, new communications technology and new sensing and avionics. Today’s B-52 will fly farther and faster and likely launch drones, fire hypersonic weapons and carry an unprecedented arsenal into war. In a similar fashion, overall flight hours for the Air Force’s F-16 have been extended by several thousand due to its successful SLEP, Service Life Extension Program. The F-16 SLEP has not only included avionics, sensing and communications technology but also retrofitted several F-35 components into the aircraft such as its Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.
F-15 Upgrades
Various versions of the F-15 are also receiving AESA radar upgrades, technologies which can increase the range and accuracy with which enemy targets can be detected and verified. AESA in particular is engineered to detect a wide number of threats at any one given time and can cover a growing number of frequencies. The range and image fidelity of a radar system is in large measure determined by the number of its Transmit/Receive modules and the “packaging” of how densely and effectively they are engineered into the nose radome of an aircraft. Therefore an F-15 which much longer and more precise detection range can greatly adjust to a modern threat environment and see potential enemy targets from much greater distances. The F-15 has also been engineered with an extremely powerful Advanced Display Core Processor II computer, a machine with processing speed so fast it can perform 87 billion functions per second.
New High-Speed Computer
A significant US Air Force essay from 2016 catalogs the first flight of the ADCP II on an F-15.
“The ADCP II high-speed processing and interface designs enable advanced systems integration, increased mission effectiveness, augmented fault-tolerance, enhanced system stability and aircrew survivability,” the Air Force essay explains. According to the US Air Force, the most critical element of the computer upgrade is that the new computer will support ongoing aircraft upgrades that dramatically improve performance capacity and allow for continued software enhancements. The ADCP II supports the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System and the well-known and highly impactful Infrared Search and Track Systems (IRST). These technologies greatly enhance the ability of the aircraft to operate in a high-threat electronic warfare (EW ) “Jamming” environment. IRST is also integrated into the US Navy’s F/A-18 and is credited with greatly improving targeting precision range and accuracy
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University